Consumers expect convenience, agility, and customization in all things. They are now accustomed to curbside grocery pick-ups, Lyft services, delivery of fresh meal kits, and Netflix movie viewings. It speaks to the trend of platforms replacing pipelines.
To keep pace with consumer demands, businesses also require highly targeted, customized deliverables with significantly faster lead times. Specifically, this trend is reshaping, more specifically adding agility, to the landscape of management consulting.
The traditional norm involves large consulting firms such as McKinsey or Deloitte engage in a pre-planning process of several months before actual contracts are signed with multi-billion dollar businesses. Then large teams are flown out to the client site, in which they scope the problem in greater depth and provide a multi-tiered strategic solution, which then takes another several months to execute by the actual client team. When companies used to focus on gaining or maintaining market share slowly with three to five year plans.
This pace of work, while helpful for strategies that will take three to five years to materialize, tends to lag behind changing landscape of what consumers demand and companies need in today’s world.
Enter Micro-Consulting, which is the agile, customized version of a traditional management consulting model. This type of business-to-business problem solving reflects the changing times and adapts to a faster pace of needs.
- Laser focused projects – Clients will have specific areas where they require additional, outside experts to supplement their in-house knowledge. Micro-consulting answers this need quickly, offering 1-2 consultants without months of pre-planning or contract negotiations.
- Lower budgets – Micro-consulting has democratized access to exclusive McKinsey type talent to companies that do not meet the $1B revenue minimums required by the large consulting forms. Micro-consulting serves companies of all sizes and projects of all scopes and budgets.
- Shorter delivery time – Projects are delivered in a matter of weeks up to three months versus six months just for preplanning and then another year for delivery.
- Immediate ROI – Shorter delivery means the effectiveness of delivery can be measured sooner and can adapt faster to the customer’s demand for convenience.
- Flexible location – Consultants can often work on these projects remotely, as well as on-site at the client location.
