4.4 Qualitative evaluation of consulting services

Management Association of Russia detects reasons why management of enterprises requires consulting services³⁶ (see Figure 10). The most of all business needs the use of knowledge and skills possessed by professional advisers (note that almost 60% of respondents). Independent diagnostic of the company couldn’t be executed without help of external consultants. More than 50% of respondents indicate that they use the services of external consultants to obtain an unbiased "snapshot" of the organization.

Almost a fifth of Russian firms using the services of management consultants in the case of lack of human and institutional resources for the independent solution of management problems. Often this proves to be effective, especially when the load of this kind is unevenly distributed in time.

About 7% of senior managers use consultants to justify the decisions taken by management. These managers reasonably believe that the evaluation of solutions from the outside expert help to avoid unproductive objections and resistance of staff.

The most effective, according to representatives of the Russian business community, the use of consultants to conduct diagnostic organization and assess the effectiveness of its operations, i.e. actions which would allow full use of the most important advantage of an external consulting - the independence and impartiality.

The effectiveness of the works themselves to optimize the performance of consultants in specific functional areas of study is somewhat lower, but also at a good level. The consultants have demonstrated their effectiveness and as independent expert projects and solutions. It is fully evident benefits consultants as carriers of a large store of knowledge and best practices in various areas of business.

Figure 10. In which situations Russian enterprises have resorted to the assistance of external management consultants?

Figure 11. Was the result of interaction consistent with the consultants' expectations of Russian companies?³⁷

Results of the customer satisfaction research of Management Association of Russia (see Figure 11) indicate that about 60 per cent of the customers received the consulting services on the expected level. Less than 30 per cent received the services on the level worse than expected.