Innovation Consultants Are Doing Too Much Themselves
Innovation consulting is a premium professional service. Clients pay for the judgment, creativity, and facilitation expertise of senior consultants — not for the hours those consultants spend formatting proposal decks, managing project invoices, or scheduling stakeholder interviews.
Yet that mismatch between what clients pay for and what consultants actually spend their time on is pervasive. A 2024 survey by the Management Consulting Association found that independent and boutique consulting firms report an average of 34 percent of consultant time consumed by non-billable administrative work. For firms billing at $200 to $500 per hour, the revenue cost of that inefficiency is substantial.
Virtual assistants are helping innovation consulting firms close that gap.
The Operational Burden Inside Consulting Practices
Innovation consultants typically manage a portfolio of client engagements simultaneously, each with its own timelines, stakeholders, and deliverable schedules. The coordination and administrative demands of that portfolio — without support staff — fall entirely on the consultant.
The work is not trivial. Coordinating stakeholder interviews for a single engagement may involve fifty or more scheduling emails. Preparing a workshop requires logistics coordination across venue, materials, participant communications, and agenda preparation. Managing billing and project reporting for five concurrent clients can consume a full day per month.
VAs are taking on that operational layer systematically.
High-Impact VA Use Cases for Innovation Consultants
Proposal development support. Winning new business requires customized, high-quality proposals. VAs research prospective clients, gather relevant case study data, format proposal documents, and manage submission logistics — allowing consultants to focus on the strategic narrative and solution design rather than document production.
Workshop and facilitation logistics. Design sprints, ideation workshops, and strategy sessions are the core delivery vehicle for many innovation consultants. VAs handle pre-workshop participant communications, material preparation, venue or virtual platform setup, and post-workshop notes distribution — making every workshop tighter and more professional.
Stakeholder interview scheduling. Client engagements often require fifteen to thirty stakeholder interviews in the first weeks of a project. VAs manage the scheduling process end-to-end — sending calendar invites, confirming attendance, preparing interview guides, and tracking completion rates against the project timeline.
Research and intelligence gathering. Innovation consulting requires current intelligence on industry trends, competitive landscapes, and emerging technology applications. VAs conduct structured research sweeps, compile briefing documents, and maintain research libraries organized by client sector — keeping consultants informed without breaking their focus on delivery.
Billing, invoicing, and project tracking. The administrative side of running a consulting practice — tracking hours, generating invoices, following up on payments, and maintaining project budgets — is time-consuming and error-prone without dedicated support. VAs handle billing workflows, freeing principals to focus on client relationships and business development.
Measuring the Return
The return on VA investment for innovation consulting firms is most visible in two metrics: consultant utilization rate and proposal win rate.
Consultant utilization — the percentage of consultant time spent on billable or directly client-facing work — typically increases by 15 to 25 percent when VAs absorb the administrative load, according to professional services benchmarking data from SPI Research's 2024 PS Maturity Benchmark. A utilization increase of that magnitude at typical innovation consulting billing rates delivers several hundred thousand dollars in additional annual revenue per consultant.
Proposal win rates improve when proposals are better researched, more consistently formatted, and submitted faster. VAs contribute to all three factors.
Building the Right VA Relationship
Innovation consulting firms get the most from VA partnerships when VAs are given clear workflow ownership rather than ad-hoc task assignment. The best engagements treat the VA as a business operations function — owning specific processes — rather than a task queue.
Firms ready to explore dedicated operational support can connect with trained virtual assistants at Stealth Agents, which works with professional services and consulting organizations.
Sources
- Management Consulting Association, "Time Allocation and Productivity in Boutique Consulting Firms," 2024
- SPI Research, "Professional Services Maturity Benchmark," 2024
- Deloitte, "The Future of the Consulting Workforce," 2023
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Management Analysts Occupational Compensation, 2024