What Is Implementation?
Implementation is the phase of consulting where the firm helps the client actually execute a recommendation instead of just handing over a strategy. If a study concludes that a company should centralize procurement, the implementation team designs the new procurement organization, works alongside client staff to negotiate the first supplier contracts, and builds the reporting that tracks whether savings materialize. The deliverable is a working process, system, or operating model, not a deck.
The distinction matters because consulting was long criticized for leaving clients with a polished report and no results. Clients increasingly demand that firms stay to deliver measurable outcomes, so implementation now represents a large and growing share of modern consulting work relative to pure strategy, and a growing share of revenue at MBB firms that once positioned themselves as strategy-only advisors.
How Implementation Engagements Work
An implementation engagement typically begins where a strategy study ends: the recommendations get translated into a portfolio of initiatives, each with a client owner, milestones, and a financial target. The consulting firm often stands up a transformation office or program management office (PMO) to coordinate the work, run weekly reviews, and escalate stalled initiatives to a steering committee. Teams are usually larger and more embedded at the client site than on strategy studies, and engagements commonly run six to eighteen months rather than eight to twelve weeks.
The day-to-day work looks different too: piloting a new process in one region before rolling it out globally, configuring systems, retraining frontline staff, and tracking results against a baseline. Fees are sometimes partly tied to outcomes achieved rather than billed purely on time. Because the change has to survive after the consultants leave, implementation teams spend heavily on change management and on building capability in client employees rather than doing everything themselves.
A Concrete Example: From Recommendation to Results
Consider a cost transformation. A ten-week diagnostic identifies $150 million of annual savings opportunities across procurement, organizational structure, and IT. Capturing that money might require a year-long implementation program of forty or more initiatives, each with a bottom-up validated target, a named client owner, and a stage-gate process that moves savings from identified to executed to banked in the budget.
The implementation team runs the operating rhythm: weekly initiative reviews, a savings tracker reconciled with finance, and escalation when a workstream slips. Success is judged not by the quality of the analysis but by whether the savings actually show up in the P&L, which is a very different bar than winning applause for a well-argued recommendation.
Implementation in Recruiting and on the Job
For recruiting, implementation changes what firms hire for. MBB and other major firms have built dedicated implementation and delivery arms and recruit people with project management, operations, and change management strengths alongside classic problem solvers, and even generalist consultants should expect a meaningful share of their staffing to be on execution-oriented engagements. In case interviews, strong candidates address execution unprompted: closing a recommendation with risks, next steps, and a realistic rollout plan signals maturity that interviewers reward.
On the job, implementation work builds skills that transfer directly to line roles in industry, including running teams, managing stakeholders, and driving change through people outside one's reporting line, which makes it a common springboard into operations and transformation leadership positions. It also shapes lifestyle, since implementation consultants are often embedded at a single client four or five days a week for many months. Candidates comparing offers should confirm whether a role is generalist strategy, implementation-focused, or a blend, because the projects, travel, and exits differ.
