Consultport - A Platform for the Future of Consulting
Employment agencies, which match job-seekers to open positions at companies, have been around since the late-1800s. They were originally seen as a way to address unemployment. One hundred years later, in the late-1900s, the way businesses found employees and workers found jobs evolved dramatically.
Who remembers the days when employers had to place a classified ad in a newspaper and job-seekers had to buy a copy of the newspaper (or read one at the library) to read through the employment section of the classifieds? You’d circle or write down the jobs that sounded interesting, then type or print out a copy of your resume and a cover letter. Then you’d either mail or fax to the potential employer.
Fast-forward to today: The advent of the internet and the rise of digital technology have revolutionized the way employers and potential employees find each other. Employers no longer have to find full-time, part-time, or freelance workers via tiny ads in newspapers. These ads reach only a small segment of the potential talent pool. Simultaneously, the types of positions open to freelance or temporary workers has expanded. It led to the rise of a broad freelance workforce that includes highly-skilled management consultants.
Use of the internet has also enabled the consulting industry to glide into the 21st century to help businesses connect with the top consulting services. In this article, we’ll look at the evolution of the consulting industry. It will help you understand why we say that Consultport is a platform for the future of consulting.
A Brief Look at the Evolution of Consulting
Arthur Dehon Little credited to the founding of the first consulting firm. He opened a chemical analysis office in Boston in October 1886 and began providing outsourced research on a contractual basis to multiple clients. In 1911, the Arthur D. Little company formed an on-site research lab for General Motors, which confirmed the validity of consulting as a new business model.
The Booz Allen Hamilton consulting firm was founded a few years later and began servicing both corporate and government clients. McKinsey & Company came along more than a decade later. Moreover, its founder, James O. McKinsey, got the credit with the invention of “management consulting.”
Other major firms came to the consulting marketplace a bit later, including Boston Consulting Group in 1963 and Bain & Company in 1973. The concept of businesses outsourcing work was not a new one by this point. Although the actual term “outsourcing” was not really seen as a valid business strategy until the late-1980s.
In 2013, Professor Clayton Christenson and others wrote in the Harvard Business Review about the evolution of the consulting industry. The article stressed that the industry was being disrupted by boutique firms, freelancers – and, of course, freelance consulting platforms.
The Workplace Has Also Evolved
The workplace has changed a lot just since the turn of the 21st century. It has also been disrupted by technological and sociological changes. Even before the onset of COVID-19, coworking spaces, remote work, increased digitization, and use of temporary or freelance workers became commonplace.
A recent Gartner poll found that 32% of organizations are replacing full-time employees with contingent workers as a cost-saving measure. They also found that 48% of all employees will likely work remotely at least part of the time after COVID-19, versus 30% before the pandemic.
These two findings are encouraging for the consulting industry. Why? Because it means that more companies are open to using freelance consultants. Moreover, they are more accepting of work which the employees or freelancers who may not even be in the same country do remotely.
As demand for contingent workers increases, this will also increase the demand for independent consultants. The best place to find independent consultants for your business is a freelance consulting marketplace. Online platforms, such as Consultport, have many advantages – both for companies and for consultants.
Why Consulting Platforms Are the Present and the Future of Consulting
As the consulting industry continued to evolve, the use of online platforms disrupted the traditional methods of finding independent or freelance management consultants. Platforms like Consultport help match highly-skilled consultants with projects that make the best use of their skills.
What are the advantages to consultants?
- The ability to focus on doing work, not on administrative tasks – Highly-skilled management consultants would rather be working on projects for clients, not spending time handling the administrative paperwork associated with projects. As a freelance consulting marketplace, Consultport takes care of the admin tasks. This helps consultants spend their time working on projects.
- Save time finding projects to work on – As a consulting platform, Consultport helps consultants get matched up with projects that will make the best use of their skills. Consultants don’t have to spend their time looking for projects that match their skills.
- They retain their flexibility – A recent poll by the World Economic Forum found that 75% of workers want to retain flexibility over their work schedule in the post-pandemic period. Independent consultants are “independent” for a reason, and being part of the talent pool on a consulting platform allows them to take on projects when they want and to take a break when they want.
Conclusion
Consultport is a platform for the future of consulting because it’s not just a freelance consulting marketplace. It is the logical “next step” of consulting for a digitized workforce in a radically-evolved workplace environment.
Put away your fax machine, your newspaper classifieds, and your pencil. The future of the consulting industry and the job-finding process is already here, and its benefits have been proven by Consultport. There is no going back.
