ISO 20700 Management Consultancy Standards
Professionalism in management consultancy has led to an increased quality orientation of the screening and selection of an appropriate consultancy. It also results in a greater emphasis on standardisation in management consultancy. The first standard for management consultancy services – the EN16114:2011 “Management consultancy services” – was developed by the European management consulting industry and published in 2011.

The next level of a service standard for management consultancy is the preparation of a global ISO standard for management consultancy services – the ISO 20700 “Guidelines for management consultancy services” – by the ISO Project Committee PC 280, which is currently under development and considered by ISO as one of their “best seller” standards.

See April 2016 news post from ISO (http://www.iso.org/iso/news.htm?refid=Ref2060)  

Country Institute members of CMC-Global, plus CMC-Global itself, are actively involved in developing the ISO 20700 with the ISO organizations, as Robert Bodenstein, Chair of project committee ISO/PC 280, is also a vice chair of CMC-global. Get an overview in the ISO Briefing Note compiles by ISO  (http://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/-15521300/15521302/15519655/iso_20700_%2D_management_consultancy_%2D_briefing_notes.pdf?nodeid=17867146&vernum=-2). More support in publishing this standard will be provided by ISO in the course of the development and implementation.

What is important to distinguish is that CMC-Global and its member institutes set the standards for and certify individual management consultants to one set common standards the world over, the Certified Management Consultant (CMC) designation. ISO standards address the “minimum acceptable” processes and practice standards of consulting service providers.

CMC-Global and its member institutes also certify and appraise consulting firms through 2 different programs:


While there may be some overlap in these CMC-Global designations for consulting service providers, we aim to keep our CMC, ACP and CMC-Firm standards of practice and engagement initiatives dynamic and ever-evolving to the expectations and demands of management consulting clients.

The application of the standard and principles aims at improving the understanding and transparency between clients and management consultancy service providers (MCSPs), the provision of increased quality of consultancy services with a better value to clients as well as reduction of risks.

The next plenary meeting of the Project Committee PC 280, chaired by Robert Bodenstein, will be in Toronto from October 26-28, 2016. In the course of the development of draft ISO 20700, the Task Force “Stakeholder Engagement” of ISO PC 280 is preparing a marketing and stakeholder engagement program.