McKinsey consultants at the office.
Management consulting was an estimated $71.2 billion industry in the United States in 2016, according to analytics firm Statista, and the industry is only growing larger.But how many of the more than 600,000 consultants in the country are actually helping the companies paying them big bucks to improve efficiency and profitability?
Forbes teamed with Statista to determine the top consulting firms in the country. They settled on an unranked list of 234, highlighting those that stood out. A Forbes representative told Business Insider the list of highlighted firms is not ranked because the team behind the list thought it would be unfair to equally measure firms that were so different across their specializations and industries.
The top firms, however, received the highest number of "very frequently recommended" ratings from the polls that Forbes and Statista conducted of more than 8,000 senior consultants and more than 1,000 senior clients. The polls measured each firm's work across 32 sectors, ranging from finance to oil and gas, and with work pertaining to legal issues and mergers and acquisitions.
Participants could not recommend their own firms. Last year's results were also factored in, but were weighted to be less important than this year's responses.
The "Big Three" major management consulting firms - McKinsey, BCG, and Bain - all made the highlight list, and the consulting branches of three of the "Big Four" major accounting firms - Deloitte, PwC, and KPMG - also made the list of most recommended.
An unranked list of nine standouts is below, and you can find the list of all 234 at Forbes.