The journal Management Consulting, October 1997, published a survey about the UK consulting industry. It estimated some 25% growth in 1997, compared to 1996. Not all consulting activities are likely to be of interest to the majority of readers of this journal, but it is interesting to see how large a proportion of total revenue is in areas which are in our domain.
Corporate strategy and organizational development accounts for about 14.5% of total revenue, business process re-engineering around 7%, and change management 6%. Human resources and project management, in which the journal has a selective interest, were 3.5% and nearly 11%, respectively.
The percentages were based on a survey of the 100 largest ยฎrms, and there were only small changes between the proportions of the various activities in 1996 and 1997.
It is probably not surprising that information technology makes up some 28% of consultancy activity.
There is no particular reason why the proportions should be the same for other countries, except for the fact that managements generally seem to see the same types of problems at the same time.
The total size of the UK consultancy market is not really known, as deยฎnitions of consultancy vary, and there is no central source of statistics which covers all ยฎrms in what is a very fragmented market. Estimates for the size of the market in 1997 vary between just under ยฃ6 billion to around ยฃ8 billion, which means that the apparently lowish percentage spent on change management, for example, converts to a great deal of consultancy.
And if we accept that for every organization that employs consultancy help in a particular problem area, there are many more that either use their own internal expertise, or respond inadequately, the ยฎgures suggest that the topics we try to cover in the journal are still of vital importance.