10 Useful Management Consulting Frameworks
During management consulting case interviews, you will be presented with a business problem. You are expected to critically analyze it and come up with sound recommendations. This is quite tough because of the pressure you feel with the time limit and recruiter’s presence. Read on and get an idea on how to overcome this challenge.
With sufficient preparation for a consulting interview, we are confident you will be able to go through this recruitment stage. The first step is to be familiar with case frameworks. They help you structure your answer by giving you a step-by-step guide on what action to take. Then you can practice applying them to cases commonly used by recruiters of top consulting firms like McKinsey and BCG. As you work on it, you will realize that you’re also boosting your confidence. With your acquired knowledge, you will be convinced that you won’t mess up in the interview.
To help you prepare for it, we listed ten management consulting frameworks that you should know.
1. Market Situation
This framework is used for industry analysis. It includes finding out how attractive the market is. It focuses on analyzing four elements: customers, suppliers, competition and performance.
2. Market Segmentation
This divides the customers into groups because of their different responses to a certain product or strategy. It studies the geographical, demographical, psychological and behavioral parameters of each market segment.
3. New Market Entry
This determines whether your client must enter a new market or not. It goes deeper into the market potential, how it matches the company’s background and the possible competition.
4. Competitor Response
This management consulting process determines how your client must react to the new service, sales gimmick or any strategy of competitors. This structure analyzes the new product, its price and its distribution to consumers.
5. Mergers and Acquisitions
This structure allows your client to decide whether to pursue an acquisition of the target company or not. It studies the nature of the target company and the benefits it can give to the acquirer.
6. Capacity Expansion
This management consulting framework determines if expanding the company facilities is a wise move or not. The structure checks the rationale behind the move, the target market and all the client’s possible options.
7. Profit Hunt
This framework explores strategies on how to improve the profit of the company by analyzing its costs and sources of revenue. It also considers the volume of production and the price.
8. Product Strategy
This determines the marketing strategy perfect for the new product. It concentrates not only on what the product offers but also on factors affecting customers such as prices, promotions and distribution process.
9. Product Development
This analysis aims to determine if developing a new product is necessary, beneficial or profit-gaining. Using this structure means studying the demand and supply, the market value and the company’s capability.
10. Pricing
This intends to come up with a price for a certain product. You study the customer’s willingness to pay, product substitutes and cost for producing the goods.
More Details on Each Framework
We have shown you a list of ten important frameworks. They will help you in by far most of the cases you will encounter. If you want a detailed explanation of the frameworks, download our Guide to Consulting Case Interview Frameworks. It has visual process charts to illustrate the frameworks clearly. It also has guide questions to walk you through the complete process, so that you know exactly how to use each framework.