Consulting firm
A consulting firm or simply consultancy is a professional service firm that provides expert advice for a fee. Consulting firms may have one employee or thousands; they may consult in a broad range of domains, for example, management, engineering, and so on. Management consultants, in particular, typically work with company executives and provide them with generalists and industry-specific specialists, known as subject-matter experts, usually trained in management or in business schools. The deliverable of a management consultant is usually recommendations for achieving a company objective, leading to a company project. Many consulting firms complement the recommendations  with implementation support, either by the consultants or by technicians and other experts. This is called outsourcing. Consulting services are part of the tertiary sector and account for several hundred billion dollars in annual revenues. Between 2010 and 2015, the 10 largest consulting firms alone made 170 billion dollars growth revenue and the average annual growth rate is around 4%. Segments. The segmentation of advisory services varies widely across organizations and countries. Categorization is unclear, in part because of the upheavals that have occurred in this industry in recent years. One approach is to separate services into four broad service  delivery families, considering the managers they are targeting: Types. There are different types of Consulting Firms serving different sectors. They mainly fall under the following fields: Some consulting firms also serve niche sectors such as Many larger consulting firms will offer pooling as a business model, across time as well as space, where the distributed commodity is the specialized labour of its consultants. Consulting firms may also take on a coordinating role, or market-organizing role, like market makers, but then more directed towards the client's operational side, rather than financial side. Successful consulting firm cases. Mexico. In 2013 , there was a randomized trial in Mexico where 432 small and medium enterprises were allowed access to management consulting services for one year. As a result of this trial, there were many positive impacts. Such positive impacts include: increase in entrepreneurial spirit, increases in employment and higher wages for employees. Even after 5 years after the trial, positive impacts are still active. These results were achieved by advertising a consulting program to 432 enterprises and recorded data on the positive effects. Money laundering in consulting firms. A consulting firm is a suitable instrument for money laundering. Illegally obtained money is  laundered by the employment of consulting companies. The reason consulting firms are so effective at laundering money is because consulting services are immaterial, therefore, pricing is non-transparent. Another reason consulting firms are effective at laundering money is because sometimes consultants regularly leverage their clients into charging higher prices. When a client of the consulting firm is satisfied, the consultant can charger higher fees through more leverage while setting prices through the contracting prices. Therefore, when auditors inspect financial statements provided by the consulting firm, the consulting firm can state that a certain consulting project costed an 'x' amount of  money and auditors are unable to detect fraud, thus allowing money laundering to occur. Impact of consulting firms in emerging economies. Negative impacts. The impact of consulting firms on local businesses in emerging economies do not always have positive effects. One reason for this is that firms in emerging economies suffer from the inferiority of their technologies and innovation capabilities, thus although they have access to consulting firms, they cannot make the most of the advice given. Advice given by consulting firms to clients may not be used efficiently as clients firms in emerging markets tend to suffer due  to a lack of infrastructure, organisation, and education. Another reason firms in emerging economies struggle to effectively use consulting services is that innovation is very costly and risky. Positive impacts. As noted above (Add link to Mexico CASE), consulting firms in emerging economies do also have positive impacts. Positive impacts include: increases in employment, increase in entrepreneurial spirit and higher wages for employees. Impact of consulting firms in developed economies. One study shows that there is a significant difference between efficiency between consulting firms in America (Developed Economy) and consulting firms in Asia Pacific regions (Emerging Economy). Efficiency scores of  consulting firms in America were significantly higher than consulting firms in Asia Pacific regions. This is because firms in developed economies have better infrastructure, organisation and education, thus advice given by consulting firms is used efficiently.