What exactly is the difference between tech consulting and management consulting?
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I moved to chicago for a job in 2022. The cook county minimum wage has increased from $13.35 to $15.40 from 2022 to 2026. I started at $140k as a senior associate consultant. Just to cover the rate of inflation, which is how cook county calculates the minimum wage increases, I should be at $161.5k. I was at $158k before finally getting promoted to engagement manager, which was only an 8.3% pay raise. So I’ve been working my ass off to not even keep up with inflation. Thoughts?
In management consulting, the client is a company's management. In tech consulting, it's the photocopier.
OP it depends on you. If you want to get really deep expertise with a certain function like ERP, CRM, integrations, DB, etc., TC is for you. If you're more interested in the process for deciding tech (and which tech, and which people), MC/Strategy is better. Put it another way - would you rather plant trees you'll never see grow, or carve statues from lumber that's handed to you? Both are needed, both are lucrative, most people are better at one or the other.
Tech consulting = implementation, tool selection. Management consulting = how the company is managed, possibly including but not limited to tech (at a level higher than implementation, e.g. do we need to replace our CRM?) Could also be things like reorgs, change management, and other things with nothing to do with tech.
Tech is not only implementation, in fact with Big 4 or MBB often higher level strategy that does align with MC principles. That's a gross oversimplification P1.
Tech also involves providing guidance and vision to the business, I.e what are the high level things they should be thinking about that either align or drive business. Architecture work, etc
At it's purest sense it's implementation, vendor selection, and activities surrounding that. The real tech strategy is coming from the MC/strat groups except for really small clients that can't afford that. There are no TC-aligned consultants working with the CIO/CTO or CEO of a global multi-billion dollar firm, even the semi-international quarter billion firm I worked with had MC-aligned staff for the strategic stuff. Tech design can have upstream ramifications and vendor selection can get into partnerships/firm culture but it's WAY overstated to thonk of it as "strategy consulting" or "management consulting" at the Big4/ACN level. I agree that TC is different at the MBB level, though even they are starting to do some implementations.
Where we're going the biggest difference I can see is just how big the project is. We're overhauling entire divisions and upending the status quo in every dept when we go in. It has tech but it's not limited to tech
Uhh P1, I'm not sure what experiences you've had comparatively, though I can say I have been on many projects where we (in Tech) are with the CIO/CTO of multi billion dollar global Fortune 500s, advising them on IT strategy that aligns with or possibly guides other business as well. MC hasn't decided Tech in about 95% of the cases... Tech has, that is exactly the function of Tech strategy
What do you mean, "decide tech"? If you mean the answer to a question "how do we grow sales 15% next year?" is "increase Salesforce adoption through additional build out and training" TC should be in the discussion but not responsible for the answer, because if the answer has nothing to do with them (e.g. could be "retrain sales staff and add 100 headcount), they are not the group to do it. They are a hammer and every problem looks like a nail to them. Once "tech is decided" and the particulars need to be fleshed out, including strategic ones like rollouts and change management and vendor selection/negotiation/relationships, that is the "tech strategy". Put more simply, I'm differentiating between answering a question with tech, and answering a "tech question".
Pwc2 can you elaborate on that?
Which one is a "better" move career wise?
^ Human Capital. Tha wimin are 🔥