Due in part to lower barriers to entry, the management consulting industry has grown an average of 3.3% per year over the last five years, leading to the growth of more than 1 million competing firms. As the industry grows, long-term sustainability is increasingly vital for management consulting firms that want to remain around for the long haul.
This article explores some factors that can help set your firm up for sustainable success and technology’s pivotal role.
What Can Long-Term Sustainability Look Like in Management Consulting?
To help predict your business’s long-term success, you should define the metrics to help you get there and to measure when you’ve arrived (e.g., S.M.A.R.T. [Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Results-oriented, and Timebound] activity metrics, and outcome metrics). Even within the same industry, “success” is an ambiguous term that can mean different things to different firms.
A few metrics you can use to help measure your growth and sustainability over time include:
- Client acquisition percentage
- Client acquisition cost (CAC)
- Client retention
- Client satisfaction scores
- Conversion rate
- Human Resource related (e.g., employee turnover, employee satisfaction, billable hours per employee, billable realization rate, billable utilization rate, time to hire)
- Monthly revenue
- Profitability
- Project margins
- Project on-time completion rate
- Project within-budget completion rate
- Sales conversion rate
Choose the top three to five metrics that impact your competitive advantage most and start tracking them for trends and progress versus goal. Sample S.M.A.R.T. goals with specific, measurable objectives, such as “increase client retention by 25% per year.”
How Workforce Management Solutions Can Help
Because determining business sustainability requires measuring progress toward goals, the right technology must be in place to gather and analyze data. This is where workforce management solutions are invaluable.
Workforce management systems are designed to plan, schedule, and manage your workforce to streamline your firm’s operations. Here are a few ways to implement a workforce management system to help you sustain your business.
Collecting Necessary Information
Intelligent business decisions are best made with data to back them up. Workforce management solutions constantly collect data on your workforce and processes to provide invaluable business intelligence.
This data can be used to make year-over-year comparisons to vastly improve your firm’s efficiency. You can also use tools like data visualization to see trends in large data sets quickly.
Measuring KPIs
If your key performance indicators (KPIs) include employee retention and resource allocation, a workforce management solution can automate these measurements for you. These systems are designed to monitor employee turnover rates and their associated recruitment costs. They can also measure resource allocation so you can staff future projects more efficiently.
Evaluating Performance
Workforce management systems enable tracking metrics like productivity and performance down to the individual level, team level, division level, geographical factors, and may also be aligned to specific service lines. For example, some systems include tools to quantify productivity, assigning a numerical value based on each employee’s time spent on assigned tasks. This can help you identify trends within teams, departments, or individuals to find potential opportunity gaps.
Other performance evaluation features include calculating meeting time, employee attendance records, and reports of time spent on each task per role.
Real-Time Progress Tracking
If you’ve ever faced a timely business decision for your firm, you know the value of having the most up-to-date data possible. Workforce management solutions record real-time project progress, timecards, and other measurements. This ensures you always have access to a bird’s-eye view of your company across people, processes, and specific clients and know what everyone is actually doing.
Improving Time Management
In addition to calculating and storing metrics, workforce management software has many tools to help employees use their time more efficiently. This can help keep costs down, contributing to your management firm’s long-term financial health.
Time management tools you can take advantage of include:
- Overtime alerts that bar employees from logging unapproved overtime hours
- Prioritization tools that help employees know which assignments have higher importance or urgency
- Communication and collaboration tools that can help avoid unnecessary meetings
- Task responsibility fields so employees are always clear on what’s expected of them
- Tools to provide real-time recognition, which can help employees feel good about their work and stay motivated
Set Your Management Consulting Firm Up for Sustainable Success With Workforce Management Software
Workforce management software can quickly and easily access the data you need to move your business forward. It can also help improve efficiency and operational processes, leading to cost savings that can be used for other pertinent items.
coAmplifi’s workforce management solution is tailored to consulting firms to help you steer your firm toward continued growth. Schedule your demo now!
