Impact of COVID-19 on Consulting Industry

Clients are feeling the pain of the outbreak in the way of supply chain disruptions, waning consumer demand, market uncertainty, workforce security concerns, etc. This will obviously mean that budgets will be squeezed and appetite / ability to pay for Consultants significantly constrained. Additionally, since Consulting itself is obviously a travel-heavy industry, the model doesn't exactly lend well to operating in an outbreak.

What do you think the effect will be on pipeline, revenue, and chargeability for MBB and other major consulting firms? On promotions and ways of working? For those that are currently a practicing consultant, what shifts are you seeing at your firm?

The WHO has labeled the Coronavirus outbreak a pandemic as of today 3/11

 

Not all MCs are travel heavy, and this is a chance for many firms to flex their videoconferencing software. The main thing that will be affected are workshops as those are challenging to do properly virtually. Client-site working will be severely reduced but realistically its not necessary in 80% of cases. Its more to show "we are willing to work here physically with you". Everything else (KOs, interim and final deliveries) can be done virtually. Some firms may be more willing and other may not. But the same business problems will persist and demand for consultants may remain relatively constant depending on the industry. I'm currently in a large change management project that hasn't been effected except for lower turnout at certain workshops. Consultants should be fine.

 

As I mentioned in another comment on this thread, perhaps my view is myopic and industry specific. I am speaking from the biotech/pharma side only. Clearly industries that struggle to survive will not spend money on consultants (have read about a few airlines firing consulting teams). I guess the industries that will fair better than others will still penny pinch but may be able to have some form of external consultation. For sure a wave of restructuring and layoff "consulting" may arrive in the coming months.

 

Another consideration though is that certain clients will put everything they can on pause, and only utilize MCs for the most pressing of issues. Certain F500 clients already are halting all ongoing and future projects with third party consultants. For now there may only be a few companies following suit, but it will be hard to predict. Good luck getting staffed if you're on the bench.

 

Considering where we are now, the operating model will have to adapt, at least temporarily, but as The Pharma Guy said most firms can do about fine under these new circumstances. Maybe hiring will slow down a little, maybe firms will be slightly more keen on counseling people out, but nothing drastically different. Keep in mind, strategy consulting and a lot of implementation consulting is fairly profitable as long as consultants are utilized, so firms might be a bit more accommodating with clients to keep contracts going.

We'll see how the demand evolves. Certain regions will be worse hit than others, which will put strain on less stable firms/ offices. Think a Miami office that might be over-indexed on tourism, for example. I can't see the situation dramatically affecting the major global/ regional firms, to be honest, unless fatality rates shoot up or further mutation happen.

Generally speaking, consulting is a relatively safe place to be. It will be interesting to see how "voluntary attrition" decreases in the coming quarters. What you can hear from startup executives right now is way more dire, having to revise runways left and right, hiring freezes, emergency fundraises...

 

Clients will focus on saving the core business (which doesn’t exactly require consultants - more blocking and tackling daily stuff) vs typical consultant stuff (whether growth strategy in a new market / product or some mega new IT system). Like 2009, cost reduction (including implementation) stuff will be back but that still requires this shock to system / travel shutdown to go away and things to settle down a bit (more like Back half of 2020). Think next couple of months there will be lot of bench riding.

 

From my personal standpoint, a lot of projects are carrying on. Most of the bread and butter strategy work we do which includes market potential, pricing of new drugs and pipeline development is still going strong. Maybe my industry is an exception because things are so spread out in time that they'll surpass this pandemic and a likely global recession. New drugs are always being approved, developed and used.

 

Yeah, pharma will probably do fine in the coming months. I have better visibility on consumer industries and it is not looking too rosy, but projects are carrying on as well. Everybody is asking to add preparedness & epidemic impact analyses to existing projects though.

I heard some epidemic-related projects have already kicked-off (e.g., preparedness, IT diagnostic).

 

IME so far the only thing that's changed so far is that the default for the next two weeks is to suspend travel that isn't commuting and to default to video conferencing where possible.

Most clients I've interacted with are concerned for family and friends about on a personal level, but business-wise, it's basically a large inconvenience to center small talk around. We actually had a steerco recently via skype and the client members in Ireland were musing about how this St Paddy's day was the most sober they'd ever seen

 

In my view the only real hit is to new projects trying to sell during the period of real crisis lockdown (maybe a few months). But that doesn’t mean revenues stop for a few months, that’s just new projects. I’d be shocked if anyone shuts down an ongoing project.

 

What effects do you guys think this would have on 2020 summer interns/ return offers? Plus, is there likely to be any full-time recruiting in the fall? And could downturns mean that firms might hire consultants to help them get through the downturn/think of strategies for survival?

 

So I have an offer to be a life science specialist at a mid tier firm. They called all incoming LSSs to say they’re staying the course and we don’t have to worry about our offers for what it’s worth

 

I'm at MBB and yes there will be some negative impact, but it's not as doom and gloom as some would have you believe. Fundamentally, businesses hire us when they have tough problems to solve that they themselves aren't equipped (for whatever reason) to solve alone. In a recession, business still have problems and consultants are still equipped to solve them. Sure the general focus of projects will likely shift from growth strategy to cost cutting, and yes businesses will probably tighten their belts a bit on professional services spending, but at the end of the day we're still getting the call when a F500 CEO has a business-critical problem to solve. What this means is your bonus will probably be lower than expected, some low performers may get let go that otherwise would be given an extra 6 months to figure it out, but we're not going to rescind offers or roll out mass layoffs. If you're just joining a firm or you have decent reviews, your job is OK.

Case in point, I get a pipeline email every week at my firm. In the past week we've kicked off multiple projects at my office alone, and our pipeline of projects that are sold and staffing is as strong as it's been in the past year.

 

Disclaimer: I'm not in a leadership position at my firm so I can't know for sure, but this is my hypothesis.

Right now we're all working from home. If work from home continues into the summer, internships will get cancelled because the logistics of having a remote intern you've never met are just too much to realistically handle. In that scenario, I would bet MBBs will just give all would-be interns full-time offers. MBBs have very high (90%+) FT offer rates for their interns and then they go out and do more FT recruiting to fill a full class, so they'll want to retain all the interns they hired. If we're in a recession, the size of hiring classes will likely decrease so overall there may be fewer spots available, but the main thing I want to stress is if you have an offer in your hand from MBB I do not believe they will rescind it at any time.

If we are able to return to work in person by mid-May, I would assume summer internships are still on. Again, 90+% of interns will likely receive return offers and then MBBs will hire even more people for full-time. A recession could cause smaller total class sizes, but again if you have any type of offer in your hand you're fine.

 
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There's a lot optimism in this thread which isn't a bad thing but as a principal at MBB, here's some real talk. Behind closed doors, leadership is freaking out. Even if we put aside the impending recession, the uncertainty of COVID-19 is making business forecasting and resource planning next to impossible and obviously that is not good.

Many of our clients have asked us to take 20% haircuts off of our rates/burn without reducing scope in exchange to continue work. Our pipeline still looks okay but if you lived through the great recession, you know how quickly that kind of stuff can get cancelled or dry up. And this isn't just for pure and operational strategy work - it is affecting all of our businesses.

As far as internships goes, despite the reassurances to students - as a lead at one of our target MBA campuses, I know that there has been numerous conversations on alternatives. For example, what do we do if everyone is still working from home come June? Several senior partners have advocated cancelling the program all together but we are going to wait it out as long as possible before making a decision.

I'm not saying that the sky is falling but this is and will continue to be an incredibly challenging environment for management consulting. Collectively, our clients have lost over 40% of its market cap in a matter of weeks and as this drags on, many will rightfully retreat into survival mode which typically means preserving cash at all cost and cutting all discretionary spend.

What will be important is for everyone to focus on what they can control and be flexible. For those who have jobs, this is the time to step up and make sure that you are not perceived as bottom 20%. Those with offers, you have less options but maintain contact with your networks and know that worst case, you won't be abandoned but your start dates may get pushed back or your internship may be take a different form. Good luck!

 

Appreciate your candidness. As an incoming undergrad MBB intern, I'm naturally a bit concerned. If internships are just cancelled for the summer, do you think all the interns would get offers by default?

From my understanding (and correct me if I'm wrong) undergrad interns tend to be of higher caliber than the general FT pool (at least based on how competitive internships are), so I'd imagine that consulting firms don't want to just lose them.

 

Nothing is certain yet and as this is unprecedented, I'd be lying if I said I had an answer for you. During the great recession, internships weren't cancelled but the bar was much higher to receive return offers and full-time recruiting was shrunk down to nothing. There's been several ideas tossed around - extending automatic offers is one of them but the issue is no one knows business demand for 2021 so a lot depends on that.

Another idea is to fast track those who receive offers to final rounds and use a "its yours to lose" approach. Please know that cancelling the internship program is worse case scenario and we would only do it if we had no other choice. More likely would be to organize our summers into pods and turn the internship into an internal study with an engagement manager serving as a coach. As I mentioned, this is very fluid so I'm just providing my best educated guess at this point.

 

@ConsultingMonkey04 - Thanks for posting - spot-on.

All others - ConsultingMonkey04's post is one of the best WSO posts I've read (and I've read many since Fin Crisis.). His points are true for 2008-2009 and are true now. His post should be added to the WSO category of "career advice / what I wish I knew / "what every Associate should know / how did you make it through " post article to save in your library and break-glass-in-emergency scenario when these Black Swan events happen again. I confirmed below each paragraph. Hopefully my replies below are easy-to-read.

~Yukon Gold

ConsultingMonkey04:
the uncertainty of COVID-19 is making business forecasting and resource planning next to impossible and obviously that is not good. TRUE

Many of our clients have asked us to take 20% haircuts off of our rates/burn without reducing scope in exchange to continue work. TRUE and some demand 30% with 180 day payment terms

Our pipeline still looks okay but if you lived through the great recession, you know how quickly that kind of stuff can get cancelled or dry up. And this isn't just for pure and operational strategy work - it is affecting all of our businesses. TRUE

As far as internships goes, despite the reassurances to students - as a lead at one of our target MBA campuses, I know that there has been numerous conversations on alternatives. For example, what do we do if everyone is still working from home come June? Several senior partners have advocated cancelling the program all together but we are going to wait it out as long as possible before making a decision.

I'm not saying that the sky is falling but this is and will continue to be an incredibly challenging environment for management consulting. Collectively, our clients have lost over 40% of its market cap in a matter of weeks and as this drags on, many will rightfully retreat into survival mode which typically means preserving cash at all cost and cutting all discretionary spend.

What will be important is for everyone to focus on what they can control and be flexible. For those who have jobs, this is the time to step up and make sure that you are not perceived as bottom 20%. TRUE

Those with offers, you have less options but maintain contact with your networks and know that worst case, you won't be abandoned but your start dates may get pushed back or your internship may be take a different form. Good luck!
**TRUE - YOU CAN GET AN INTERNSHIP OR FT OFFER AFTER THE STORM. **

 

Despite title joining a Big4 this fall in Western Europe. Received my offer after interning there. Honestly given the unprecedented uncertainty and likely lower return rate for internships it is virtually impossible not to worry. But as it has been pointed out in previous posts by people way more informed the lack of information on what is going to happen is huge.

In case you have some extra time these strange days it might be a good moment to focus on getting a skillset boost by taking an extra consulting-oriented Excel/PPT course (why not Tableau or Alteryx as you might eventually use those), stay up to date in business news (situation changes dramatically every week so not an easy task) etc.

Honestly being a bit more prepared and informed than average in the first couple weeks of your internship might make a difference. Needless to say that attitude and willingness are even more important in this context.

Hopefully in the following weeks everything starts to get back to normal and the consulting industry (and the rest of the economy/society) recovers swiftly from this setback.

 

I recently started working full-time in the consulting service line of a big4 in Western Europe. I don't know about other service lines (deals/M&A if that's your line) but in consulting we got the message last week that no interviews will take place until further notice. However, already made offers will be honoured.

Array
 

I'm at Bain and received this in an email from our Worldwide Chief Talent Officer: "We are retaining our summer programs as a commitment to investing through turbulence and in building our future talent pipelines. We will welcome these talented individuals into our virtual team models and demonstrate our Bain spirit in new and creative ways this summer. More to come on how we will welcome our new colleagues."

I assume if Bain is doing this, most competitors will follow suit

 

Guys is it true that LEK announced mandatory unpaid leave for everyone? 3 weeks apparently

 

I'm wondering what a virtual consulting internship would look like? I read that some MBBs are talking about trying to integrate interns into virtual working models that they themselves are now adapting too. I still had hope that some of the restrictions would be gone by late May/June to the point where people could at least work from home-office with heightened hygiene precautions but it seems less likely by the day.

 

Similar to any other recession. Most companies will be cash strapped, which means that spending $100k+ / week on a consulting engagement will not be a priority. This means that hiring will be scaled back and promotions will be dialed down.

Cash strapped clients also implies more (i) success-based fees and (ii) tangible solutions / hard skills vs. traditional strategy work.

In terms of the way of working, I think people might become more open to videoconferencing, but I doubt that there will be a significant shift from the traditional travel-heavy model.

 

Thankfully I'm on a boring but highly critical transformation project for a bankrupt company that is forced to pay out its contracts and also not burn millions of people's homes and businesses down.

I will let you guess who that it is.

So speaking from an employment perspective, it's not a sexy time right now, but I feel secure at least through 2020 and the client likes me/our team so worst case through 2022.

But to any of the MBBers and partners in this thread - I'm always open ears and eyes... :)

 

Curious - what exactly are you doing here? Like, who hired you, a lender, a muni, the utility? And why would they hire you, when they likely have the resources themselves; is it because they need a 3rd party to workout or restructure things, like an 'arms length' transaction?

Why would the hire McKinsey if they could hire a bank or finaincal company to do it way cheaper, and they specialize in the space?

I hope this doesn't sound rude, I'm genuinely curious.

 

The utility.

Multiple reasons:

  1. Standing up a new system over the course of 3-7 years either requires consultants oryou hire FTE's with direct experience with that new system (improbable and insanely costly for individuals whose roles will be phased out in less than 10 years). Temporary changes like this necessitate management consultants, while costlier in appearance, are actually cost-saving.

  2. Consulting is a business of people - both relationships and human capital. We take from experts across industries and specializations. We leverage past relationships with vendors and other contractors/consultancies to bid projects. Even during COVID we have extensive training development options. That allows us to bring in and collaborate with people on the financial, the engineering & design, the program management, the strategy, and the cyber sides for the client. In fact, we actually poached this project from a MBB because due to their limited perspective and the vendor verbally told their partners that they were fucking idiots in front of the client.

  3. At least in the utility space with regards to consulting, my firm has built a competitive advantage against similar firms and boutiques/MBBs that I can't disclose. However, with regards to other facets like our Program Management offerings and transformations, we have been steadily adding value to other clients in the US that is opening their doors to strategies they did not previously have bandwidth for, which also played a part in us getting this client.

  4. Utilities are risk-averse and avoid accountability whenever possible. This is their mindset when hiring consultants: If it fails, they can just say "Hey, we hired the best and it didn't work out, we did nothing wrong, $20mm loss...no biggie."

 

I would think no significant difference.

Yes banks are in the basket of companies hit especially hard by this (for reference this group includes Energy, Retail, Hospitality, Tourism, Travel & Financial Services) ... 1) because the no-interest rate environment squeezes their margins and 2) because markets are down which puts pressure on their trading performance and ability to sell M&A work. But, these companies are well-positioned to weather a recession (balance sheets are de-risked and revenue streams highly diversified) and there are no changes to their long-term strategies. I'd be reasonably confident that OW will be able to still sell work in this environment after we get over the period of initial shock (which I am expecting/hoping will be over by end of Q2)

 

Large firm (T2 strategy) has moved Summer analysts to Virtual format.

 

They've all been strangely quiet, though at least Bain and McK have promised they won't just cancel and leave interns out to dry.

Hard to predict what will happen. Solid shops like LEK and Strategy& are just cancelling and giving full-time offers. Booz and Kearney straight up cancelled. Accenture is remote.

I think it makes most sense for them to just cancel and give full-time offers. Interns are generally the cream of the crop at each firm, meaning that they don't want to lose them (which is why, for example, McK takes all its interns on a fancy vacation type retreat in Cali for a week). On that note, it seems like they wouldn't want to give them a shitty experience (which remote almost certainly would be).

But your guess on what actually happens is as good as mine

 

So the banks (GS/JPM) are postponing start-dates to early July but paying interns for the whole time, encouraging people to not realocate and saying that even the latter part of the internship might be virtual. nothing from mbb yet.

 

I got a McKinsey FT offer in Western Europe in March, and my starting date got postponed to September (in February I was told if successful they wanted me to start in June or July).

It’s still a long way to go until September, and I can’t stop thinking how bad it would be if they rescind my offer after I give notice to my current employer over the summer...

They are still paying out my signing bonus though, so they are showing great commitment and that are willing to do everything they can to reassure candidates they will honour their offer.

 

Anyone has updates on Asia consulting firms? How are MBB doing, are any T2 shops closing?

 

I left consulting to go back to the industry side a few months ago and based on what internal planning I see my take is: don’t be optimistic. Aim to be in the top half of whatever group you’re in if you want to be have a good chance of surviving this year. Things look stable now because everyone’s getting checks from Uncle Sam but that’s not going to last long.

Relatively safe areas are major in-flight technology and mandatory regulatory deployments. Everyone else is already being scanned for potential cost cutting.

Get busy living
 

Incoming intern at BCG SF - they called today saying guaranteed ft offers, virtual 7-10 week internship (depending on the case), full comp. also gave us the option (if we sign ft within 2 weeks) to volunteer with a nonprofit, with full comp from BCG. Same policy holds for all of NA.

 

Sounds like MBBs are safe (for now anyway), anyone has news on T2 shops? LEK, ATK etc would be feeling more impact I imagine

 

COVID has impacted the industry tremendously. Professional services/contractors are one of the first things companies will cut when times get tough. Our clients are struggling, projects have been dropped, and proposals which were in the pipeline are no longer being sold. Our bench has been steadily growing and people are being forced into the government practice, which is actually doing pretty well right now. M&A work dried up and the only areas with growing business is probably restructuring and government work. Partners comp is getting significantly cut. Of course no one will be getting bonuses/raises, which is really the least of our worries as lay offs will be significant. I suspect senior managers will be the hardest hit group as we always seem to have too many who stick around who will never make partner, and they have high comp. Myself and the rest of the nobodies will face the chopping block in June. I have been looking for a new job but the hiring freezes have been proving a challenge.

 

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