We are "Consultants", that is to say that we tell the "Client" what they ought to be doing in their own business. The obvious issue with this is that we don't know anything about their business in anything other than a generic sense - we have worked with similar businesses doing similar stuff for them but each client is actually a totally new experience.
However, as "Consultants", we are able to adapt that range of experience to each client in new and interesting ways - at least thats what we want you to believe when we pay for marketing. The truth is (obviously) a bit more confusing and difficult to understand - a 'good' consultant can save you a fortune whilst a 'bad' one is relatively easy to spot and get rid of. The real danger lies in the middle ground of dull, uninspired and uninspiring middle management who seem to have embraced their networking skills but, sadly, not their lack of talent and so ply their meaningless trade in a constant stream of drivel whilst littering the IT landscape with poorly built, badly implemented, failed systems that give the people who know what they are doing a bad name.
You might be forgiven at this point for thinking that we are in some way 'against' these consultants or that we have some axe to grind but in fact the issue is not the people it is the mediocrity both in their performance and the performance of the organisations who allow it.
If you are in "IT" (or "ICT" as the government is insisting on calling it in case anyone too scared of technology to realise what a mobile phone is might be concerned that little johnny is being turned into a nerd by the "computer" teacher) your world is full of consultants and if you are not there is a consultant waiting to get you involved. Consultants all want to be your 'business solutions partner'; this euphemism (like most things in IT) has a very positive background but it was hijacked (like most things in IT) and now means 'I want to be the gold digger that sqeezes your budget till the pips squeak'.
Management Consultants are generally intelligent, frequently sociable and at the higher end of the scale you might even be happy if one marries your offspring - particularly one of the senior partners who didn't get caught when Sarbanes-Oxley came to town. This is the 'professional' end of the market - generally people with an accountancy background (usually their first degree is in Mathematics so they started out with SOME hope). Their training since they left University has been in 'making other people feel stupid until they agree to pay money to show them they are not stupid at all'. This proved very effective for a long time (in IT terms that is) with the 'big five' accounting for most of the worlds most profound IT cock ups ( and an occasional success though we wonder if the 'Hundred Idiots' theory applies). When the house of cards fell down - remember Enron? - most of these organisations still managed to sail on with only minor damage by selling off their consultancy services businesses, paying the remaining partners a large bonus and then assisting customers with the difficult transition to a post Sarbanes-Oxley world which only came about because they gave poor advice in the first place. This ability to be right even when you are wrong is what sets the really great Management Consultant apart and makes them worth massive fees.
IT Consultants frequently confuse themselves with Management Consultants but this is not a failing of intelligence it is simply a need to a) increase marketability and command higher rates and b) a reaction to the fact that ALL management consultancies have something to say about IT but IT companies are never allowed to talk about 'the professions' no matter how ridiculous or stupid their ideas are. In particular you will find that a consultant with an IT background is usually paid less but required to be more productive than a Management Consultant of a similar age and apparently similar ability. Their training is (slightly) more practical than a management consultant (a Math, Science, Engineering degree is common and History or Literature degree is acceptable - but this is mostly because the 'Management Consultants' have a hard time interviewing people without a degree so tend to just stipulate it as necessary when a client asks - there is no real reason for this other than to reduce the number of CV's received).