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Consulting firms would do well to enact business ethics policies that are adhered to and managed

Article tracks some of the features and lessons learned from Intranet strategies to manage employee and expert knowledge at Booz-Allen, Arthur Andersen, E&Y and KPMG.

Strategy in digital business has become an increasingly significant component of Digital Business Service Provider (DBSP) offerings. Pure plays have and are becoming more experienced, and are serious competitors to the more traditional strategists. DBSP strategists take over where the traditional consultancy process lets go. They serve largely in the operational strategic role by taking the business idea to the step of design and architect to achieve deliverable capabilities. But they also do more.

Very little observational data are available on what management consultants actually do on an hour-to-hour basis. The purpose of the present research study is to gain insight into the work of management consultants by answering the following questions: (1) What are the characteristics of the management consultants' working days? (2) What are the characteristics of the management consultants' verbal interaction patterns during scheduled interactions? (3) Which intervention strategies are dominant during management consultants' scheduled interactions? (4) What are the main functions of unscheduled interactions? (5) What are the characteristics of the management consultants' desk work?

When you're forced to cut costs in your business, you must carefully weigh what's most important to your competitive edge. The recently-constructed, expensive institutions supporting Knowledge Management (KM) may be the first to go - after all, their contribution to the bottom line is hard to measure, and they represent high fixed costs for the firm. But is this necessarily the right move? Professors Elie Ofek and Miklos Savary explain that when you consider your competitive goals, your approach to KM will make a difference.

Asking the right questions can tell you whether a potential client is serious about using your services or is just wasting your time. Get the information on what every consultant should ask and how to know when you should bail out.

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Fed up with the failure of consultant-led enterprise software projects, CIOs are demanding more (and less) from the big consultancies or doing without them altogether.

Organizations spend billions of dollars for impractical or incomplete data, ineffective or inappropriate interventions, and poorly thought-out or implemented recommendations. This article can help you select a qualified consultant.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the demise of the IT consultant have been exaggerated.

Traditionally, two roles have been associated with consultants: Superman, the expert who can do it faster and/or better than anyone else; and Prometheus, who brings the fire of innovation to the ambitious enterprise. In the realm of information technology in particular, neither of these roles is going to disappear. Indeed, the need for consultants to help identify, extract and refine IT-based value has perhaps never been greater.

When companies retain consultants to help implement strategic initiatives, they often fall into the trap of giving up too much control and overpaying for solutions that don't work. Here's how to strengthen consulting engagements and get your money's worth out of expensive hired muscle.

Companies hiring management consultants have more choices than ever before, but that doesn't mean it's easy to find a bargain.

The management consultant has come to be taken for granted. But the management consultant is an extraordinary and indeed a truly unique phenomenon.

Your IT system needs a major overhaul, and hordes of consultants would love to fix it for you. How do you find one who'll get the work done on time and on budget? Start by asking these questions.

The popular impression that management consultants are key to spreading new ideas in organizations is exaggerated and misleading, according to a unique fly-on-the-wall study. The consultant's image as an expert outsider bringing new knowledge or understanding to clients is firmly contradicted by findings from the three-year long project. For the investigation, researchers spent 30 months working alongside consultants and their clients in four diverse consultancy projects. Their aim was to clear away the mystique and understand exactly what clients and consultants do when working together and how their relationships work for or against the flow of knowledge. [Hat tip to Rob at Business Pundit]

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Anybody can become a consultant. But not everybody does it well. Here's what you need to know to thrive.

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A story from Keith Yost, an MIT grad, about his relatively short experience working at BCG in Dubai as a management consultant. [Hat tip to Brad Feld]

If a client doesn’t control the consulting relationship, a project will fall short of expectations. Only when clients engage consultants based on merit and manage those consultants carefully, and only when company staff are seen as integral as the individual consultants, can companies hope to achieve or even exceed the goals they set. These authors tell readers how they can do that.