PRTM Management Reviews

Pros

PRTM is focused on bringing strategic solutions to the client that are very results oriented. The client interaction is excellent.

Cons

The sompany training program is in need of work and is not a priority at PRTM. The company expects that you are client ready from day one.

Advice to Senior Management

More training is needed as well as ongoing training to develop higher level skills. Need to develop client facing skills to ensure the best possible interactions with client

Pros

I'd say PRTM has a collaborative culture, with a plenty of nice people. I truly enjoyed interacting with the people I've worked with at PRTM. The pay is better than corporate jobs' pay, but not comparable to other consulting firms.

Cons

PRTM has tons of average people, with quite mediocre capabilities. You'll have to love processes to enjoy the work at PRTM; this is what PRTM does and is good at. The firm will never reach the status of McKinsey and BCG, primarily because it attracts average, risk-averse talent. Pay is worse than the industry; for example, as a Pricinple, you make on average less than $200K/year, while at BCG you make around $350K. And then the work is tedious, because it's all process (not content) focused.
If you're serious about management consulting, skip PRTM. It just doesn't pay off in the long run.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on hiring and attracting top talent if you want to grow; don't recruit from third-tier business schools, and focus more on C-level topics (strategy).

Pros

1) High level, transformational work that provides fantastic experience
2) Interact with top level executives, helping them solve their biggest challenges
3) Collaborative culture; your colleagues in the firm will help you succeed
4) Review process takes place twice per year

Cons

1) Salary below other firms
2) Limited training
3) Limited tools available to do your work (research capabilities, software tools, etc.)
4) Firm has shifted away from promoting a good work-life balance

Advice to Senior Management

The combination of the Atlantic and Pacific regions was a mistake, as was splitting up the firm into business groups.

Pros

Relatively flat org
Big name clients
Face time with clients at all levels of PRTM
People are nice
Global company, lots of travel
Stable for 32 years

Cons

4 - 5 days of travel per week through out career
Mostly male firm
Limited diversity in educational backgrounds, personalities, and work styles
Rooted deeply in tradition, not moving speedly into the future
Very little strategy work, few "big thinkers"
Partners encourage a project scoping and management style leads to burn out

Advice to Senior Management

Think more like one firm with employees instead of as a collection of small business owners
Value employees and all they bring - train them, be concerned about the project schedules, encourage vacation use, leverage differences in staff

Pros

Develop core consulting skills and leverage the extensive training available. Among the consulting firms it has a very good work life balance which is something that helps a lot in a very demanding job. The 5 days on site, 4 nights away from home model gives you a good balance. There is a good amount of coaching and feedback available to introspect and improve yourselves.

Cons

Mainly it is the fact that the type of projects are not necessarily strategic in nature. A lot of program management type of projects which will be repetitive over time. The downside of consulting which is that you advice but not actually do it is also there.

Advice to Senior Management

At the entry level more challenging projects can be given

Pros

The number, and quality of high-level executive interactions.
The chance - and the ability - to influence the performance of the client's firm.

Cons

Lack of name recognition, lack of supporting infrastructure -- such as IT, training, research, and administrative support -- present at other consulting companies.
The usual consulting travel and lifestyle balance issues.

Advice to Senior Management

Please rethink the staffing approach - being 100% chargeable makes it difficult to conduct NBD, develop new IP, or conduct marketing campaigns, and still deliver on client commitments.

Pros

Good firm if you want to focus on Supply Chain Operations. You get experience in running the operations of companies especially the Program Management aspects of it. Also it is a very open firm with easy access to Partners. I met some truly exceptional consultants.

Cons

Lack of name recognition. During client engagements, most employees had not heard about PRTM. In many instances client employees asked whether it was a contracting firm. PRTM is notorious for lack of organized training. If you are lucky enough to be on a good project with an experienced Partner you will learn a lot. It was very difficult for me to find previous work or intellectual property I could leverage for client work. As a result, I had to rely on the web or reinvent again. I didn't see a lot of fresh thinking or truly ground breaking intellectual capital come out of the firm. That may be a result of the culture where every Partner is so focused on client delivery that true intellectual property is not developed. I saw come proposals that used material from proposals developed 10-15 years ago.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on training and skills development of consultants.

Pros

The impact of the work delivered to clients is visible and you feel like you're gaining skills that will be useful later in life. The Directors are very supportive of family life and rarely ask you to work on the weekends. The monthly in person staff meetings really helped tie everyone together with a sense of community. The client list was really top notch, and the level of senior executive client interaction was very high, even from the moment I joined the firm. The project responsibilities I was given from day one were remarkably impactful and I felt like a contributor to a client's success right away.

Cons

The biggest issue I saw was with compensation. If you got a mid year promotion, you didn't get a pay raise until the end of the year, which was actually very disheartening. Compensation at the top level is not really known outside of the Directorship and it made it hard to know what the carrot was. There was a lot of speculation at the Associate level on salary increases and potential at the other levels, but people were very tight lipped about compensation overall. Surprisingly, for what a data driven company PRTM is, when it came to performance reviews, there was no data provided to me for why I got what I got.

Advice to Senior Management

Be more transparent on salaries and bonuses. Continue results driven approach

Pros

One of the best of the consultancy firms. Not too large, not too small. Produces good results for clients. Highly respected.

Cons

Your happiness is more influenced by your particular project / responsible partner than at other firms.

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate more openly. Spread the wealth more to consultants. Reduce internal workload to a greater degree

Pros

Great place to learn about how to run a business. PRTM focuses on Operations Strategy, meaning how do you run your business to meet your strategic goals. You will get to see a lot of different industries and learn the best ways to solve high level problems. Great reputation among clients.

Cons

Travel of course. Also, somewhat of a slave to the economy - when things are going well, consulting is great, when business slows down, it gets pretty stressful. This is the same for all consulting firms though. While PRTM does great work, it does not have a broad reputation outside of product development and supply chain clients. Many people who leave PRTM go to prior clients because they really understand what we do, otherwise it is difficult to get people to understand what you've done since they haven't heard of PRTM.

Advice to Senior Management

More communication is always better. They are getting better at it than they were a few years ago. Try to be more creative in getting more business other than just saying to try to sell more.