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A consultant is a professional specialist who advises companies in solving problems that could not be solved internally.
Organizations are constantly facing problems, adversities and questions about the market, the processes and their products, and sometimes the experience of their professional team is not enough to solve them, so they need to hire an expert in that area, to help them get afloat and see a clear horizon again.
The consultant: an external agent
The consultant has the characteristic of being an expert in an area. For example, accounting services could be considered consulting services in accounting, since the company may not have professionals with the necessary knowledge to perform balances, financial statements or income statements.
Likewise, a lawyer lends legal consulting when the company is facing legal proceedings, or well, you need to do paperwork that requires legal representation.
The common aspect of these services and all those called “consulting” is that they are performed by professionals outside the company. They are not in the organization chart, nor do they have a permanent contractual relationship, rather they offer a service to solve something specific and in a certain time.
The new services that have required consultants
But the competitiveness of markets have required companies to request assistance in other areas to maintain your position and create a branding of excellence.
Areas in which consultancies:
- Strategic communication: The relationship between the company in its “brand” role, it needs to interact assertively with the public and sometimes, problems can be generated that contravene the brand name, so you need to quickly catch up with that situation. For example, Starbucks some time ago was in the eye of the networks
social, after expelling a customer from one of their restaurants,
apparently because of his skin color.
In front of this situation had to apologize and execute forceful actions to
Assume your mistake and not lose a significant percentage of customers. The action was close all your restaurants at the same time, during a day and communicate that during that time employees would be trained in racial inclusion. A decision that was advised by a communications specialist and very well received by public opinion.
- Coaching and team leadership: The motivation in a work team is crucial and, although it is known by all who make up a company, sometimes that motivation is not enough convincing to generate actions that improve the work environment and performance.
It is for this reason that companies are requesting consultants in coaching, to advise them and especially the managers and bosses who are in charge of teams of people, on how to generate motivation, improve the work environment and create a challenging environment.
- Corporate social responsibility: There are companies that have a CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) department, and others that outsource this service, especially when the company is installed in a new territory or city. Therefore, they need advice from someone who knows the place, its culture, customs and interests, in order to generate an approach and subsequent link between the company and its environment. This can bring great benefits and make an important difference, since a company that does not establish ties with the territory in which it is located, is very likely to generate reticence among citizens, due to ignorance of the interests and projects that it has and if they could eventually be affected.
Consulting services are on the rise and at the same time they have become a new way of working “freelance”, Serving several clients and increasing the experience with each of them.
If you are interested in being a consultant, then we recommend you specialize in an area that you are passionate about, study, investigate and create hypotheses of existing problems, for later propose creative, innovative solutions that increase the value of the organization.