Project Management in Consulting

The consulting industry may not have to deal too much with materials and physical assets; however, with so much expertise involved, varied stakeholders, and overlapping responsibilities, any given project can become a complicated beast without the right project management tools. 

With ProWorkflows Nexus project management software, consultants can manage demands such as resource planning, knowledge sharing, billing accuracy, and team coordination with greater clarity, coordination, and control.

In this post, we explore four common project management challenges most consulting firms face—and how Nexus provides practical, purpose-built solutions to support consistent delivery of project objectives.

Resource Allocation and Utilisation

• Problem: Consultants are often stretched across multiple projects.

• Cause: Overbooking by management and inadequate capacity planning tools.

• Impact: Reduced quality, missed deadlines, and staff fatigue.

If there is one thing that tends to be true of the consulting industry, it’s that any given person can expect to be involved across a wide range of projects and clients. This can cause friction when it comes to scheduling, as it becomes difficult to tell who has availability beyond personal, subjective assessments. 

Nexus helps you maintain a comprehensive, itemized schedule of all work across all clients, allowing you to check any given member’s availability based on their currently assigned tasks, as well as the start and finish dates and time allocations stored within. 

We also have an availability checking report, which shows all staff members and their allocations for the upcoming weeks and months—crucial for project planning, improving task completion, and maintaining project timelines. With this kind of visibility, consultant project management becomes more proactive and precise, reducing strain on resources and supporting smoother project delivery.

Over-Reliance on Key Individuals and Expertise

• Problem: Projects hinge on a few senior consultants or SMEs.

• Cause: Limited bandwidth, underdeveloped junior staff, or siloed knowledge.

• Impact: Delivery risk if someone leaves or is unavailable.

Some consultants with particular expertise can become bottlenecks in certain situations. When you absolutely have to rely on a specific skill set, your project can experience delays while waiting for that person to become available. Nexus alleviates this problem by holding space for project communications, deliverables, and files related to specific project work items. 

Furthermore, you can utilize our contact tagging system to denote various levels of expertise. This means you can search for other members who might have a similar skill set and get them working on the same item with minimal delay. It’s a practical way to support faster onboarding, streamline task sharing, and strengthen your project management. Consulting services, especially those with distributed teams or shifting workloads, benefit from this kind of flexibility and control.

Billing and Contract Issues 

• Problem: Disputes over hours worked, scope, or deliverables.

• Cause: Poor time-tracking, unclear deliverable definitions, or informal change processes.

• Impact: Client frustration, delayed payments, legal exposure.

Nexus allows you to state not only what items will be worked on in a project, but also what milestones will be seen and what outputs the client can expect. Additionally, you can specify the exact hours to be worked and the number of hours already worked. The client will have access to the same data (or a more limited version of it) and will, therefore, be constantly informed of exactly what you’re working on, how long it will take, and what the charges will be. This kind of visibility helps avoid scope creep, allows for milestone tracking, improves client satisfaction, and reduces the risk of budget overruns—key elements in an effective project management system.

You can move all items from a quote into a project. This means the document that the client agreed to will be an exact copy of the work you expect to complete. Of course, you can make any required changes throughout the project, but this establishes a solid baseline. It also ensures your project management processes are consistent and auditable, while helping you identify costs and improve overall project transparency. 

You can also define any additional work, its cost, and whether you will charge for it. This means that in situations where extra work is required but cannot be charged for, or a task runs over, you will instantly see the impact on your project’s profitability. These insights support better decision-making and allow project managers to implement controls that ensure completed tasks stay within budget.

Knowledge Management Gaps 

• Problem: Lessons learned and intellectual property (IP) not captured or reused.

• Cause: No centralized system or incentives to document knowledge.

• Impact: Reinventing the wheel, inconsistent quality, inefficiency.

Ensuring that you have all the required information in the correct place is crucial. As mentioned, Nexus can house all your reference documents and deliverables, but this overlooks broader instructions and information on company processes. For this, we have a centralized note system that can be selectively accessed and categorized—an essential feature for consultants who need to collaborate across various industries or handle multiple projects. 

You’ll also have space to store standard procedures under our template sections, meaning even if someone is new to your organization, they can still access your generalized workflow. This supports project management processes by integrating onboarding and internal documentation into a scalable, repeatable system. For example, you may have a well-thought–out, templated workflow concerning client onboarding and job scoping, which can be used to maintain clear objectives and a more controlled output.

Consultants often face specific challenges when managing intellectual property, internal systems, and lessons learned. Nexus makes handling all these components as easy as possible, with as few missed tasks as possible, and ensures that all your time is either billed or recorded. This ensures consistency, promotes reuse of best practices, and enhances effectiveness across the entire project lifecycle.

Take Control of Project Management in Your Consulting Firm

Consulting can be a complex business with numerous stakeholders involved and multiple moving parts. But with ProWorkflow’s Nexus project management system, you can streamline your business processes, ensure project progress is transparent, and gain valuable insights that drive efficiency, profitability, and scalability.

Whether you’re trying to track project metrics, lead future projects, or improve productivity, our project management tool supports the full project lifecycle. If you want to discuss how ProWorkflow can help you with your project management, book a demo with us today!