McKinsey at ROMBA 2019

FIRM PRESTIGE RANKING

It can be difficult to dislodge popular opinion. Outside of public relations fiascos, the forces of branding, shaping daily discourse and media coverage, wins out in the end. That’s what you find in the Prestige ranking: the large incumbents hog the spotlight, leaving little room for movement.

Like the workplace measures, Prestige follows the same 1 to 10 scale. Here, practicing consultants score rivals with which they were familiar. Here, the MBB hold court, led by McKinsey & Company with a 9.100 score, representing ongoing improvement since bottoming out at 8.894. BCG scored an 8.828, edging out Bain & Company at 8.755. In fact, the Top 5 remained the same as last year with Deloitte Consulting and PwC bringing up the rear.

Beyond that, there was a shakeup in the status quo. EY Parthenon boosted its prestige score by .564 of a point, enabling it to move from 10th to 6th. Oliver Wyman actually improved by .292…and still lost a spot, remaining behind EY, which lost three places. The Bridgespan Group actually moved up 21 spots by gaining 1.873 points. The Korn Ferry Hay Group and Gallup Group also improved by over a point, enabling them to move up seven and spots respectively.

Indeed, most firms watched their Prestige scores go up in the latest survey. That meant little movement in some cases. Case in point: Northrop Grumman, which held steady at #17…despite raising its score from 5.014 to 6.011. More notably, Prestige rose by a point or more for nearly every firm ranked between 20 and 30, a group that includes Charles River Associates, Raytheon Professional Services, AZ Associates, and General Dynamics Information Technology. And the pattern continues to a lesser extent through the rest of the Vault Consulting 50.

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