If this doesn’t summarize a large swath of big 4 consulting I don’t know what does. I can echo a very similar experience in this area. I have done consulting in a small corner of the energy industry for about 10 years now. I have always worked on the technical/development/customization side of the equation. I joined a consulting company that promised local(non travel) management consulting. They wanted to break into my field so they hired me and a few others to start a practice. I quickly realized that most of the the management consultants were hucksters and relied on networking and nepotism to stay busy. I often heard “back when I was at Deloitte/PwC/EY/KPMG…” the work consisted of building a ton of process model documents and PowerPoint presentations. If there was any real work that needed to be done it was shipped to India. The manager on site was often looking for any slight variation in requirements so they could claim a variance and extend the work order and create a change order. The senior consultants were often 1-2 years out of college and had training in running meetings and using consulting words to keep the business off guard. I spent a year there and decided I wanted to go independent. That was 7 years ago. Best move I ever made.
BCG/McK/Bain are not Big4 consulting. It's not all roses, but I'd argue that they operate pretty differently - the fact they charge 2x-3x more should tell you something.
We don't deal so much with process mapping PPTs (still a lot of PPTs though).
Except for PPT "beautification", we don't ship work to India. In the few occasions we end up outsourcing something, those are usually well paid experts, mostly local.
We're generally take scope changes well, assuming it's something reasonable. There's a tacit understanding that the client don't know all requirements beforehand. Understanding the actual problem is usually part of the work. So we build a level of trust that allow us to discuss scope trade-offs if/when needed.
Fresh grads are paired with Ivy league MBA consultants, at least a 100% manager ~5+ experience, and an experienced partners. Clients can check out ppl CVs but now they just go to LinkedIn.
To;dr we don't cheap out on anything since we have 3x or more the budget
