Business consulting firm
A business consulting firm that stays to build.
A business consulting firm is the outside team a company hires to find what holds its results back, agree the number that has to move, design the change and get it into daily operation. The 34 Group is a business consulting firm whose consultants operate: once the advice is given, we build it with you, and the senior consultants who wrote the diagnosis are the ones on site through go-live.
Take a shelf in a store in Queens, New York. One of us put digital price tags on every shelf of that store and had the whole store live in 2 days, and a price change on that shelf that used to take 5 minutes took 20 seconds afterwards, while repricing the whole store, a week's job before, took 5 minutes (2018 to 2021). The tag is the visible part. The part a buyer pays a consulting firm for is the year before it: the business case that got signed, the store team trained, and someone still standing in the aisle on go-live morning.
What a business consulting firm does
Business consulting is the work of moving a company's results from the outside in, and it comes in four jobs. The first is to find the real problem, which is rarely the one in the request: a retailer that asks for a new e-commerce platform usually has an order flow that stops in one place. The second is to agree the number that has to move, in the client's own accounts, before anyone designs anything. The third is to design the change, the operating model, the process improvement, the change management plan and the technology behind them. The fourth is to make it happen in the operation, at the shelf, in the warehouse, in the order queue, until the number moves and stays moved.
Management consulting, operations consulting and digital transformation are the labels for different slices of that work. Business consulting services are usually sold on the first three. We plan every engagement around the fourth, because that is where the ROI a board approved either appears or doesn't.
How ours works
Our engagements run in three movements: a diagnostic, a build and a stay. The diagnostic finds the problem and the number, on your floor and in your data, in days. The build ships the smallest change that moves that number, with your people and an AI-accelerated build team of ours, so a first result lands within weeks. The stay is the part most proposals leave out (we opened the top five results for this query on 8 September 2026, and none says who stays after the recommendation): the same senior consultants remain on site through go-live and the adoption that follows, until your team runs the change without us.
The method has a name, FOCAL, and it is written up in full on how we work. For a retailer or an e-commerce company the flagship programme is The Whole Way, which runs the four joins between the store, the site, the stock and the customer. The rest of the catalogue, from store systems to AI adoption, is on what we do.
Four engagement models, side by side
| Large firm | Boutique consulting firm | Staffing marketplace | Operator-led (ours) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who is in the room | A partner sells, a manager runs, a team of associates delivers | The founders, on most days | The contractor you picked from a list | The senior consultants who wrote the diagnosis, on your floor |
| What ships by week 4 | A diagnosis and a recommendation the board will read | A diagnosis and a first plan | A person at a desk, from week 1 | A diagnostic and the first change in production |
| Who stays after go-live | An implementation partner or your own teams | The founders, if the retainer allows | Nobody, once the contract ends | The same people, until your team runs it |
| Seniority of delivery hours | Mostly associates, partner time at the milestones | Senior on every hour, thin on capacity | Depends on who you hired | Senior on every hour, with the build team scaled by AI |
| Best for | A group-wide programme that needs board-level assurance and scale | One defined question, answered by a senior pair | Extra hands fast, with flexible terms | A mid-market company that wants the change built and running |
The large consultancy earns its place on the diagnosis, on the assurance a board accepts before it commits capital, and on the scale to staff forty people in a month; a boutique earns it on senior attention; a staffing marketplace earns it on speed and on terms you set. Where we part ways with the big firm is on what the deliverable is. The pyramid engagement model, where a partner sells and a team of associates delivers a recommendation, treats the recommendation as the product. We've watched a recommendation on paper fail four times on one programme: four business cases for shelf labels, each argued on a single capability, none of them funded, before the fifth was built from a live store and went to 150+ stores across 10 countries. The value of a recommendation shows up in the operation, and a team that leaves at the signature leaves that value to whoever builds it next.
The proof we bring
Every figure below is first-hand, from the people who did the work. The clients are anonymized and the numbers are kept; the case studies are on the proof page.
A conservative business case projecting 2.4 billion euros over 14 years, modelled from live two-store data, a projection and never a realised saving, is what took the digital price tags from a pilot to a programme, and one of us wrote it (2018 to 2021). Another of us then carried the programme to 150+ stores across 10 countries, after four earlier attempts had failed on a single-capability business case.
A single-date switchover of a kitchen range across 29 stores, 25% of national turnover, with zero lost sales, steering 8 direct reports and at least 145 store-side people who reported to somebody else (2012 to 2014). Honestly, the 145 is the number we're proudest of, because none of them had to say yes.
Some 450 stores in the US and Canada traded every day on a main store system one of us kept running for eleven years, including a phased migration of about 400 of them.
A flagship store in a global retail group had a connectivity crisis that was costing it sales every week; it was fixed within a week, network downtime fell 95%, and with the layout then redesigned on the repaired network, foot traffic rose 20% (2018 to 2021).
In a support operation covering several markets, one market's backlog went from one month to two hours on the same tools, once the team owned its queue. And search acquisition, SEO, paid search and AI search together, for a leading French online credit broker at 24M annual visits (April to August 2026).
Most of those years were spent inside IKEA, as employees. IKEA is pedigree here. It has never been a client of the firm.
Where we work
We work on site in Philadelphia and New York, and along the corridor between them, with the rest of an engagement run remotely when the work allows it. The Philadelphia page and the New York page carry the local detail for each market, and our US record starts with the store systems above.
Two guides carry the decision before this one. If you are still asking whether to hire anyone at all, read when not to hire a consulting firm. If the shortlist already has a big firm on it, the alternative to McKinsey for mid-market retail is the checklist we would use in your seat.
The questions buyers ask us
What does a business consulting firm do?
The 34 Group does the four jobs a company hires a business consulting firm for: find the problem behind the symptom, agree the number it has to move, design the change with the people who will live with it, and get that change into daily operation. Our consultants ran stores, store systems and product teams before they advised on them, so the fourth job is the one we plan around from day one.
How is The 34 Group different from a management consulting firm?
The 34 Group shares the first half of the work with a management consulting firm: a large firm's diagnosis is well researched, its recommendation carries weight with a board, and it can staff a group-wide programme in weeks. The difference is who stays. Our senior consultants write the diagnosis, then build the change with your teams and remain on site through go-live, so the value in the recommendation lands in the operation.
How long does an engagement with a business consulting firm take?
The 34 Group scopes every engagement in its own working session, and the length follows the change itself. A diagnostic runs in days. A first change ships within weeks of it, and the stay through go-live lasts until your team runs the change without us. The shelf-label store that went live in 2 days sits inside a programme that has run since 2018 and is still rolling out. Both timelines are real.
Which industries does The 34 Group work with?
The 34 Group works with retail, e-commerce and the operations behind both: store systems, order and fulfilment, digital product teams, search acquisition and AI adoption. That is where our own years were spent, in stores, in store IT and in product portfolios. A company from another industry with a shelf, a queue or a platform to run gets the same operators; we say so on the first call when it is a stretch.
Do you work with small businesses or mid-market companies?
The 34 Group works with mid-market companies first: enough stores, orders or product teams for a change to have a number attached, and a leadership that wants the change built. Small and mid-size businesses with one clear problem and an operation to build in are welcome, and we say on the first call whether the problem is worth our kind of engagement. What we decline is a scope with nothing behind it to build.
Where does The 34 Group work?
The 34 Group works on site in Philadelphia and New York, in the corridor between them, and remotely for the parts of an engagement that do not need a floor. Our US record includes eleven years on the store system that about 450 stores in the US and Canada ran on. Each market page carries the local detail.
Thirty minutes on your problem
Bring the number that has to move and the last thing that was tried on it. In a 30-minute diagnostic we pressure-test it and give you the first three things we would do, with no pitch attached. Book it through the contact page. The scoped FOCAL Diagnostic is the written route, for a board that needs the answer on paper before it commits anyone's calendar.