What is
Strategy Consulting?

But first, what is strategy?

Establishing a strategy means making choices in the allocation of a company's resources, whether financial or organizational.

Strategy consulting

Strategy consulting means helping the managers of a company or one of its business units to make these choices, which are by their very nature complex. It's a very specific segment of the vast business consulting market.

Strictly speaking, strategy consulting covers the strategic support provided to group senior management and ComEx to help them decipher market trends, position themselves, create or maintain their competitive edge & prioritize company resources:

• Vision and strategic plan
• Business case for various strategic initiatives, prioritization and roadmap
• Vision of market trends and developments, go-to-market rules
• Diversification into other activities, whether adjacent or not
• Portfolio review
• Strategic audit of potential acquisitions, due diligence...

The skills and qualities required for these assignments, reinforced by the progressive learning of consulting firm methodologies, are :

• Analytical and problem-solving skills
• A capacity for synthesis and conceptual creativity
• The ability to understand and navigate in rapidly changing and poorly documented environments
• Written and oral communication skills to quickly identify key messages and convey them convincingly and effectively to decision-makers.

Experience

Several years' experience (3-8 years) in strategy consulting with consulting professionals enables you to develop excellent "business" reflexes, sharpen your analytical faculties and quickly frame and solve complex problems in a variety of situations. It's a career gas pedal and a gateway to a wide range of career paths: major corporations, entrepreneurship, finance...

Strategy consulting deals with difficult, often unique subjects, and its methodologies are opposed to the replication of standard models or frameworks ("templates") that can be found in other types of consulting, for example the support of organizations by rolling out project management techniques, which are just as necessary. These projects are often the result of recommendations made by strategy consultants.

This explains why the profiles (and consequently the remuneration and therefore the fee structures) differ between strategy consulting firms and other types of consulting.   [Strategy consulting profiles can carry out organization or transformation assignments, but it is very rare for organization firms to be asked to carry out strategy consulting assignments].

Different types of consulting firms

The strategy consulting sector is subdivided into several types of company:

• The major groups in the sector (BCG, McKinsey, Bain & Company, etc.), which today carry out a limited proportion of their business in strategy assignments, and more in programs to transform organizations, IT and processes.
• Big 4 firms, originally auditing firms, have bought strategy consulting boutiques, such as EY with Parthenon and then OC&C, or PWC with Strategy& (ex-Booz), or Deloitte with the acquisition of Monitor.
• Strategy consulting boutiques, usually founded by former partners of major brands in the sector.

The latter, like Emerton, provide consultants with expertise that rivals that of the major groups, but with a level of attention and interaction with the most senior members of the firm that their competitors cannot guarantee.