15 Best Strategy Consulting Firms in 2023

A winning strategy is the cornerstone of success in the relentless, ever-changing business landscape. Whether you’re a thriving corporation aiming for sustainable growth or a daring startup seeking to disrupt the market, the right strategic direction can be the catalyst that propels you to greatness. That’s precisely where strategy consulting firms come into play.

They are the trailblazers of the corporate world, armed with their knowledge and invaluable insights, ready to catapult organizations to unprecedented heights. In this thorough guide, we explore the fascinating field of strategy consulting and identify the top professionals in the industry for 2023.

We have also scoured the market, assessing and rating companies according to their track records, industry reputation, client satisfaction level, and inventiveness. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur hungry for guidance or a seasoned executive contemplating strategic direction, this article is your compass in choosing the top strategy consulting firms.

We have curated the best selection, paving the way for industry trends and raising the bar unimaginably. So, buckle up and brace yourself as we introduce you to the best strategy consulting companies breaking new ground and raising the bar in 2023!

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What Are Strategy Consulting Firms?

Strategy consulting firms are companies that are brought in as a third party to offer external, professional perspectives on the challenges of a business. They are professional services organizations that provide strategic advice and guidance to companies and organizations.

Furthermore, they collaborate closely with clients to assist in resolving complex business issues, the development of long-term strategies, and informed decision-making. These organizations typically hire consultants with extensive industry knowledge and skills who are highly trained and seasoned.

They also collaborate with clients at various levels, including executives, senior management, and operational teams, to assess company challenges, spot possibilities, and create effective solutions. Strategy consulting companies provide various services catering to their client’s requirements.

Their focus areas include risk management, digital transformation, operational efficiency, mergers and acquisitions, organizational design, business model innovation, competitive intelligence, and market intelligence.

Additionally, the value of strategy consulting companies is in their ability to offer unbiased insights, strategic thinking, and an innovative external perspective. They have expertise from dealing with numerous clients in many industries, which enables them to spot trends, patterns, and best practices that can be used in a client’s particular situation.

Businesses trying to overcome obstacles, investigate new growth prospects, adjust to market changes, or gain a competitive edge may find hiring a strategy consulting firm advantageous. In today’s dynamic and competitive marketplaces, these companies are essential in assisting corporations in navigating complex business environments, reaching sustainable success, and making informed choices.

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Why is Strategy Consulting Important?

Here are a few factors that show why organizations should seek external strategy consultancy rather than internal ones:

• Using creativity to solve problems.
• Establishing strategic business priorities based on external business circumstances.
• Ensuring more objectivity while making decisions.
• Establishing accountability for quantifiable goals and challenges.
• Bringing various experts to help with the business challenge.
• Access to industry best practices.
• Assembling a committed team to tackle problem-solving.
• Designing and enhancing the organization’s financial objectives and models.

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What Services Do Strategy Consulting Firms Offer?

The top strategy consulting firms offer various services to help businesses manage complex issues and accomplish their long-term objectives. The following are some of the primary services typically provided by strategy consulting companies:

• Strategic Planning: Strategy consulting companies are excellent at creating strategic plans that complement the objectives and vision of an organization. They conduct in-depth assessments of the market, industry trends, and competitive environment to find growth possibilities and develop a success plan.
• Market Analysis: To better assist clients in understanding market dynamics, consumer behavior, and emerging trends, these organizations specialize in conducting in-depth market research and analysis. Again, they offer insights into market size, segmentation, consumer preferences, and competitive positioning to help with strategic decision-making.
• Risk management: Strategy consulting companies help businesses recognize and successfully manage risks. Again, they perform risk analyses, create risk reduction plans, and develop frameworks for tracking and managing risks in various business domains.
• Restructuring and Organizational Design: These strategy consulting firms help organizations optimize their structures, procedures, and systems. They also aid in aligning organizational structure with its strategic goals, boost operational effectiveness, and improve internal communication and decision-making.
• Digital Transformation: The top strategy consulting firms are essential in assisting businesses with digital transformation initiatives. To remain competitive in the digital age, they assist firms in leveraging new technology, creating digital strategies, improving customer experiences, and changing internal processes.
• Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A): Many strategic consulting firms are skilled at assisting customers with partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions. So, they help achieve successful mergers through target discovery, due diligence, valuation, deal structure, and post-merger integration.

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What Factors Should I Consider When Choosing Strategy Consulting Firms?

The corporate world is ever-evolving and changing. So, you must constantly consider new ways to innovate and expand your business to remain relevant. This is where working with strategic consulting firms may be helpful.

Strategy consulting firms have strong networks, are industry specialists, and put great effort into creating an effective plan for your company’s future. So, here are some guidelines on how to approach hiring one:

What approach do they use to solve problems?

Do they like to work solo or in a team environment? What are some particular challenges that clients asked them to assist them with? You can determine their style and yours by looking at these specifics.

What qualities do they want in a candidate or business to choose as a client?

These specifics can help you understand how they deal with businesses at various stages of development and maturity. This will also make it easier to determine whether it fits your brand.

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Are they ready to sign a non-disclosure agreement?

Your strategies should remain a secret, even from other divisions like marketing and sales. At the same time, you don’t want anyone to have a head start on your strategy for entering the market or your point of view. This is vital because you want to keep your ideas private from competitors.

Where can you find their work?

You can get a better idea of how much experience they have working on similar projects by asking to view samples of their past works. They probably have similar experience levels if the work is of high quality.

Have they had experience in the same field as you?

Look over their portfolio of clients to see if they are in a related field to yours. The more information you have about the businesses they work with and the difficulties they have encountered, the better idea you’ll have of the kind of value proposition your company can offer. If they specialize in this field, you can be confident they have the necessary skills to deal with emerging problems.

How much will they cost you?

Many businesses use consultants instead of recruiting internal staff because they cannot afford the costs. But choosing which consulting firm to work with might be challenging for a company with limited resources and a tight budget. So, ensure your new consultant’s pricing structure includes fair upfront costs and things like staff support fees or monthly minimum hours to discover one who will offer you services at a cheap rate while also guaranteeing quality service.

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15 Best Strategy Consulting Firms

Strategic consulting is incomplete without hiring the services of external firms to tackle your company’s challenges. And to make things easy, we have compiled a list of the world’s best 15 business strategy consulting firms.

So, ensure you look through each one and make your choices based on your organization’s needs.

• Bain & Company
• Boston Consulting Group
• Deloitte Consulting L.L.P.
• Accenture
• EY-Parthenon
• Oliver Wyman
• PwC Advisory/Strategy
• L.E.K. Consulting
• Ernst & Young (Consulting Practice)
• KPMG LLP (Advisory)
• Kearney
• Advancy NA
• I.B.M. Global Business Services
• AlixPartners, L.L.P.
• Roland Berger

1. Bain & Company

Bain & Company is among the top strategy consulting firms that will open opportunities for the rest of your career and is arguably the Bthreeg 3 strategy player that is most employee-focused. To develop its future leaders from the inside, the company spends much time and effort on training and development.

That is unless you’re interested in leaving. Establishing a case for sticking at Bain for the long term is simple when combined with a dazzling client roster and top-of-the-market compensation.

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2. Boston Consulting Group

Boston Consulting Group frequently ranks among our top consulting firms and is the second-largest business strategic consulting firm by revenue. The firm’s multicultural, international teams help businesses thrive, create long-lasting competitive advantages, and benefit society by bringing them extensive industry and functional experience.

At the same time, the company is purpose-driven and works to make a lasting difference for its people, clients, and society. Insiders say that “you will be challenged… and rewarded.”

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3. Deloitte Consulting L.L.P.

Deloitte is a worldwide financial advisory, audit, tax, risk, and consulting provider. Corporate strategy, mergers and acquisitions, marketing and sales growth solutions (also referred to as Deloitte Digital), human capital change management, and manufacturing operations, including climate, supply chain, sustainability, financial management, and equity solutions, are just a few of its services.

As one of the world’s largest business strategy consulting firms, Deloitte stands out for its capacity to assist customers in resolving their most challenging issues, from strategy to implementation and operations.

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4. Accenture

Accenture helps clients increase performance and provide long-term value for stakeholders by bridging the gap between business and technology. The company promotes a “culture of cultures” where employees feel at home and may achieve their full potential professionally and personally.

Therefore, Accenture stands out as one of the best strategic consulting firms. And ensuring that individuals can speak openly and honestly about complex topics like bias and inclusion without fear of retribution or career limitations is essential to create an inclusive workplace.

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5. EY-Parthenon

With over 700 offices globally, EY-Parthenon, the strategy consulting division of the multinational professional services company EY, is one of the biggest global business strategy consulting firms.

Suppose you’re a job seeker wishing to broaden your skill sets while deepening your expertise. EY-Parthenon offers a virtually unmatched learning experience by using the infrastructure of its parent company and its global network of outstanding individuals.

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6. Oliver Wyman

Oliver Wyman is a company currently in a rush, quickly increasing its workforce through hiring and acquisition to handle an influx of work. Also, the company, frequently recognized as a “Best Place to Work” in its field, guarantees an “environment where exceptional people can thrive.”

Further, Oliver Wyman, a sizable consulting firm with operations on five continents, aims to give its employees access to an entrepreneurial, non-hierarchical culture where talented individuals collaborate on challenging, high-profile client engagements. Thus, go-getters that thrive in a fast-paced, motivated workplace and early responsibility will succeed here.

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7. PwC Advisory/Strategy

PwC Consulting Services is also one of the best strategy consulting companies. It combines functional knowledge from all over the world to assist customers in solving their most challenging business issues.

Meanwhile, the company has the resources, mentorship, and technology to help in advancing your career. So, you can also get more excellent knowledge in your area of concentration and position yourself as a leader by joining PwC as a consultant.

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8. L.E.K. Consulting

One of the global business management strategy consulting firms, L.E.K. Consulting, works with several clients, including big private equity firms and small startups. The Boston-based company has a global footprint that touches almost all the world’s leading markets.

Additionally, it is a somewhat midsize company that can provide its employees with a more individualized experience than some of its larger competitors because of its combined extensive industry expertise across various clients and capabilities.

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9. Ernst & Young (Consulting Practice)

Ernst & Young is another perfect fit if you’re looking for business strategy consulting firms to work with. It is also one of the Big Four accounting firms on a global scale. Further, they provide services in audit, tax, business risk, technology and security risk, and human capital, which are their most widely recognized. Additionally, they assist in corporate transformation through four service lines: assurance, consulting, strategy, and transactions.

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10. KPMG LLP (Advisory)

KPMG is among the Big Four accounting firm and one of the most famous corporations in the business world. It is an international professional services network structured as a network of companies offering clients services.

These services include technology enablement, talent management, organizational design, strategy and operations, business intelligence, change management, integrated business planning, analytics, outsourcing, growth enablement, business process management, business integration, shared services, and transformation.

But on the risk management side, they provide advisory services on risk and compliance, forensic analysis, internal audit, financial risk management, and I.T.

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11. Kearney

One of the first international strategic management consulting firms, Kearney has always been focused on operations and helps customers through significant transformations. The company collaborates with most Fortune Global 500 and governmental and charity institutions.

Further, Kearney, a reputable midsize company with a solid reputation globally, is ready to provide consultants with the best of both worlds: the adaptability and exposure chances of a boutique firm supported by the infrastructure of a much larger company. The overall result strikes the perfect balance between teamwork and independence—the advantages of scale with the capacity for customization.

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12. Advancy NA

The next on our list of business strategy consulting firms is Advancy. Advancy’s consulting services range from corporate strategy to private equity. The company, which employs over 250 consultants, combines its skills with an entrepreneurial attitude to give customers the boost and direction their businesses require.

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13. I.B.M. Global Business Services

I.B.M. consultants work with customers to combine strategy, process, technology, and information to improve effectiveness, cut costs, raise profit, and increase shareholder value. Further, I.B.M.’s services and consulting include big data, networking, cloud services, A.I., automation, and more.

As one of the strategic consulting firms, they’ve put a considerable amount of money into A.I. Additionally, the business-ready tools, programs, and solutions in I.B.M.’s portfolio are intended to lower the costs and barriers to adopting A.I. while maximizing results and using the technology responsibly.

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Read also: 15 Best Boutique Consulting Firms in 2023

14. AlixPartners, LLP

AlixPartners is a global advisory company in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The company gained recognition for its work in business turnaround and restructuring. Again, the company is known for turning around the fortunes of businesses in crises.

Thus, it is among the best business strategy consulting firms. Additionally, the ideal candidate is someone with about ten years of experience in the field who can start influencing a client’s business instantly.

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15. Roland Berger

Roland Berger’s identity is intricately intertwined with the idea of the global community because it was the first European-born consulting company to go global. So, Roland Berger is undoubtedly among the best strategy consulting companies.

The organization is based on the notion that companies should emphasize long-term, globally sustainable economic, environmental, and social development. Therefore, job seekers who prioritize the future and lead with their hearts should look for a company actively bringing meaning to the consulting profession.

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FAQs

Conclusion

There are many excellent strategy consulting firms to choose from in 2023. However, the best firm will depend on your interests and goals. But, all the firms listed in this article offer excellent training, opportunities for advancement, and the chance to impact businesses.

If you’re considering engaging a strategy consulting firm, we encourage you to research and choose the right firm that meets your brand needs and objectives. Moreover, you can have a successful and rewarding career in this field with hard work and dedication.

References

blog.hubspot.com – Strategy Consulting: What It Is & How to Succeed in It

in.indeed.com – What Is Strategy Consulting? (Skills, Careers, and Salary)

strategykiln.com – 7 Things to Consider While Hiring a Strategy Consulting Firm

firsthand.co – Best Consulting Firms in Each Practice Area

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