I'll place them into tiers in descending order in terms of the amount of pure strategy work as a PERCENTAGE of total engagements. Please feel free to add on to the list:

Tier 1: McKinsey, Bain, BCG, LEK (lots of PE due diligence here as well), Parthenon (the only tier 1 company that has a serious education consulting practice. Lots of strategy cases with big for-profit schools/universities), some elite boutiques such as Dean and Co, Mars and Co as well.

Tier 2: ATK (mostly supply chain management), Strategy&, Monitor Deloitte (very insulated from the rest of the firm. Get most of the pure strategy projects), FSG, Marakon etc.

Tier 3: Deloitte S&O (may sound controversial, but as an analyst here I can tell you vast majority of revenue comes from outsourcing consulting, tech project management, and also M&A consulting particularly Post-Merger Integration work for large or MM clients), PwC Consulting, EY Consulting, Accenture Strategy etc.

Pseudo-Consulting groups: A lot of my friends felt unpleasantly surprised when they realized the kind of work they were doing here. EY Advisory, PwC Advisory, Deloitte Advisory, KPMG, Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, Epic Consulting etc.

Others: Some economic consulting, HR consulting firms fall under this category. Cornerstone Research, NERA, Mercer, AON etc.

Hopefully this response is detailed enough. Feel free to add or subtract from my list and move companies up or down tiers.

 
EML-Baltimore:

Tier 3: Deloitte S&O (may sound controversial, but as an analyst here I can tell you vast majority of revenue comes from outsourcing consulting, tech project management, and also M&A consulting particularly Post-Merger Integration work for large or MM clients), PwC Consulting, EY Consulting, Accenture Strategy etc.

Pseudo-Consulting groups: A lot of my friends felt unpleasantly surprised when they realized the kind of work they were doing here. EY Advisory, PwC Advisory, Deloitte Advisory, KPMG, Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, Epic Consulting etc.

>

PwC Consulting and EY Consulting doesn't exist - their consulting arms are all called/under "Advisory". The exception is of course Strategy& and Parthenon. Deloitte (as you mentioned) however does have both Consulting and Advisory arms.

 

At this point, there are some boutiques that probably do the most "pure strategy" work as the larger firms (such as MBB) are moving more towards the end-to-end delivery model. Firms like Altman Vilandrie ONLY do strategy and are do not have delivery teams and in fact do not have the scale to even perform delivery projects. So, I would set it up like this:

  1. Elite strategy boutiques that literally ONLY do strategy work
  2. MBB (some groups here do ONLY strategy, some groups, especially the generalists, don't - remember, these firms have tech groups now), EY-Parthenon (because of their heavy CDD load), Monitor-Deloitte, Marakon, LEK
  3. ATK (frankly, more Ops than Strat), OW (depending on group - FS is a great group but doesn't do that much corporate strategy, lots of financial modeling but it's not necessarily corporate strategy)
  4. Deloitte S&O, Strategy&, KPMG Strategy, Accenture Strategy

After that, you get into non-strategy but still pretty good consulting, like BAH, Big4 Advisory (non-strategy) groups, IBM, etc. - these aren't strategy groups but that doesn't mean they are bad consulting firms, everyone is looking for something different. Probably missing some firms here but you get the point.

 

Prior to IB, I was at a boutique consulting firm and that was the case. We only did strategy (life science/biotech/pharma), and at most of our competitors it was the same way. I had friends who went to tier 2 shops and they did a lot more operations work. The downside is outside of the industry there is much less name recognition at a boutique.

 

Monitor Deloitte is service line within Deloitte S&O, I don't know why people are separating it out. It's functionally S&O's strategy arm (although other service lines have some pure strategy offerings). As a undergrad or MBA hire, you come in as a generalist, and can't directly apply to Monitor-Deloitte (In the USA at least). Even at McKinsey, about twice as much work is operations than strategy nowadays.

 

First, tell me what "pure strategy work" is and then I'll tell you who does it.

mybrainstormisahurricane is not far off the mark IMO. "Pure strategy" ranges from anything that will attract premium fees to anything that keeps the CEO awake at night to anything that's top of mind for the board to anything that will fundamentally alter the direction and value-creation ability of the organisation.

This can span anything from company structure, technology, customer value proposition, pricing, market positioning etc.

"Pure strategy" tends to be defined pretty arbitrarily on WSO. In any case, the answer (to the question posed....as a % of their own work) is probably Strategy& and/or Monitor Deloitte if only because their op models allow them to palm all "non-strategy" work off to other parts of the business (something obviously not possible at MBB).

 
Best Response

As touched upon already, pure strategy work nowadays is almost completely confined to boutiques and only a few at that. In addition to the ones mentioned, I would add SDG (Strategic Decisions Group) to the list.

In terms of the reasoning, strategy work just doesn't seem to be as lucrative as it used to be (say 10-15 years ago). This is evidenced by all the consolidation we've seen going on in the recent era. Things like: Monitor buying Deloitte, PwC buying PRTM, Booz buying Katzenbach, PwC buying Booz, EY buying Parthenon, and Charles River buying Marakon. It seems theses firms just don't have the flow of business to stand on their own anymore (at least this is what I've heard from all my friends still in the consulting arena).

Truth is, if you are looking to do pure strategy work....you may be best served going to a F1000 internal CS group. Though this usually requires having done a previous stint in consulting.

 

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