Also known as business advisors, consultants are highly experienced professionals who provide expert advice to organizations or individuals in specific fields of business or science. Consultants operate within multiple industries, markets, and niches, and can offer their expert aid to almost every organization.
Drawing on a consultant’s expertise could help your company improve its productivity, efficiency, bottom line, and scalability. But with all the diversity within the consulting niche, what types of consultants should you consider hiring to help your business?
1. Financial Advisory Consultants
Financial advisory consultants are among the most sought-after professionals in the consulting industry. They typically work hand-in-hand with a business’ CFO and internal strategist to help align their company-wide financial goals, e.g., ROI, budgets, and profit margins, with the long-term strategic goals and short-term tactical objectives.
Given how broad the financial sector is, financial advisory consultants have plenty of services to offer, the most common being:
- Financial risk management
- Restructuring consultancy
- Tax consultancy
- Corporate finance advice
2. Healthcare Consultants
With numerous policies and regulations to follow, and new diagnoses, medications, and treatments cropping up every day, the healthcare sector is riddled with complexity. Healthcare consultants use their unique healthcare and business backgrounds to provide an interface between management and healthcare consulting – perhaps why the benefits of healthcare consulting for businesses cannot be overstated.
Healthcare consultants can provide insights into myriads of issues, including how to improve the quality of patient care, infrastructure optimization, health economics, and integrating new medical technology. Some of the most in-demand skills in the healthcare consultancy niche include:
- Healthcare delivery
- HEOR (Health Economics And Outcomes Research)
- Clinical research
- Medical technology and devices
- Strategy and business management
3. IT Consultants
Although relatively new in the consultancy space, IT consultants are quickly establishing their presence in the industry as more businesses integrate digital technology into their day-to-day activities. Despite their diverse backgrounds, e.g., cybersecurity, data analytics, IT forensics, and more, IT consultants can be split into two broad categories:
- Upgrade/Change
Consultants Upgrade consultants are responsible for IT change management, i.e., they change company IT systems to upgrade their capacities. Change consultants handle tasks such as replacing legacy systems, data migration, cloud system upgrades, installing Big Data analytics engines, and integrating Blockchain technology. - Non-Upgrade/Maintenance
Consultants This category includes any IT consultants not directly involved in changing IT infrastructure. Their tasks typically revolve around optimizing existing systems, e.g., software engineers hired to perform short-term coding projects and security testers brought in to identify loopholes in the company’s systems.
4. Management Consultants
Management consultants – not to be confused with business consultants or organizational advisors– are typically retired corporate executives with years of experience in upper-level management. The sole purpose of a management consultant is to analyze the already implemented strategies to help develop a suitable top-down strategy.
These consultants use a mix of case studies and management consultancy frameworks to help managers understand effective management techniques and industry best practices. They may also optimize how senior executives manage departments, projects, and teams day-to-day.
5. Marketing Consultants
Marketing consultants or senior marketing experts are brilliant marketers who can help companies discover new marketing opportunities, such as creating buyer persona plans for specific regions or identifying new demographics. A marketing consultant can help revolutionize your company’s marketing pipeline by:
- Creating a strategic marketing plan and aligning it to your long-term sales forecasts
- Developing and implementing a content marketing plan
- Designing systems to capture qualified leads
- Creating an inbound marketing scheme
6. Brand Consultants
A brand is the general public’s perception of a company and its products. While it may include the company logo and public relations, a company’s brand is more than just visual imagery.
Brand optimization is as important as other business elements, and a brand consultant knows how to help a company present itself to the public in the most appealing way possible. This can include reinventing company trademarks, color schemes, visual imagery, and implementing PR best practices.
Takeaway
Consultants are essentially “think-tank” assets for hire that allow organizations to access years of specialized experience and knowledge instantly. Thanks to the diversity within the consultancy space, there are external consultants for virtually any business problem imaginable. Not to mention, hiring temporary consultants is often more cost-effective than maintaining a salaried long-term specialist.
