Business Analyst JobsIf you’re the type of person who can solve the problem, untie the knot or come up with a solution while others are still scratching their heads, you might consider using those analytical skills as a business management consultant.
Or, you could use your experience and training in a field such as health care, IT, or marketing to solve a company’s problems or make it operate more efficiently.
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What Do Business Management Consultants Do?
Business management consultants often work for a larger consulting firm or as a freelance problem solver hired by companies to increase revenue, improve operations, cut costs or find other efficiencies and improvements. The job can involve analyzing a company’s finances and employment, inspecting the company or plant to review procedures and workers or interviewing personnel and managers.
It frequently involves presenting a report of your findings, too.
Whether working for a larger firm hired by a company or as a solo expert, a management consultant comes up with suggestions on how a company can reorganize, possibly by getting rid of redundant departments or procedures, changing how workers spend their time or finding suppliers.
The business analyst can focus on specific fields, such as becoming a healthcare transactions analyst or analyst of healthcare business systems, according to job postings on the businessanalystcrossing.com website. In media, the site lists positions as social media analyst or in retail as a market research analyst.
Skills Needed to Become a Business Management Consultant
Since the job mainly involves unraveling a company’s operations and finding ways to change them, business management analysts need to have keen analytical skills and the ability to solve problems, as well as the skills to work well with people and communicate, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The ability to handle pressure and a healthy dose of self-confidence also helps.
Growing competition, domestically and from the global economy, will fuel the need for companies to run at their most efficient and increase demand for hiring business management consultants. The BLS projects the field will grow 22% through 2020, faster than the nation’s overall job growth.
Green initiatives also could drive job growth as companies look for experts to improve energy efficiency, the BLS said. The need to optimize uses of information technology could also propel job growth for analysts.
Business Management Consultant Degrees and Certifications
The career typically requires a bachelor’s degree, though the BLS said more than a quarter of business management analysts have a master’s degree. If a school doesn’t have a degree program that specializes in the field, business programs in a number of areas such as management, marketing, statistics, IT or engineering lend themselves to a career as a business management consultant, according to the BLS.
You can also pursue online business management degrees to find an area to focus on or take graduate courses.
Another path to boost your marketability is to become a certified management consultant, or CMC. The Institute for Management Consultants is one organization that issues the certifications. There are more than 40 other management consulting institutes around the world, according to the IMC website.
The certification process includes written and oral examinations on your competence as a consultant, written and oral ethics exams, at least three years of experience and at least five satisfactory client evaluations, the IMC site said.
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While it isn’t mandatory, the certification can provide an advantage in the competitive business analyst field, the BLS said.
Though potentially high-pressure, a business management analyst career carries a median salary of $78,000, the BLS said. The top 10% of the workers earned more than $138,000.