There are thousands of consulting firms worldwide, serving numerous industries and specializing in every conceivable niche and expertise.
But only a select handful can claim to be the best in the business. Which consulting firms make the top of the list in 2018?
In this guide, we’ll break down the world’s top consulting firms by revenue, prestige, growth, and employee satisfaction.
Here are the Top 50 Consulting Firms In 2018.
Top 50 Consulting Firms By Revenue In 2018
When it comes to measuring the top businesses in an industry, revenue is king.
Interestingly enough, we couldn’t find any other organizations tracking consulting revenue across industries and countries. There is no existing “Fortune 500” type list that tracks top consulting firms by revenue.
There have been several attempts to track the top management consulting firms, but this is only a narrow slice of the consulting industry and completely leaves out IT consulting, which is becoming the largest slice in the modern consulting pie.
So we compiled our own list.
Our goal here was to measure actual consulting revenues, not the overall revenue of any company that hosts a consulting division.
This was fairly difficult to do and impossible to do with 100% accuracy. We had to dig through annual reports, private estimates, and numerous sources to try and estimate a company’s consulting revenue while leaving out stuff like accounting services, technology infrastructure, cloud services, etc.
We’ve given it our best shot, however, because we believe a list of the top 50 consulting firms by revenue in 2018 is something worth having.
Here are our findings below.
| Rank | Firm | Consulting Revenue |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Accenture Consulting | $17,310,000,000 |
| 2 | Capgemini Consulting | $15,460,000,000 |
| 3 | Tata Consultancy Services | $14,930,000,000 |
| 4 | Cognizant Technology Solutions | $14,810,000,000 |
| 5 | Deloitte Consulting | $13,350,000,000 |
| 6 | PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory | $12,253,000,000 |
| 7 | Cisco Systems Consulting | $12,000,000,000 |
| 8 | Ernst & Young Advisory | $11,600,000,000 |
| 9 | Infosys Consulting | $10,210,000,000 |
| 10 | KPMG Advisory | $10,180,000,000 |
| 11 | McKinsey & Company | $8,800,000,000 |
| 12 | CGI Group | $8,500,000,000 |
| 13 | HP Enterprise Technology Services | $7,882,000,000 |
| 14 | The Boston Consulting Group, Inc. | $6,300,000,000 |
| 15 | Booz Allen Hamilton | $6,100,000,000 |
| 16 | Mercer LLC | $4,300,000,000 |
| 17 | IBM Global Services | $4,200,000,000 |
| 18 | Bain & Company | $3,870,000,000 |
| 19 | SAP Services Consulting | $3,566,000,000 |
| 20 | Oracle Consulting | $3,358,000,000 |
| 21 | Gartner, Inc. | $3,300,000,000 |
| 22 | Altran | $2,813,000,000 |
| 23 | Oliver Wyman | $2,000,000,000 |
| 24 | Aon Hewitt | $1,800,000,000 |
| 25 | FTI Consulting, Inc. | $1,800,000,000 |
| 26 | Grant Thornton | $1,700,000,000 |
| 27 | BDO Consulting | $1,410,000,000 |
| 28 | A.T. Kearney | $1,400,000,000 |
| 29 | Sapient Corporation | $1,305,000,000 |
| 30 | Strategy&, part of the PwC network | $1,300,000,000 |
| 31 | Hitachi Consulting | $1,300,000,000 |
| 32 | ICF International | $1,190,000,000 |
| 33 | Navigant Consulting, Inc. | $1,000,000,000 |
| 34 | AlixPartners, LLP | $1,000,000,000 |
| 35 | Slalom Consulting | $1,000,000,000 |
| 36 | Protiviti | $816,000,000 |
| 37 | Huron | $797,700,000 |
| 38 | The Advisory Board Company | $781,800,000 |
| 39 | Bearingpoint | $767,000,000 |
| 40 | Alvarez & Marsal | $600,000,000 |
| 41 | Berkeley Research Group, LLC | $600,000,000 |
| 42 | PA Consulting Group | $556,000,000 |
| 43 | ZS | $525,000,000 |
| 44 | L.E.K. Consulting | $500,000,000 |
| 45 | Perficient | $487,000,000 |
| 46 | Simon-Kucher & Partners | $311,000,000 |
| 47 | Arthur D. Little | $239,200,000 |
| 48 | Analysis Group, Inc. | $200,000,000 |
| 49 | Horváth & Partners | $162,000,000 |
| 50 | West Monroe Partners | $160,000,000 |
If you have additional data applicable to this list that you’d like to submit our way, click here.
Top 50 Consulting Firms By Prestige In 2018
Prestige is defined as “widespread respect and admiration felt for someone or something on the basis of a perception of their achievements or quality.”
As a metric, it is relatively vague, yet it remains a prominent consideration when businesses are deliberating on which consulting firm to hire.
Business want to hire firms that have been around the block, who have worked with prominent business in their industry, and who have a reputation for excellent work, all of which factors into the concept of prestige.
So which consulting firms are the most prestigious in 2018?
To answer that question, we turned to Vault.com who surveyed more than 17,000 practicing consultants to determine which firms were considered the most prestigious by those in the industry.
“Survey respondents where asked to rate each consulting firm in the survey on a scale from 1 to 10 based on prestige, with 10 being the most prestigious. Consultants were unable to rate their own firm, and they were asked to rate only those firms with which they were familiar.”
Here is the resulting list of the 50 most prestigious consulting firms in 2018.
| Rank | Firm |
|---|---|
| 1 | McKinsey & Company |
| 2 | The Boston Consulting Group, Inc. |
| 3 | Bain & Company |
| 4 | Deloitte Consulting LLP |
| 5 | PricewaterhouseCoopers |
| 6 | Booz Allen Hamilton |
| 7 | EY (Ernst & Young) LLP |
| 8 | Accenture |
| 9 | KPMG LLP |
| 10 | A.T. Kearney |
| 11 | Oliver Wyman |
| 12 | IBM Global Services |
| 13 | L.E.K. Consulting |
| 14 | EY-Parthenon |
| 15 | Strategy&, part of the PwC network |
| 16 | Gartner, Inc. |
| 17 | Mercer LLC |
| 18 | Lockheed Martin Corp (IT Consulting) |
| 19 | GE Healthcare Partners |
| 20 | Capgemini |
| 21 | Oracle Consulting |
| 22 | Cisco Systems, Inc. (IT Consulting) |
| 23 | SAP Services (IT Consulting) |
| 24 | Grant Thornton |
| 25 | Huron |
| 26 | Navigant Consulting, Inc. |
| 27 | Gallup Consulting |
| 28 | The Bridgespan Group |
| 29 | Northrop Grumman Corporation |
| 30 | Aon Hewitt |
| 31 | Willis Towers Watson |
| 32 | ZS |
| 33 | Charles River Associates |
| 34 | FTI Consulting, Inc. |
| 35 | Alvarez & Marsal |
| 36 | Roland Berger |
| 37 | NERA Economic Consulting |
| 38 | The Advisory Board Company |
| 39 | Kurt Salmon |
| 40 | AlixPartners, LLP |
| 41 | Slalom Consulting |
| 42 | Analysis Group, Inc. |
| 43 | Cornerstone Research |
| 44 | Cognizant |
| 45 | The Brattle Group |
| 46 | Arthur D. Little |
| 47 | The Cambridge Group |
| 48 | HP Enterprise |
| 49 | Infosys Consulting |
| 50 | BDO Consulting |
Top 50 Consulting Firms By Growth In 2018
While revenue is king, there is another big metric that all businesses care about.
Growth.
In business, you are either growing or you are failing, and recurring growth is one of the most critical performance metrics for both privately owned and publicly owned businesses.
Accordingly, we wanted to look at the top consulting firms by growth over the last year. Which firms are growing the fastest?
For this information, we looked to data compiled by Consulting Magazine. The following firms are ranked based on growth from 2013 to 2016. Since the three-year mark is considered the initial milestone for building a successful business, only firms that had started generating revenue by 2013 were included.
Here are the top 50 consulting companies by growth in 2018.
| Rank | Firm | Location | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Blueprint Consulting Services, LLC | Washington | 2538% |
| 2 | OnPrem Solution Partners | California | 1412% |
| 3 | CoreCompete | North Carolina | 1190% |
| 4 | CirrusOne | California | 740% |
| 5 | Propeller | Oregon | 689% |
| 6 | RedCloud Consulting | Washington | 605% |
| 7 | Summus Group | North Carolina | 554% |
| 8 | CSI Specialty Group | Florida | 543% |
| 9 | Press Ganey Strategic Consulting | Indiana | 531% |
| 10 | The Spur Group | Washington | 502% |
| 11 | COPE Health Solutions | California | 471% |
| 12 | L4 Digital | Washington | 443% |
| 13 | DeciBio Consulting, LLC | California | 420% |
| 14 | Finix | Michigan | 399% |
| 15 | BlueLine Associates | North Carolina | 377% |
| 16 | Stoneridge Software | Minnesota | 365% |
| 17 | Exactus Advisors | Illinois | 358% |
| 18 | Triangle Insights Group, LLC | North Carolina | 352% |
| 19 | Pivot Point Consulting | Tennessee | 328% |
| 20 | Motiv, Inc. | Washington | 277% |
| 21 | 1Rivet | Virginia | 265% |
| 22 | HRpepper Management Consultants | Berlin | 236% |
| 23 | InRhythm | New York | 226% |
| 24 | The HCI Group | Florida | 225% |
| 25 | Global Conductor | California | 212% |
| 26 | GearsCRM, Inc. | Massachusetts | 197% |
| 27 | Chief Outsiders | Texas | 191% |
| 28 | Attain | Virginia | 187% |
| 29 | Germane Solutions | Ohio | 174% |
| 30 | Focal Point Data Risk, LLC | Florida | 174% |
| 31 | Antenna | Minnesota | 174% |
| 32 | Clearwater Compliance | Tennessee | 170% |
| 33 | Egremont Group | London | 167% |
| 34 | Persistent Systems | California | 164% |
| 35 | AG Consulting Partners, Inc. | Washington | 157% |
| 36 | Efficio Consulting | New York | 151% |
| 37 | Aarete, LLC. | Illinois | 149% |
| 38 | Lorven Technologies, Inc | New Jersey | 142% |
| 39 | Acquis Consulting Group | New York | 137% |
| 40 | FluidEdge Consulting | Pennsylvania | 132% |
| 41 | Lyons Consulting Group | Illinois | 132% |
| 42 | Bridge Partners | Washington | 129% |
| 43 | Intellinet | Georgia | 121% |
| 44 | TITAN TECHNOLOGIES, INC. | Pennsylvania | 117% |
| 45 | Maven Wave | Illinois | 114% |
| 46 | M2 Strategy, Inc. | Virginia | 113% |
| 47 | TCG Consulting | North Carolina | 113% |
| 48 | Strativity Group, Inc. | New Jersey | 104% |
| 49 | Cumberland Consulting Group | Tennessee | 100% |
| 50 | Pace Harmon | Virginia | 98% |
Top 50 Consulting Firms By Employee Satisfaction
While our focus here at Consulting.com is helping consultants launch their own consulting businesses, we take great interest in tracking employee satisfaction across the consulting industry.
Entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone, and being able to recommend great firms to those wishing to pursue in-house positions is something we value. It’s also why we monitor consulting salaries.
There are a number of great organizations gathering this type of data and regularly interviewing consultants in the industry, but our go-to source remains Vault.com. Their annual survey of 17,000+ working consultants provides unparalleled qualitative data on a wide range of firm attributes.
Here are the 50 best consulting firms to work for in 2018.
| Rank | Firm Name | 2018 Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | McKinsey & Company | 9.296 |
| 2 | The Boston Consulting Group, Inc. | 9.218 |
| 3 | Bain & Company | 9.192 |
| 4 | Deloitte Consulting LLP | 8.258 |
| 5 | Oliver Wyman | 7.73 |
| 6 | The Bridgespan Group | 7.689 |
| 7 | Putnam Associates | 7.649 |
| 8 | The Parthenon Group | 7.589 |
| 9 | L.E.K. Consulting | 7.52 |
| 10 | The Brattle Group | 7.487 |
| 11 | PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC (PwC Advisory Services) | 7.455 |
| 12 | A.T. Kearney | 7.414 |
| 13 | Insight Sourcing Group | 7.379 |
| 14 | Accenture | 7.339 |
| 15 | Clearview Healthcare Partners | 7.316 |
| 16 | KPMG LLP (Consulting Practice) | 7.275 |
| 17 | Roland Berger Strategy Consultants | 7.189 |
| 18 | Strategy&, part of the PwC network | 7.143 |
| 19 | Alvarez & Marsal | 7.106 |
| 20 | Ignyte Group | 7.102 |
| 21 | Health Advances, LLC | 6.993 |
| 22 | Simon-Kucher & Partners | 6.991 |
| 23 | Cornerstone Research | 6.973 |
| 24 | The Cambridge Group | 6.924 |
| 25 | Eagle Hill Consulting LLC | 6.894 |
| 26 | Jabian Consulting | 6.865 |
| 27 | Marakon | 6.836 |
| 28 | The Chartis Group | 6.832 |
| 29 | Clarkston Consulting | 6.801 |
| 30 | ZS Associates | 6.788 |
| 31 | DayBlink Consulting | 6.785 |
| 32 | Charles River Associates | 6.774 |
| 33 | Bates White Economic Consulting | 6.77 |
| 34 | Edgeworth Economics | 6.751 |
| 35 | Protiviti Inc. | 6.736 |
| 36 | Trinity Partners, LLC | 6.728 |
| 37 | NERA Economic Consulting | 6.697 |
| 38 | CapTech | 6.682 |
| 39 | Pace Harmon | 6.68 |
| 40 | Huron Consulting Group | 6.674 |
| 41 | Innosight | 6.635 |
| 42 | Novantas LLC | 6.629 |
| 43 | Arthur D. Little | 6.598 |
| 44 | Excella Consulting | 6.591 |
| 45 | Keystone Strategy, LLC | 6.577 |
| 46 | FTI Consulting, Inc. | 6.528 |
| 47 | LeapPoint | 6.526 |
| 48 | Everest Group | 6.52 |
| 49 | Crowe Horwath LLP (Consulting Practice) | 6.506 |
| 50 | ScottMadden, Inc. | 6.471 |
Now, of course, there are a lot of factors that go into employee satisfaction, and what makes one person satisfied at their current job might not do anything to satisfy another employee with a different set of goals or values.
Accordingly, we’re going to utilize Vault’s data to further break down the top firms in a number of key categories.
Top 10 Consulting Firms By Compensation
Compensation remains the number #1 factor influencing employee satisfaction. Employees who feel like they are being adequately or generously compensated are much more motivated and satisfied in their work.
Here are the top 10 consulting firms by employee compensation.
| Rank | Firm Name | 2018 Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Putnam Associates | 9.654 |
| 2 | Ignyte Group | 9.556 |
| 3 | Bain & Company | 9.494 |
| 4 | The Boston Consulting Group, Inc. | 9.391 |
| 5 | Insight Sourcing Group | 9.39 |
| 6 | McKinsey & Company | 9.326 |
| 7 | Clearview Healthcare Partners | 9.242 |
| 8 | The Brattle Group | 9.089 |
| 9 | The Parthenon Group | 9.083 |
| 10 | Cornerstone Research | 8.95 |
Top 10 Consulting Firms By Benefits
Benefits are essentially supplemental compensation, and accordingly, they also remain a significant factor in employee compensation. The average benefits package is worth around one-third of the associated annual salary, and substantial benefits packages have been shown to attract talent and increase employee loyalty.
Here are the top 10 consulting firms by benefits offered.
| Rank | Firm Name | 2018 Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Boston Consulting Group, Inc. | 9.859 |
| 2 | McKinsey & Company | 9.837 |
| 3 | Bain & Company | 9.619 |
| 4 | Ignyte Group | 9.611 |
| 5 | DayBlink Consulting | 9.558 |
| 6 | Putnam Associates | 9.532 |
| 7 | The Brattle Group | 9.475 |
| 8 | Innosight | 9.234 |
| 9 | Clearview Healthcare Partners | 9.21 |
| 10 | Insight Sourcing Group | 9.017 |
Top 10 Consulting Firms By Culture
Company culture is a daily reality for employees. What is the atmosphere in the office? Is it friendly and competitive or cutthroat and toxic? Are your coworkers and supervisors driven, stressed, lazy, intriguing, boring, or collaborative?
Every firm develops its own unique company culture, and according to consultants in the industry, the following 10 consulting firms have the best in-house culture.
| Rank | Firm Name | 2018 Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bain & Company | 9.826 |
| 2 | Putnam Associates | 9.718 |
| 3 | Insight Sourcing Group | 9.712 |
| 4 | The Boston Consulting Group, Inc. | 9.708 |
| 5 | DayBlink Consulting | 9.577 |
| 6 | Clearview Healthcare Partners | 9.547 |
| 7 | McKinsey & Company | 9.54 |
| 8 | The Brattle Group | 9.461 |
| 9 | The Bridgespan Group | 9.434 |
| 10 | Edgeworth Economics | 9.406 |
Top 10 Consulting Firms By Relationships With Supervisors
There are a number of primary reasons that good employees quit their jobs, and most of them revolve around the employee’s relationship with their immediate supervisor or “boss.” The way that a firm’s supervisors interact with their team members will ultimately make or break the culture and employee experience at that firm.
On that note, here are the 10 consulting firms rated by consultants as having the best employee-supervisor dynamics.
| Rank | Firm Name | 2018 Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Insight Sourcing Group | 9.695 |
| 2 | The Boston Consulting Group, Inc. | 9.656 |
| 3 | McKinsey & Company | 9.608 |
| 4 | Clearview Healthcare Partners | 9.594 |
| 5 | Bain & Company | 9.582 |
| 6 | Putnam Associates | 9.532 |
| 7 | Health Advances, LLC | 9.303 |
| 8 | Eagle Hill Consulting LLC | 9.299 |
| 9 | Jabian Consulting | 9.258 |
| 10 | The Brattle Group | 9.235 |
Top 10 Consulting Firms By Work-Life Balance
The final employee satisfaction metric we’ll look at today is work-life balance. Consulting is a fairly demanding industry, and consultants typically enter the industry with the expectation that they will be working long and hard, but what a firm does with that expectation will determine whether employees end up feeling rewarded or overworked.
According to 17,000+ consultants, the following 10 firms do the best at allowing their employees to balance both work and life.
| Rank | Firm Name | 2018 Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ignyte Group | 9.688 |
| 2 | Insight Sourcing Group | 9.638 |
| 3 | Eagle Hill Consulting LLC | 9.627 |
| 4 | Putnam Associates | 9.333 |
| 5 | Jabian Consulting | 9.276 |
| 6 | The Boston Consulting Group, Inc. | 9.154 |
| 7 | Health Advances, LLC | 9.114 |
| 8 | Bain & Company | 9.019 |
| 9 | CapTech | 9.011 |
| 10 | McKinsey & Company | 8.981 |
Further Reading
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