Monadnock Research Portal

Consulting Client Insights: Vault Top 50 Consulting Firms

Monadnock Research (VIII N36) - 24 August 2010

Vault has just published its latest list of the top consulting firms, the "Vault 2011 Consulting 50." This Research Note offers insights into what clients can learn from these rankings, and why high scores in some categories aren't necessarily good for your business or your project.

The 2011 moniker aside, a shameless attempt to increase shelf life, this year's ranking is not based strictly on the "prestige" factor, which had been a ranking of prestige perceptions by consultants of firms other than their own.

Consulting Client Insights&##x3a; Vault Top 50 Consulting Firms

Vault's overall 2011 ranking weighs the following factors in survey responses (in weighted percentages): culture (25), work/life balance (25); compensation (20); prestige (20); business outlook (5); and transparency (5). The latter category is whether or not a firm encourages its employees to participate.

It appears they will soon publish the results for each of the individual categories over the next several weeks. While the Vault rankings might help firms with their college recruiting efforts, the utility for clients is limited, unless a contrarian view is in order.

For example, if consultants are enthusiastic about a firm's work/life balance, the client needs to realize that also translates to less ability to get the best resources to make a deadline or in a crisis. This is routine in systems implementation projects, which are historically problematical to plan for all contingencies.

The most effectively managed projects are considered well managed because a significant up-front investment is made by the client and the firm to:

  1. Determine precisely what the project objectives are and what the deliverables and anticipated ROI will be;
  2. Select the right firm with a strong cultural fit with the organization, especially for multi-phase long-term projects in the areas of operations and IT;
  3. Mutually agree to firm resources with the proper skills and capabilities to deliver on those objectives, and get a commitment that those resources will be employed after the firm wins the business;
  4. Allocate specific client resources, including an internal executive project leader, with the proper skills and understanding of in-scope deliverables to make accurate recommendations on courses of action during the project, and with the right internal connections and political capital to mobilize resources and get the job done;
  5. Create a project plan that is accurate, realistic, and kept up do date;
  6. Execute an agreement that is clear about what the project's costs, objectives and time-lines are, and that clearly articulates what the deliverables and responsibilities of the parties are;
  7. Be prepared to start on-time, as soon as commitments are made, and deal swiftly and appropriately with any issues that present themselves;
  8. Continue to fund the project according to plan;
  9. Capture what has been learned in this project so it can be reused by the organization in the future; and
  10. Perform a retrospective assessment to ensure that the initiative's outcomes match the organization's expectations for deliverables and ROI.
Unfortunately, shortcuts are more the norm than the exception, and with the exception of short or routine projects that are more standardized in their objectives and deliverables, most project teams compromise these guidelines with impunity, with the worst examples ending up in litigation. The only way any semblance of organization and adherence to the timeline is respected is by compromising the work/life balance of staff.

So firms with policies to minimize the impact to work/life balance of consultants are certainly improving their ability to maintain staff morale. But one consequence is that it also increases the probability that clients will need to take up that slack by burning out their own internal resources.

We're certainly not advocating that clients hire firms that make a point of treating their employees poorly. But we are saying that you need to consider this in selecting the right firm for the project based on a realistic assessment of what will be required to effectively deliver what is expected.

It's also worth noting that the strategy firms at the top of the Vault list are there because they have shorter average project lifecycles, and much less customization of deliverables than in a complex IT or operations projects, for example. A firm like Deloitte or Accenture, who also have strong strategy capabilities, might have similar comparative rankiongs had those practices been surveyed in isolation. So keep this in mind.

Favorable ratings in the compensation category usually translate to higher fees. And a well-defined and consistent culture is a good thing, as long as it matches the culture of the client organization.

Clients can use the results as a relative propensity ranking for which firms are less likely to burn out their rank-and-file consultants, or at a minimum were less likely to do so at the beginning of 2010 when the surveys were taken. So for the higher ranked firms there would be a stronger likelihood that engagement team members would stay with the projects till the end, and will be less stressed and performing near their intellectual peak throughout. That's clearly a good thing any way you look at it.

Vault: 2011 Consulting Top 50 Firm Rankings

  1. Bain & Company - Boston, MA
  2. The Boston Consulting Group, Inc. - Boston, MA
  3. McKinsey & Company - New York, NY
  4. Analysis Group, Inc. - Boston, MA
  5. The Cambridge Group - Chicago, IL
  6. Deloitte Consulting LLP - New York, NY
  7. Oliver Wyman - New York, NY
  8. A.T. Kearney - Chicago, IL
  9. Triage Consulting Group - San Francisco, CA
  10. Censeo Consulting Group - Washington, DC
  11. West Monroe Partners - Chicago, IL
  12. Cornerstone Research - San Francisco, CA
  13. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (Consulting Practice) - New York, NY
  14. Alvarez & Marsal - New York, NY
  15. Trinity Partners, LLC - Waltham, MA
  16. Booz & Company - New York, NY
  17. Milliman, Inc - Seattle, WA
  18. Strategic Decisions Group - Palo Alto, CA
  19. PRTM - Waltham, MA
  20. Gallup Consulting - Washington, DC
  21. Diamond Management & Technology Consultants, Inc. - Chicago, IL
  22. Health Advances, LLC - Weston, MA
  23. Strategos - Chicago, IL
  24. The Brattle Group - Cambridge, MA
  25. Monitor Group - Cambridge, MA
  26. AlixPartners, LLP - Southfield, MI
  27. IBM Global Business Services - Armonk, NY
  28. OC&C Strategy Consultants - London , United Kingdom
  29. Novantas LLC - New York, NY
  30. Putnam Associates - Burlington, MA
  31. Easton Associates, LLC - New York, NY
  32. Accenture - New York, NY
  33. Corporate Executive Board - Arlington, VA
  34. ZS Associates - Evanston, IL
  35. L.E.K. Consulting - Boston, MA
  36. NERA Economic Consulting - New York, NY
  37. Hewitt Associates - Lincolnshire, IL
  38. Bates White - Washington, DC
  39. Pearl Meyer & Partners, LLC - New York, NY
  40. Quintiles Consulting - Hawthorne, NY
  41. Simon-Kucher & Partners - Cambridge, MA
  42. FTI Consulting, Inc. - West Palm Beach, FL
  43. CRA International, Inc. - Boston, MA
  44. Navigant Consulting, Inc. - Chicago, IL
  45. Capgemini - New York, NY
  46. Towers Watson - New York, NY
  47. Mercer LLC - New York, NY
  48. Huron Consulting Group - Chicago, IL
  49. IMS Health Incorporated - New York, NY
  50. Kaiser Associates - Washington, DC
Vault: 2011 Top 50 Consulting Firms


Next >>