About 27% of all management analysts are self employed, according to the Department of Labor. Also in the federal statistics is the fact that as of 2006, over 675,000 professionals were working as management analysts. Taken together, those two facts tell us that it’s a profession with a large working population, and that many of them are consultants.
Management analysts are generally agents of change. Business executives are constantly looking for ways to make business more efficient and therefore more profitable. The principal cost item in almost any business is salaries, so it follows that businesses are going to look on their personnel as an important business component – and one that can contribute to improved performance.
Organizational Management
A specialist in improving employee performance and morale often holds an organizational management degree. Sometimes these degrees are an area of focus for an MBA program. Often the title of the degree includes words like “organizational development” or “organization innovation.” Professionals working in this field are expected to realign company personnel into new working groups, or into a different reporting structure, or to retrain personnel with new job structures designed to improve communication and output.
Human Resources
There are lots of specialties in management analysis that require a background in accounting, or engineering, or specialized information systems knowledge. Certainly people with degrees in these fields can look for management analyst opportunities, particularly with firms that provide specialty consulting services. But the second business field where you will find a lot of analysis and changes in operation structure is in human resources. This are is somewhat related to the first, but is focused more on an integrated approach to the selection and development of employees.
Human resource degrees often begin as business studies with specialization in fields such as "organizational psychology and development," or "organizational and human resource development." Specialists in this field are often charged with not only hiring new personnel, but operating within a plan for employee development and performance. Often those plans are developed by a consultant who specializes in HR and works as a management analyst.
Logistics
Another critical area for manufacturers and suppliers of both consumer and industrial products is inventory control. There is an entire body of work on “just in time” inventory control that stresses the value of little or no shelf time for inventory. Raw materials arrive at the manufacturing facility on one day, are made into finished products the next, and promptly sent out to a customer who has already placed the order. Dell Computer built their entire manufacturing structure based on tight inventory control of this sort.
Professionals who try to improve on inventory control and related issues often emerge from college with supply chain degrees. Often this area of study is about supply chain management and logistics. The use of global suppliers and manufacturers is one aspect of this type of work; the other is managing transport and storage logistics so that there are minimal charges for empty vehicles or filled inventory shelves. Transportation logistics in particular has become a highly computerized field that requires management expertise.
Bob Hartzell writes on careers and education for several websites