TMG Consultants have won the coveted title of "Hidden Champion of the Consulting Market" for the fourth time in a row, defending their position as the best consulting firm in the "Manufacturing Industry" segment by an impressive margin.
"The fact that we have been able to win this coveted title for the fourth time in a row naturally fills us with pride," says TMG Managing Director Darya van de Sandt-Nassehi, commenting on the renewed title win – “especially because it is top decision-makers with much consulting experience and project managers on the customer side who attest to our outstanding competence. We have obviously done a great deal right in our projects”.
The “Hidden Champion” award is the most valuable distinction that a medium-sized consulting company can win in Germany. The award is presented every two years by the Scientific Society for Management and Consulting (WGMB) in cooperation with the business magazine CAPITAL. This year, a total of 30 consulting companies were honored. Ten of them had particular expertise in a specific industry. The remaining awards went to companies with a specialist discipline.
The fact that the “Hidden Champion” has such a high standing in the consulting market is primarily due to the special parameters of the competition:
- Unlike all other consulting awards, you cannot apply for the title of “Hidden Champion” yourself. Rather, one must be nominated by an independent panel of experts from science and practice. The basic suitability to become a Hidden Champion is then evaluated by empirical preliminary studies conducted by the WGMB under the direction of Prof. Dietmar Fink. This is followed by the final evaluation by executives who have consulting experience. The study is thus based on a transparent, interest-independent and scientifically accurate foundation.
- The final evaluation of the respective consulting services is based exclusively on the assessments of top managers from the business world who have extensive experience of their own in working with consulting firms. This year, more than 1,000 executives from major German companies (annual sales ≥ 500 million Euro) were involved in the evaluation. This group of people has all the prerequisites to be able to make an informed judgment with regard to the competencies of the consulting firms considered.
In Germany, around a quarter of the approximately 38 billion Euro consulting market went to the 25 largest management consultants in 2021. Only a few challengers manage to penetrate this phalanx and "compete successfully in the top segment of the market," clarifies Prof. Dietmar Fink, universally recognized analyst of the consulting market and initiator of the award.
In order to achieve this, consultants should preferably have qualifications that are particularly valued by customers: "In the age of digitization and uncertain markets, consultants must be convincing above all as technical experts, implementers and analysts," emphasizes Fink.
The special significance of the Hidden Champion with regard to the associated proof of competence is also emphasized by TMG Managing Director Klaus Dieterich: “Anyone who gets a better performance in the customer evaluation than the supposed top dogs McKinsey and Boston Consulting must definitely have achieved something special.”
However, it is also clear that TMG will not rest on its laurels. “If you want to belong to the "crème de la crème" in the consulting business in the long run, you have to constantly develop yourself further and also prove your competence in newer pressing topics such as sustainability, process intelligence or SAP S/4HANA transformation,” adds Darya van de Sandt-Nassehi. “In this respect, the title is both an incentive and an obligation for us.”
