Function
The functions of consulting services are commonly broken down into eight task categories. Consultants can function as bridges for information and knowledge, and that external consults can provide these bridging services more economically than client firms themselves.
Marvin Bower, McKinsey's long-term director, has mentioned the benefits of a consultant's externality, that they have varied experience outside the client company.
Consultants have specialised skills on tasks that would involve high internal coordination costs for clients, such as organization-wide changes or the implementation of information technology. In addition, because of economies of scale, their focus and experience in gathering information worldwide and across industries renders their information search less costly than for clients.
Read more about this topic: Performance Consulting
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“The uses of travel are occasional, and short; but the best fruit it finds, when it finds it, is conversation; and this is a main function of life.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.”
—Leonardo Da Vinci (1425–1519)
“Uses are always much broader than functions, and usually far less contentious. The word function carries overtones of purpose and propriety, of concern with why something was developed rather than with how it has actually been found useful. The function of automobiles is to transport people and objects, but they are used for a variety of other purposes—as homes, offices, bedrooms, henhouses, jetties, breakwaters, even offensive weapons.”
—Frank Smith (b. 1928)