What Is a Business Management Consultant? A Complete Career Guide

In a fast-changing business landscape, companies must meet a continuous demand for innovation, automation, and streamlined operations to stay ahead of the competition. That's where business management consultants come in. These professionals combine strategic insight with practical experience to help businesses solve complex problems and leverage new opportunities. This complete career guide explores what it takes to thrive in this dynamic field, from the essential skills, qualifications, and education to professional certifications and career pathways. 

What Is a Business Management Consultant?

A business management consultant provides external, objective advice to help businesses and organizations improve. Business management consultants analyze a business's operations to identify and solve problems and develop strategies to improve efficiency, performance, and profits. 

What Does a Business Management Consultant Do?

Business management consultants work with business leaders to improve processes, strategies, and management to optimize workflows, maximize productivity and efficiency, meet goals, and boost profits. A management consultant's roles and responsibilities follow a general process of gathering and analyzing data, identifying and defining problems, developing solutions, offering guidance, and implementing new strategies to solve problems. They carry out the following tasks:

Analyzing Business Processes

Business management analysts conduct interviews and gather the business's enterprise resource management data to assess current performance and understand the current state of the business. They analyze this data to identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, redundancies, other challenges, and underlying problems. 

Business management analysts use tools such as data analysis, modeling, process mapping, root cause analysis, and value analysis to understand and evaluate the processes used within a company. 

Conducting Market Research

Business management consultants also conduct market research that enables them to use benchmarking to compare the business's performance metrics against standards within the industry. This helps identify gaps, problems, or areas where a business might be missing opportunities. 

Developing Strategic Plans

Based on the findings of an analysis, business management consultants develop custom strategies and recommendations to present to business leaders. Recommendations are typically rank-ordered to focus on the highest-priority (highest-value) recommendations first, and they might include actions such as reengineering processes, adopting new technology, or restructuring teams. 

Advising on Organizational Structure

Business management consultants may also study and evaluate a business's overall organizational structure, using a detailed org chart. They will consider a variety of different organizational models (such as hierarchical, functional, team-based, network, matrix, or flat), along with the business's strategy and objectives. The consultant's objective, outside perspective can help uncover hidden problems that can be solved by clearly defining roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships. They can recommend a structure to align with the company's goals. 

Implementing Solutions

After identifying problems and offering solutions, business management consultants provide detailed plans for implementation and stick around to oversee the implementation of new processes with change management to guide leaders and employees through transitional periods. They also provide strategies and tools for tracking metrics to measure outcomes. 

Why Organizations Hire Business Management Consultants

Organizations hire business management consultants for countless reasons, but some of the main benefits that business management consultants can offer include:

• Access to expertise and specialized skills
• Objective, external perspective
• Identifying and understanding problems
• Solving complex problems
• Identifying and leveraging new opportunities
• Change management for implementing new strategies
• Increased efficiency
• Reduced costs
• Better productivity and employee satisfaction
• Maximized profitability and increased growth
• Project-specific assistance

Regardless of why they hire management consultants, businesses are largely satisfied with the services they receive. A paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research reports satisfaction rates of more than 80 percent, especially regarding cost reduction, revenue growth, and organizational restructuring. 

Types of Business Management Consultants

Several different types of business management consultants exist, and each focuses on a different area of business for performance improvements. In addition to marketing, legal, project management, public relations, and sales consultants, some of the most common types of business management consultants include the following.

Strategy Consultants

These consultants focus on strategic planning and work on high-level organizational strategies to achieve business goals. 

Operations Consultants

These consultants focus on operations to improve internal processes, maximize efficiency and productivity, and minimize costs. 

Human Resources Consultants

These consultants focus on human resources functions to improve people-related aspects of a business, like recruiting, hiring, onboarding and training, employee engagement and satisfaction, retention, benefits and compensation, and staffing.

Financial Consultants

These consultants focus on financial management, improving budgeting and financial planning, risk management, bookkeeping and accounting systems, and overall financial health. 

Technology Consultants

Also called IT consultants, these experts focus on developing, implementing, and improving the technology systems used in a business to enhance automation, collaboration, communication, operations, efficiency, and security. 

Skills Needed to Succeed as a Business Management Consultant

Business management consultants draw from a broad foundation of hard and soft skills to carry out the several functions required of their roles. 

• Analytical Skills - Analytical skills help management consultants understand large datasets and simplify complex problems into more manageable, graduated concerns.
• Problem-Solving - Management consultants use creativity and innovation to solve the problems identified with their analytical skills.
• Communication - Almost every aspect of a consultant's job requires strong communication skills, from gathering information with employee interviews to communicating about problems, solutions, and change management recommendations.
• Leadership - Management consultants must possess strong leadership qualities to guide clients (and their teams) through transitions and complex projects.
• Adaptability - From one client to the next, a management consultant's job can look very different, and adaptability will help them adjust to new clients, businesses, changing goals, project scopes, restrictions, and environments.
• Project Management - Whether brought on for a specific project or for generalized business improvement, business management consultants work on a variety of project-based tasks. Project management skills are invaluable for organizing and managing timelines, maximizing resources, and successfully implementing solutions. 

Educational Requirements

Professional positions in business management consulting typically require a bachelor's degree in a related field, such as business management, finance, economics, computer science, or accounting. Business degree paths provide students with the opportunity to build a broad foundation of technical knowledge while developing core skills such as analytical thinking and problem-solving. 

While an undergraduate degree typically satisfies requirements for entry-level business consulting positions, more advanced roles in the industry often require an advanced degree, such as a Master of Business Administration (MBA) or professional certifications that demonstrate and validate one's expertise. 

Certifications for Business Management Consultants

Business management consultants can validate their expertise and skills, boost their resumés and careers, and specialize in a professional niche by obtaining professional certifications, such as:

• Accredited Small Business Consultant (ASBC)
• Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP)
• Certified Change Management Professional (CCMP)
• Certified Digital Marketing Expert
• Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
• Certified Management Accountant (CMA)
• Certified Management Consultant (CMC)
• Certified Sales Professional (CSP)
• Certified Six Sigma Black Belt (CSSBB)
• Project Management Professional (PMP)

Job Outlook for Business Management Consultants

As business across industries and sectors becomes increasingly complex and competitive, with the emergence of new technologies and the need for almost constant innovation, business management consultants are expected to be in high demand. At 9 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipates much-faster-than-average growth for the occupation, with 98,100 new jobs expected to be added annually between 2024 and 2034.

How a Bachelor's in Business Management Prepares You for Consulting

A bachelor's degree in business management prepares students for consulting careers by developing foundational skills such as strategic and analytical thinking and business knowledge. Coursework covers finance, organizational structure, project management, economics, marketing, and data analysis. Additionally, undergraduate business coursework provides opportunities for leadership development, communication strengthening, and team-based work with experiential learning strategies. 

Steps to Become a Business Management Consultant

While every individual career path is unique, aspiring business management consultants can follow these steps to prepare themselves for their management consulting careers. 

Earn a Bachelor's Degree

A bachelor's degree in business management or a related field is a minimum requirement for entry-level positions in business consulting. 

Gain Relevant Experience

In addition to fulfilling education requirements, job applicants with relevant experience will stand out above those without it. You can gain relevant work experience while you're still in college by applying for and working in internships at consulting firms, taking part-time entry-level positions in consulting firms, and shadowing professionals in the industry. 

Develop Specialized Skills

Consider the type of business management consultant you would like to be, and develop specialized skills to support a career in that niche. For example, if you want to be a technology consultant, you should sign up for computer science classes. If you wish to pursue financial consulting, focusing your electives in finance, accounting, and data analysis will serve you better. 

Pursue Certifications

You can strengthen your resumé, move into specialized areas of consulting, and advance your career by obtaining professional certifications for business management consultants. Take the time to research a variety of certifications to find the ones that support your career goals. 

Build a Professional Network

Consultants thrive when they have an extensive professional network. Connect with your peers in college, seek mentorships from industry professionals and experienced professors, attend industry events, and join professional networking groups. The more meaningful connections a business consultant has, the more professional opportunities they have. 

Apply to Consulting Firms or Freelance

To gain experience, aspiring consultants can apply for jobs at business consulting firms or take on clients through independent contracting to build real-world experience while building professional recommendations and a portfolio. 

Explore a Business Management Consulting Career Path With Champlain College Online

At Champlain College Online, our online bachelor's in business management program includes a selection of core business and management courses designed to help students develop a broad foundation of business and management knowledge, in addition to a variety of elective classes that students can curate to pursue their desired business consulting niche with several additional certificate options.

To learn more about how our flexible online learning program could help you prepare for a career as a business management consultant, we welcome you to contact our admissions office today.