The Nepalese consulting industry is booming in recent years. Today, one can seek the consulting service on various areas related to education and training, human resource, legal matters, research and development, accounting and finance, IT, and so on. Along with the rise of the consulting industry in Nepal, the market is starting to get competitive. This signals for better strategies on the company level to get the optimized result and to achieve the specific goals.
While the business managers of a consulting company are trying to excel in their business strategies, there are a lot of external and environmental factors they need to analyze. To define, external and environmental factors are the outside influence that can affect the business's ability to achieve its strategic goals and objectives. Talking about the external and environmental factors, it is categorized into two parts: Microenvironment, and Macro-environment.
Let us begin with the Microenvironment and see how these factors are influencing the business strategies of Nepalese consulting firms.
- Customers/Clients: In the context of Nepal, the clients for the consulting companies are mostly middle level and top level of business entrepreneurs. Apart from that, the Government may function as a client as some of the public projects might require help from private consulting firms. Here, clients are not under the influence of business managers and they only come if they need the service. Since the consulting company is client-oriented, business managers of a consulting company must understand the essence of this factor and strategize the business accordingly.
- Competitors: As mentioned earlier, the Nepalese consulting market is getting tougher with increasing competition and this is what a company cannot control. Thus, a consulting company should know how to make strategies that will provide them a competitive advantage against the competitors.
- Suppliers: The supplier could be a quality assurance provider in the case of Nepalese consulting companies. For example, Nepal Realistic Solutions (NRS) provides the service with ISO standard certification where NRS acts as an intermediary between the NRS clients and the suppliers (auditors). So, if the supplier failed to perform their duty, this may hamper the image of a consulting company and could cost a potential customer. Therefore, the consulting companies in Nepal should prioritize the strategy to choose the best supplier to work with.
- Public: The public in Nepal is categorized into the general public like local communities, financial public like banks, stockholders, and media public like online media, television, newspaper, etc. The public is such a factor that demands a corporate social relationship with the consulting companies in Nepal. This automatically requires the consulting companies to have the best strategy for a good corporate relationship with the public as any business would not last without the support of the public.
- Competitors: As mentioned earlier, the Nepalese consulting market is getting tougher with increasing competition and this is what a company cannot control. Thus, a consulting company should know how to make strategies that will provide them a competitive advantage against the competitors.
After considering some of the major micro-environmental factors, it is time to consider the macro-environmental factors in Nepal. They are :
- Socio-Demographic environment: Nepal is a geographically challenged country with no proper infrastructures in most areas of Nepal. This may limit the strategy of market expansion for the consulting industry.
- Political and Legal Environment: Nepal is slowing moving towards political stability. With the stable government under the Communist and Maoist party, the consulting companies now may focus on improvising and expanding their business through improvised business strategies. Also, with political stability, more opportunities will start to rise which may bring a better possibility of a new market for Nepalese consulting companies. But Nepal still deals with bureaucratic delays and inefficiencies which might hinder the business mostly in case of legal consulting.
- Economic Environment: With a stabilizing the political environment, the economy is slowly pacing forward. It is the good news not only for the Nepalese consulting industry but the whole industry in general. But on the other side, Nepal records a higher number of Nepalese people departing to foreign countries each year for better employment. This might bring a shortage of expert human resources in the field of the consulting industry. So, the consulting companies need to prioritize their strategy on how to get and manage the human resource in the specific field.
- Technological Environment: The whole world is experiencing a technological wave. But, looking on the technological side, Nepal is still far behind. And also, the frequently changing nature of technologies is making it more difficult.
- Ecological Environment: Ecological environment include such factors that force the business to change its strategy and compel to focus on the effect brought by such factors. For example, the last earthquake in Nepal caused a lot of damages which required reconstruction at some phase. If a consulting firm had its office damaged, the main strategy would automatically be the reconstruction.
After identifying all those external and environmental factors, it is impossible to deny their influential presence while considering and analyzing the business strategies in the consulting industry of Nepal.