The market for management consulting services is changing with an increased level of competition and more specialized service providers. At the same time there is a high level of companies that fail in their efforts to establish themselves on the market. This thesis sets out to give the reader an increased understanding of the complex characteristics of the market for these services, focusing more specifically on which factors that have an effect on the strategy development for companies within the industry. The thesis is also aimed at providing the reader with a deeper understanding of how developing Consulting companies can tackle the specific challenges facing them. In order to meet the purpose of the thesis, we have applied relevant theories to a generic strategy model in order to develop a model that is applicable for the management consulting industry.

Background: An accountant is supposed to secure that the information from a company is true and fair. Recently consulting, or giving advice, has grown to be a major part of an accountants daily work particularly in smaller companies which may have insufficient financial competence themselves. This means that an accountant occupies two parts, as an independent reviewer and as an initiated advisor, which have caused controversy. Purpose: The purpose is to outline and explain how the accountants and audit customers regard an eventual discrepancy between performing the audit and consulting, and to give suggestions how to manage this. The purpose is also to define what customers perceive as quality in consulting an auditor.

This thesis work is about how technical Consulting companies can accept their organization before a coming recession. Technical Consulting companies are together with the rest of the actors in the construction business constantly depended on the current economic situation on the market. How to adapt the organisation depends on the current situation on the market.To adapt the organization in the best way possible the companies need to recruit and educate personal. It is then very important to find a solution on how the current change of generation in the companies will be handled. The large and very much competent group of 40-talists will in a few years retire.

The purchasing of management consulting services has traditionally been characterized by informal and relation based interaction. However, case studies have shown that there is a movement towards more formalized and structured purchasing procedures among buyers of management consulting services. The purpose of this study is to investigate the prevalence and the implications of this professionalization. To investigate to what extent certain mechanisms of professionalization have been implemented on the Swedish market, a survey directed to Sweden?s 500 largest companies was conducted.

A case study was done of Sthlm Policy Group, a consulting agency that mainly targets NGOs and government agencies in the peace and security sector. The goal of the case study was to explore the tendency of NGOs in Sweden to hire commercial Consulting companies. The main interest was to see what the key reasons are for NGOs to hire private consulting agencies, but also to explore what problems that might be associated with such relationships. Interviews were carried out with representatives of the consulting agency, with its clients as well as with other NGOs that were identified as potential clients. The interviewed NGOs and government agencies were found to approve of the use of commercial consultants.

This report deals with an IT solution for the fictive company, Nexus Consulting. It is a small company with four employees, dealing with economic policy. The company wishes to set up a complete network environment with antivirus, firewall, computers and servers. They want us to analyze and compare different outsourcing companies offering cloud services and then recommend which company would suit them best.In addition, the company wants to have a webpage containing essential information about them and the services that they offer their customers.The report describes, analyzes and compares three outsourcing companies offering complete cloud services where a practical solution proposal has been developed by the group.The network component is based on the Windows platform and the web part is coded in HTML and PHP.The report also discusses what cloud computing is and why so many companies choose to move to it..

In 2010 mandatory audit was revoked for small and medium sized companies in Sweden. At the same time the authorization for accounting consultants was established with the aim of raising the knowledge and status of the profession. Even though The Swedish Companies Registration Office has discovered more errors in the accounting after the mandatory audit was eliminated, it especially concerns those companies who does not have neither an auditor or an accounting consultant. One of the reasons often mentioned to be audited is the auditors role when it comes to lending decisions. Our empirical studie show that the auditors most important function, being unbiased, is not what is of greatest importance for the credit institutions.Instead it was professional skills, and for small and medium enterprises (SME) it was consulting they requested the most.

Swedish Consulting companies within the architecture-and engineering business exist on a market that is distinguished by an increasing globalization and internationalization. The companies? commissions are based mostly on long-term, personal clientele. These relations are threatened by a huge number of coming retirements and high employee turnover.Consequently these companies need to improve and strengthen their relationships with existing customers, to create long-term employee and customer loyalty. The purpose of this essay was to analyze and evaluate Consulting companies´ internal marketing.

The problem area was identified due to the fact that research within internal audit is fragmented and insufficient, simultaneously to internal audit becoming more common in the public debate. Crises and scandals in companies such as Enron in the US and Skandia in Sweden have resulted in new regulations regarding how companies should be governed. These regulations have been established in Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) in the US, and in Sweden the Swedish code for corporate governance will be implemented in 2005. The regulations imply that companies must provide sound internal control and to accomplish that, companies should have an auditing and consulting internal audit function. The Swedish code for corporate governance denotes that companies can decide to comply or explain why the code is not complied.

Management consulting firms are dependent on attracting and recruiting new talents since the human capital has a vital role in these types of organizations. In the following years a new generation, Generation Y, will to a large extent enter the labour market. According to several studies this generation has different characteristics than older generations.This thesis examines management consulting firms? views of Generation Y and which strategies they use to attract and retain the generation. The fact that the subjects are unexplored led the authors to conduct a qualitative study of seven management consulting firms through in-depth interviews.

Study objects: Three different productions companies which the authors have chosen to be anonymous. Purpose: The purpose with this study is to examine why production companies choose to use 3D-animations in television commercials, and what different kind of aspects affects their decisions. Theoretical: The theoretical chapter reviews the history of 3D-animation andtelevision commercials and other fields that will be relevant laterin the analysis and discussion. Method: A case study has been made on three different companies, two of the companies are active in post-production and the other one is active in the consulting area. Data was collected through semistructured interviews with two of the companies.

Study objects: Three different productions companies which the authors have chosen to be anonymous. Purpose: The purpose with this study is to examine why production companies choose to use 3D-animations in television commercials, and what different kind of aspects affects their decisions. Theoretical: The theoretical chapter reviews the history of 3D-animation andtelevision commercials and other fields that will be relevant laterin the analysis and discussion. Method: A case study has been made on three different companies, two of the companies are active in post-production and the other one is active in the consulting area. Data was collected through semistructured interviews with two of the companies.

The aim of this study is to investigate how employees in Consulting companies develop their competence in order to perform their daily work. The focus is on informal competence development. The theoretical framework consists of theories concerning learning and competence development in working life, theories on organizational change and evaluation, a well as professional reflection. The methods applied are narrative research and interviews based on the assumption that knowledge about reality is only obtainable through language and communication.The main results show that competence is developed through experience, social interaction, communication and dialog with co-workers and customers. The post-modern conceptions of the rapid (technical) development and need to be up-to-date has a strong hold on the informants apprehension of working life, as does the notion of not having enough time for all the competence development they would like.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine why so many CRM-projects didn`t reach the expected goals that companies management envisaged. The purpose was divided into two research questions. ? How should companies? management design the strategic projection of the CRM implementation? ? How will employees? attitude to changes influence the result of the CRM implementation? The case company was a Swedish technical consulting company: interviews were conducted with two represents from two different departments. The findings of the study were that management often strongly believes that software will sort out most of the upcoming problems and forget the factor that education of employees is at least equal important.

As the environmental awarenesshas increasedin recent decadessohas the society?s demand forenvironmentalresponsible companies(Ammenberg, 2004).One way for companies to take responsibility and work with environmental issues is to implement anenvironmental management system(EMS). EMSserves as a tool for companies to systematically work with environmental issues and develop the company's environmental efforts. ISO 14001 is theEMSaccording to whichthat the majority of companies today choose to get certified(Brorson & Almgren, 2007). The introduction and operation of the ISO 14001 requires significant financial and human resources and it can therefore be questioned whether the environmental managementsystem is adaptable forall companysizes.The purpose of this studyis to examine whether EMScan provide environmental and economic benefits for companies of all sizes and ifthe conditions to get certifiedaccordingto ISO 14001 is the same for large and smallcompanies.A literature study was made to collect information on company'simplementation of ISO 14001.