Consulting 101 - The Basics

By Dale Stubbart

Welcome to the wonderful world of Consulting. It's a world I know well, having lived it for more than 30 years. What does a Consultant do? Well I'm glad you asked.Consultants are brought into a project for the expertise, to speed the project along, and to share their knowledge with the Client.Consultants are sought more for their wisdom than for their advice. I try to help the Client come to wise decisions rather than telling them what they should do - nobody likes to be told what they should do.I get to travel, meet new people, work in various industries and feel the satisfaction of the team having done our job well.This book is about the basics of Consulting. I wrote it to help those who are new at Consulting, so they don't feel like they're flailing around on their own, not sure what they're supposed to do, act, or what's available to them as a Consultant.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dale Stubbart
• Release date: Nov 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201744205

Book preview

Dedication

I’d like to thank my Uncle Gerald Thomas for getting me my first gig as a consultant for his company Thomas Data Systems.

I’d like to thank my wife for putting up with my being gone almost every week of the year for several years.

I’d like to thank all the consultants who let me use them as references.

And I’d like to thank all the consulting firms and clients who invited me to be part of their teams.

Welcome

My name’s Dale Stubbart. Maybe you’ve heard of me.

I’ve consulted for Individuals, Small Businesses, Non-Profits, and Fortune companies. I’ve been a Consultant to more than 35 different Clients.

I’ve consulted for companies in AZ, CA, CO, FL, ID, IL, MI, MN, NE, OH, PA, WA, WI, Guam, and Toronto.

I’d love to consult for companies in HI, the Caribbean, and Europe.

I’ve been in IT for over 40 years. I’ve been a Computer Consultant for at least 30. I’ve worked for several computer consulting firms – Yellow Bear Journeys, Stubbart Consulting, Thomas Data Systems, Technalysis, Smith McCann, and Prithibi. Never heard of any of them?

What about Computer Task Group (CTG), Keane. Adecco, EP2M, Nityo, Staff Matters, Waggware, Centric Consulting, and Sure Power? Still no?

How about HCL, Accenture, Oracle, PWC, Oxford Global? Surely you’ve heard of one of them!

I’ve worked directly or indirectly for all of those Consulting Firms. And the point is, it doesn’t matter how well known the Consulting Firm is, the basics of consulting are still the same.

Welcome to Consulting 101 – The Basics.

Yellow Bear Journeys is my own current consulting firm. Stubbart Consulting was my previous consulting firm. Thomas Data Systems, Technalysis, and Waggware no longer exist. EP2M got bought by FivePoint which got bought by Ernst Young. The rest are still in existence.

Five of the consulting firms I worked for had less than 10 Consultants. Two had less than 50. The rest were all larger and included some of the largest consulting firms in the world.

I consulted for one client for almost 12 years. My average contract lasts 10 months. The shortest was 1 day. When possible, Clients tend to offer me extensions on the contract – sometimes due to the project running longer than they expected (not my fault), but mostly because they appreciate what I bring to the project and to the team.

Types of Consulting Firms

There are various types of consulting firms: Management / Business / Strategy / Operations, Financial, Technical / Computer / IT, Human Resource, and others – Energy, Marine, you name it.

Consulting firms may be one-person businesses, small businesses, medium-sized businesses, large businesses, or the Big Four.

The Big Four, used to be the Big Eight. The Big Eight were Financial Consulting firms – Arthur Andersen, Arthur Young, Coopers and Lybrand, Ernst and Whinney, Delloite Haskins and Sells, Peat Marwick Mitchell, Price Waterhouse, and Touche Ross. Now the Big Four practice multiple types of consulting.

Through mergers and acquisitions, the Big Eight eventually became the Big Four (this is just the basics, so I won’t give you a thorough history lesson here) – Ernst and Young (EY), Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (commonly known as Deloitte), KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Not only did the Big Eight merge with others of the Big Eight, they merged with many smaller consulting firms as well.

Deloitte is the largest with over 250,000 employees.

The largest business/management consulting firms are McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Bain. These are sometimes called the Big Three or MBB (first initial of their names). McKinsey has 20,000 employees.

The largest technical consulting firms are Accenture (400,000+ employees), Tata, Cognizant, Deloitte, and Infosys.

The largest human resource consulting firms are Mercer, Towers Watson, Aon Hewitt, Deloitte, McKinsey, Accenture, Boston, Hay Group, PwC, and Bain.

It doesn’t matter what type of consulting firm you work for, the basics are still the same.

Consulting Compared to Employment

In many ways, Consulting is similar to being employed at the Client.

The main difference is that Consultants usually start each project with a new Client. Some Consultants I know start with