Sizing up the Competition

I just read that Booz Allen has almost 20,000 billable consultants. Personally I thought the number was closer to 22,000. But either way it gives you a feel for the size of the company. I would say that qualifies it for mid to large size.

You hear a lot about some other popular consulting companies. However do you know how big they are in terms of employees? Neither did I.

This past week I read some magazine rankings for the best consulting companies to work with. Many were familiar names. Here are those I noted, along with the number of billable consultants they employ:

Boston Consulting Group - 4,500
Accenture - 47,000
Deloitte - 25,000
PriceWaterhouseCoopers - 41,000
Booz and Company - 3,500

That just goes to show you that Booz Allen is not the biggest. Many firms have twice the number of employees. It is also interesting to notice the amount of management consultants that broke off in the split of Booz Allen. This is good stuff. You should know how many people your competitor's employ. Arm yourself with that information.

Best Firm to Work for

Consulting Magazine ranked Booz Allen Hamilton as the 5th best firm to work for in 2009. This is a triumph as we were not even ranked last year. We scored highest in corporate culture. We also did well in career development. An area for improvement was compensation and benefits.

A rep from our company was quoted as saying we are committed to be the best management and technology firm. Hey. Consulting Magazine reminds its readers that Edwin Booz founded management consulting. We are well known for our training programs. I am feeling this. This past year I got Oracle certified on the company's nickel.

Furniture Thieves

My office is near two big conference rooms. There seems to be a lot of meetings that are oversubscribed. As a result, people are often looking for extra chairs around my office.

A few weeks back a woman popped into my office and asked if she could borrow my guest chair. Since it is the company chair, I told her that was fine. She promised to bring back the chair. That was the last time I saw it.

What was I to do? I did not know which room she took the chair to. And I don't recall who the woman was. That's no fun. Now I don't have a visitor chair. And I have people visit my office all the time. For now I have commandeered my manager's chair to use as a guest chair. He sits in my office, but is hardly ever there.

Today another woman asked if she could borrow my one remaining guest chair. I told her that my previous guest chair was stolen. And I asked her how I knew I would get the chair back. In the end, I did not let her borrow the chair. What would I tell my boss if I let his chair be swiped? I felt a little bad. But I guess you have to stand up to potential thieves if you want to keep your stuff.

Merger and Acquisition

Booz & Company is acquiring Katzenbach Partners. They are a small strategy firm. This is public news. I read about it in Consulting Magazine.

Jon Katzenbach is one of the founders of the firm. They only have around 100 employees. They have worked with Booz & Company before. Katzenbach wants to grow his international business. That's hard when your company is a little guy.

I don't know how much Booz & Company paid for the acquisition. And I wonder how the new employees will fare. There is a definite culture at both Booz Allen and Booz & Company. I hope it works out.

The Split

There are two distinct parts to the Booz Allen business. There is the government consulting. Then there is the commercial management consulting. These two businesses are very different in nature. The employees that work the two sides are also very different. This year, Booz Allen decided to separate these two parts into distinct companies. The government consulting side of the house kept the Booz Allen Hamilton company name. The commercial management consulting division became a new company named Booz & Company.

The Carlyle Group, which is a private equity firm, made a $2.5B investment in Booz Allen Hamilton. They essentially became part owners of the government consulting company. In return, they obtained three seats on the board of directors for the company. Booz Allen itself will continue to hold three seats themselves.

Initially I had some concerns over the split. However I am finding that this really does not impact my day to day work here in the company. All of my benefits seemed to have remained the same. In fact, I previously had little to no contact with the commercial management consulting part of Booz Allen. I do not expect I shall have interaction with them in the future either. I guess the change was more of an ownership issue. As I am not a part owner in the company (you need to rise very high in the chain for that to happen), the split was a non-event for myself.

The Corporate Mission

Here at Booz Allen we just finished up our fiscal year. We put out our annual report for fiscal year 2008. There was a lot of information presented. Being an employee of the company, I took some of this information very seriously. A lot of the general information about the company is part of the message we try to get out about the company. I thought I would add how I have seen some of the message put into practice on day to day level.

Some of the strengths of the company include functional expertise, in-depth domain knowledge, and lifelong professional development. Our team definitely has great domain knowledge. That is why we have won the contract to work for our specific client. I myself have served this client for almost 10 years straight. That is why the firm hired me.

Many companies talk about professional development. Here at Booz Allen this is more than just talk. I get money and time each year to get certification training. There is broad flexibility in this policy. For example, last year I spent a couple grand and a week learning about XML technology. This year I spent a week to get prepared to be Oracle certified. I also have started taking college classes to improve my web development skills.

Our mission here at Booz Allen is twofold. We solve problems for our clients. And we deliver results that endure. Those are some catchy phrases. But I can verify that the first one is very true on our project. The client has a lot of problems with the system they had developed for them. They also have new problems to achieve their own mission. These are the primary reasons why they need help from our firm. Time will tell whether the results we are delivering endure. I certainly hope they do.