West Monroe is a national management and technology

consulting A consultant (from la, consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice and other purposeful activities in an area of specialization. Consulting servic ...

firm headquartered in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. West Monroe provides professional consulting services to businesses across many industries, including consumer and industrial products, energy and utilities,

financial services Financial services are the Service (economics), economic services provided by the finance industry, which encompasses a broad range of businesses that manage money, including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, acco ...

healthcare Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...

life sciences This list of life sciences comprises the branches of science that involve the scientific study of life – such as microorganisms, plants, and animals including human beings. This science is one of the two major branches of natural science, the ...

private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a ty ...

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...

, and software and high tech. All employees share equity as part of the firm's employee stock ownership plan (ESOP).

Office locations

West Monroe has eight offices in North America, including

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

(headquarters),

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, and one in the U.K.

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

History

2002–2004: formative years

In April 2002, four former

Arthur Andersen Arthur Andersen was an American accounting firm based in Chicago that provided auditing, tax advising, consulting and other professional services to large corporations. By 2001, it had become one of the world's largest multinational corporat ...

consultants met at Miller’s Pub in Chicago and founded West Monroe. That group, which included Dean Fischer (chairman of the board ''emeritus'') and Kevin McCarty (currently CEO and chairman of the board), established West Monroe Partners LLC, with the name deriving from Arthur Andersen's previous address on West Monroe Street in Chicago. Dean Fischer became the company's first president and CEO. The firm began serving its first client, Equity Marketing Services, in June 2002, and went on to deliver business and technology consulting services to a variety of mostly Midwestern clients from its Chicago office. In mid-2004, West Monroe hired its 50th employee and launched its first website.

2005–2009: expansion years

The years between 2005 and the end of the decade marked a period of expansion for West Monroe. In 2005, the firm opened three new offices in Montreal (January), Seattle (October), and Columbus, Ohio (December). During this year, the firm reached $10 million in revenue and hired its 100th employee, including members of West Monroe's first university recruiting class. In 2006, the National Association for Business Resources named West Monroe one of its “101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For” in Chicago. Since then, it has garnered similar accolades locally in Chicago, Seattle, and Columbus, as well as nationally from ''Consulting Magazine'' and ''Vault''. Expansion continued with the mid-2006 opening of a Toronto office and merger with LxLi, a consulting firm specializing in labor management and engineered labor standards. In 2007, West Monroe opened an office in New York City (April) and one in Dallas (September). West Monroe established in 2007 a formal, 13-member Board of Managers. During this period, the firm started practices to serve specific industries; for example, the Energy & Utilities practice, which has worked with utilities across the country to plan and advance smart-grid strategies. During the latter years of the decade, West Monroe also began to focus on multi-faceted business transformations. The same year, West Monroe also welcomed its first intern class. All five members of the inaugural intern class are still at the firm today.

2010–2017

In March 2010, West Monroe entered an international consulting alliance with

BearingPoint BearingPoint (parent company: BearingPoint Europe Holdings B.V.) is an independent multinational management and technology consulting firm with 41 offices across 23 countries and around 4,300 employees. In 2021, the firm delivered 1,298 projects ...

, which has strong European roots. In April 2012, West Monroe celebrated its tenth anniversary in business. Later that year, in September, it named co-founder Kevin McCarty as president. Dean Fischer retains the role of CEO. The firm added an office in Minneapolis in late 2012. At the end of 2012, West Monroe reorganized as an employee stock ownership plan. In January 2014, West Monroe announced it had acquired Madrona Solutions Group, a Seattle-based consulting firm focused on delivering customer relationship management and business intelligence. The same month it also announced the opening of its Los Angeles, CA office. In October 2014, president and co-founde
Kevin McCarty
was named as CEO. He replaced Dean Fischer, who retired and transitioned to the role of executive chairman of the board of managers. In October 2015, West Monroe announced it had acquired Etherios, a Salesforce platform. As part of the acquisition, the firm strengthened its presence in two markets, San Francisco, CA and Dallas, TX. In July 2016, West Monroe announced it had acquired Invoyent, a Chicago-based healthcare consulting firm.

2017–present

In 2017, West Monroe announced the acquisition of CAST Management Consultants, a financial services consulting firm based in Los Angeles. In 2018, West Monroe added two new members to its Board of Managers, Barbara Duganier and Barbara Bennett, bringing the total number of outside board members to three. In the fall of 2018, West Monroe met a new headcount milestone, exceeding 1,000 employees. In January 2019, West Monroe invested in an expanded leadership team by promoting three executives to newly formed C-level positions. In 2019, West Monroe acquired two companies: Waterstone Management Group, an advisory firm for private equity firms and Fortune 500 companies; and GoKart Labs, a digital product studio. The two transactions expanded West Monroe’s capabilities in software, high-tech, and digital transformation. In October 2019, West Monroe signed a 12-year lease as the anchor tenant at 311 W. Monroe in Chicago’s Loop neighborhood. As the anchor tenant, West Monroe has naming rights and will call the building West Monroe HQ. In 2020, West Monroe acquired two companies: Pace Harmon, a strategy and outsourcing firm; and Two Six Capital, a data science firm for private equity. In September 2021, West Monroe acquired Verys, a California-based software development firm. The acquisition represents their largest to date, and was a part of a "$250 million investment in continuing to build its end-to-end digital services in response to unprecedented client demand."

Global alliance

In 2010, West Monroe announced a strategic consulting alliance with

to expand their global market coverage and to better provide services to their international clients. Both firms offer business consulting services to help solve their clients’ most important and broader business issues. While

has European roots, West Monroe is active in the North American management consulting market.

Industry specialization

West Monroe maintains specialized capabilities in the following industries: *

Financial services Financial services are the Service (economics), economic services provided by the finance industry, which encompasses a broad range of businesses that manage money, including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, acco ...

Human Capital Management Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, an ...

Private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a ty ...

Healthcare Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...

Life Sciences This list of life sciences comprises the branches of science that involve the scientific study of life – such as microorganisms, plants, and animals including human beings. This science is one of the two major branches of natural science, the ...

Energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of heat a ...

and

Utilities A public utility company (usually just utility) is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure). Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and r ...

Manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a r ...

and

Distribution Distribution may refer to: Mathematics *Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations * Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a vari ...

Retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...

Software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

and High Tech

Competitors

West Monroe Partners’ competitors range from niche consulting firms with specific industry, functional, and technical expertise to the largest global management and technology consulting firms.

Recruiting

West Monroe has a team of more than 1500 professionals with diverse skills: strategic and tactical, business and technology, functional and process, industry and market focused. It recruits a mix of experienced personnel (approximately 67 percent of new hires) and entry-level consultants (approximately 33 percent of new hires). The firm uses a variety of methods to source talent, including employee referrals, social media and networking, staffing partnerships, and campus activities.

Awards and recognition

West Monroe is consistently named as a best place to work by publications such as Great Place to Work and

Fortune Magazine ''Fortune'' is an American multinational business magazine headquartered in New York City. It is published by Fortune Media Group Holdings, owned by Thai businessman Chatchaval Jiaravanon. The publication was founded by Henry Luce in 1929. The ...

, Consulting magazine, Puget Sound Business Journal, Crain’s Chicago Business, Crain’s New York, Dallas Business Journal, and Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal.{{Cite web, url=https://www.prweb.com/releases/west_monroe_partners_named_to_2019_dallas_business_journal_list_of_100_best_places_to_work_in_north_texas/prweb16675561.htm, title = West Monroe Partners Named to 2019 Dallas Business Journal List of 100 Best Places to Work in North Texas

Publishing

West Monroe publishes a monthly newsletter for clients, as well as several industry-specific newsletters. These ongoing newsletters highlight key industry trends and issues facing C-level executives. In addition, West Monroe authors multiple research studies and polls, white papers, perspectives, executive communications, and newsletters on a variety of topics.

References

Consulting firms established in 2002