What is consulting?

In modern business, one of the most demanded areas is the provision of consulting services to enterprises. Often, company executives do not fully understand what consulting is really about and why it is needed. Firms that provide such services offer assistance in solving a wide range of issues.

For example, the training of managers and employees in actions in the circumstances of force majeure, in the event of a sharp drop in productivity or a drastic change in the scope of the enterprise.

Also, consultants can help in solving not so global tasks, but requiring qualified personnel training. For example, carrying out programs that increase the efficiency of employees of certain departments, training in emergency situations and so on.

To understand what consulting is, you need to pay attention to the fact that this term is used for the name of a wide range of concepts. Traditionally, we are talking about organizational consulting, the main task of which is to establish a management system in the enterprise.

The invited specialists can achieve the best results if working with the company is systematically, including the analysis of the entire enterprise, the internal flow of information flows, interaction between units both vertically and horizontally.

Consulting services are, first of all, help in identifying the causes of complex situations in the enterprise and the search for ways to eliminate them.

More often the analysis of the reasons of insufficient efficiency of work leads to necessity of improvement of organizational structure of the enterprise. After all, competently built management is the driving force of any company, regardless of its size and work experience.

The main advantage of attracting external experts is that they do not depend on the established values and norms in the enterprise and, therefore, are capable of soberly assessing the real state of things.

This gives an opportunity to receive objective recommendations regarding the establishment of the company's work.

The question of what consulting is and whether it is useful, excites many entrepreneurs. Often people simply do not believe that an outsider who does not know their company can help solve the most pressing problems.
Many firms buy assistance and knowledge in areas where they are not specialists. For example, technical consulting is often used in the construction sector, when an outside organization is involved to assess the state of the facility, to identify possible defects or shortcomings.

However, it is necessary to distinguish between consulting and outsourcing, which is a form of work with a third-party company that provides certain services. For example, in this way, you can conclude a contract with a training company that will provide trainers for networking within the units.

Consulting has one fundamental difference. Experts from the consulting company will not solve a problem for you and your employees. They will try to teach you how to do this and help to work out ways to solve the problem. And if it turns out that the problem, relatively speaking, is the untrained staff, the consultants will offer you the services of their company to eliminate this problem.

In conclusion, it can be noted that if the company has difficulties with which it is not able to cope on its own, the head has three opportunities to try to adjust the situation.

First, use outsourcing. Secondly, hire a qualified employee who will be able to solve the problem. And thirdly, contact a consulting company. It is worth noting that in the third case, the CEO will get the most complete picture of what is happening, and he will be offered a wide range of measures to establish the work of the enterprise at all levels.

In order to create your own opinion about what consulting is, whether it will be useful to your company, you can hold a preliminary meeting with a specialist of such a firm and find out all the questions that interest you.