What’s a freelance Strategy Consultant?
Strategy Consultants provide their expertise to your various projects: identifying problems, planning and suggesting areas for development. A real advisor, the freelance Strategy Consultant has an outside view of your project and helps you make well-informed decisions. They often work closely alongside the Business Developer or Marketing Manager.
All you need to know about Strategy Consultants
What does a Strategy Consultant do?
As the name suggests, the freelance Strategy Consultant is recruited by companies to assist them in defining their strategy and improving their business model. In some cases, they help them to implement these strategies, for example by supporting them in change management.
Companies usually turn to freelance Strategy Consultants when they encounter problems, such as reduced profitability (or even losses), low or negative growth, or organizational problems. They may also call on these consultants to make investment decisions, i.e. to analyze the market in a target country for international expansion, or analyze a target for acquisition.
How to brief a freelance Strategy Consultant?
The freelance Strategy Consultant will mostly work on your premises, as they need to spend time in the company to meet all the stakeholders and carry out their analysis. They should have access to all the figures available to study the finances, growth and organization of the company. If the project is not confidential, they will also need access to company employees for interviews. In the case of purely financial assignments (e.g. analysis of a target for a potential acquisition) this can often be done remotely, with limited interaction with employees.
Freelance Strategy Consultants’ projects typically have three stages:
1. Analysis
During the analysis stage, the freelance Strategy Consultant will interview the teams, analyze the company’s business model as well as its finances and internal operation. They may also be required to analyze competitors’ business models to better understand the market and propose a tailored solution.
2. Suggestion
After spending often up to 3 weeks carrying out a relevant assessment of the company, the Strategy Consultant will present this information to the company’s decision makers. They’ll then work on developing solutions. Indeed, the findings of their analysis may allow them to identify new services or products to be created, new markets to expand into, or a way of increasing margins (changing prices, optimising promotional mechanisms, reducing costs, etc.). This stage also usually lasts 2–3 weeks.
3. Implementation
In some instances, the freelance Strategy Consultant may be asked to stay on after they have finished giving all their recommendations so that they can implement them. In this case, they will work with the company to implement these solutions, as well as in the creation of tests to verify the success of their suggestions. For example, they may be asked to test a new management technique in one team and then apply it to the rest of the company if the results are conclusive.
This stage is often the longest as there is a strong change management dimension, which is critical if the solutions considered are to be adopted by all employees. For these projects, which have a strong impact on the organisation, the freelance strategy consultant will work with the client for 3 to 6 months.
How to choose a Strategy Consultant?
For an assignment as important as getting your company out of a slump or boosting its productivity, it is vital that you choose your freelance Strategy Consultant carefully. Fortunately, Malt freelancers fill out several fields on their profiles that should help you find the right Strategy Consultant for your needs.
Availability
First, it’s important to check that the freelancer is able to work directly on the company’s premises, especially if it’s for a long assignment.
Experience
Next, and this is probably one of the most important selection criteria, you need to take a close look at a freelance Strategy Consultants’ experience.
As each assignment in this profession varies greatly, they are rarely specialised and are therefore able to work with companies in any sector. This is one of their major strengths, as they can bring good practices from other industries to your company. So be sure to look at which companies they’ve worked for before, but more importantly, what results they’ve achieved.
Reviews
In addition, you can consult reviews left by previous clients on freelance Strategy Consultant’s profiles to get a clearer idea of the quality of their work.
Finally, if you think you’ve found the perfect freelance Strategy Consultant but you lack a few details, don’t hesitate to get in touch with them via Malt!
