1. Introduction

Strategic marketing is aimed at long-term planning of a company’s relationship with all aspects of the external environment: consumers, competitors, and others, in order to determine its future place in a particular market. Today, strategic marketing is defined not as a physical, but as a social process [1]. Institute of Entrepreneurship Problems LLC (IPP) provides services in the field of law, audit, valuation, investment, management, and marketing consulting to enterprises and government agencies.

2. Material and methods

The company was established as an LLP in February 1992 on the basis of a team of lawyers who served four large enterprises (two Russian and two Lithuanian). IPP is an independent private company: the shares of the company belong to the top managers of the company, V. Romanovsky and N. Mochulovskaya, the company is not part of any other structure and its decisions depend only on customers. IPP has been the largest consulting company in the North-West of the Russian Federation and one of the 20 leading companies in Russia since 1997. Since 2000, the IPP representative office has been operating in Moscow. The company serves clients in all regions of Russia, and also has a practice outside the Russian Federation, but focuses on providing services to companies in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region. IPP’s clients are the country’s largest enterprises, natural monopolies, state unitary enterprises, government ministries and departments. The core of the company’s experts was formed in the 90s. Today, the company employs about 300 specialists. IPP invests all its efforts in the development of the quality of services provided: professional development of experts, formation of corporate standards of work, analysis of experience and development of practice [2]. The company has a quality management system certified in accordance with ISO 9001-2008 standards. The professional responsibility of auditors and appraisers is insured by Alfa Insurance Insurance Company. The company consists of five departments, each of which, in turn, consists of several departments. Each department has its own management, which reports to the head of the department. The heads of departments report to the top management in the person of V.B. Romanovsky and N.Y. Mochulovskaya.»[3]

Such a structure allows you to control the activities of all personnel, the amount of work performed and clearly define the boundaries of each department’s activities, which allows not only the department as a whole, but also each specialist in particular to perform their duties most carefully. Since the activities of each department and departments vary in the profile of services provided and the required specialists, this work focuses on the activities of the consulting department, in particular the Financial and management consulting department [4]. Currently, the Financial and Management Consulting Department provides the following services:

«Strategy and Strategic Management

• Development strategy development (strategic positioning)
• Development of strategic plans (strategic planning)
• Development of projects for the restructuring of companies / groups of companies, including projects for the re-formation of non-core activities
• Development and implementation of strategically oriented company management systems using the BSC (Balanced Scorecard) methodology

Economic and financial management

• Setting up a budgeting system
• Development and implementation of a management accounting system
• Development of cost management systems
• Optimization of the financial management system and the activities of financial and economic services
• Analysis and development of recommendations for improving the efficiency of financial and economic activities

Investment and financial consulting

• Optimization of investment process management
• Development (expertise) Feasibility studies, business plans of investment projects
• Development of recommendations on ways and structure of project financing
• Assistance in finding potential investors
• Project support at all stages of the investment process
• Conducting Due Diligence (comprehensive inspection of the facility in the financial, legal, organizational and managerial spheres)
• Consulting support for mergers and acquisitions
• Development of programs to increase the investment attractiveness of the business
• Assistance in preparing to enter the capital market»[2]

The main purpose of the work is to analyze and rank the factors necessary to increase the company’s rating in terms of financial and management services, focus on the most significant factors contributing to development, and choose a long-term marketing strategy.

The ultimate goal is to increase the company’s rating in terms of financial and management consulting services.

To achieve the goal, it is necessary to implement the following subgoals:

1. Provide services to enterprises in various sectors of the economy.
2. Expand the portfolio of services provided.
3. Provide services to a multi-scale business.
4. Increase the total number of customers

To implement each of the subgoals, it is necessary to solve a number of tasks:

1. In order to provide services to enterprises in various sectors of the economy, it is necessary to identify and cover enterprises in sectors of the economy that are poorly covered by the company.
2. In order to expand the range of services provided, it is necessary to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the company in the services provided.
3. In order to provide services to a multi-scale business, it is necessary to identify and cover enterprises of business categories that are poorly covered by the company.
4. To increase the total number of clients, it is necessary to identify the company’s capabilities, strengths, weaknesses, and threats.

To solve the above tasks, actions such as:

1. Structuring clients by economic sectors.
2. Structuring clients according to the scale of their activities.
3. Competitor analysis.
4. Conducting a SWOT analysis based on competitor analysis.

It is advisable to analyze competitors only among companies providing approximately the same package of services, without taking into account companies that specialize only in specific services, such as Pro-Invest Consulting, which provides services only in the field of corporate finance [5]. It is also necessary to take into account the market niche occupied by competing companies and the company itself. For example, world-renowned companies such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte&Touche, Ernst&Young, KPMG, and Anderse are undisputed industry leaders and have the highest reputation in the eyes of not only the Russian but also the global community. In addition, they were officially active in Russia only until 2022, i.e. before the start of a special military operation in Ukraine [6].

The purpose of the analysis in this article was to find out which sides are the company’s strengths, and which ones need to be improved in comparison with competitors. Companies such as Register-Consulting CJSC, ECOPSI Company, Business Consulting Group LLC, BIG Petersburg Consulting Group, SV-Consulting LLC, Technoprogress LLC, MIPKI, GCE Group of Companies, MCD CJSC were selected for the analysis of competitors.», «BDO Unicon», «FinExpertiza», «INSEI». All of the above companies occupy a prominent share of the audit and consulting services market in the Northwest, have been on the market for more than 10 years and have a similar number of employees in the region, from 200 to 400 people.

Based on the results of the analysis, it can be argued that in order to increase the overall number of IPP’s customers, it is necessary to pay more attention to advertising and promotion of the company, despite its wide fame, as well as to pay attention to cooperation with a large number of international associations. In addition, management should motivate employees for scientific work and publications.

Under the conditions of sanctions pressure, especially starting in 2022, a lot of Western companies were forced to leave Russia. This has also affected the consulting business. The largest Western companies PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and KPMG officially withdrew from the Russian market, but their Russian divisions, while retaining their staff and range of services, began operating under other names [8].

Consequently, under the conditions of sanctions pressure and the forced policy of import substitution, the consulting business in Russia is also forced to adjust to changing the tactics of domestic companies. This concerns the change in foreign economic orientation from West to East [7]. The tightening of the key interest rate by the central bank, higher taxes and various forms of control with appropriate sanctions also require diversification and a change in the range of consulting services. As part of the expansion of the range of services, the management of IPP should introduce turnkey services and personnel management services.

The analysis results showed that the main clients of the financial and management consulting department are large companies (73% of total revenue). The share of medium–sized companies is 17%, small businesses — 10%.

Consequently, the companies that need consulting services most of all are representatives of large businesses. The results obtained correspond to the opinion often found in the literature that in order to find out which companies are the main clients of consulting companies; it is enough to simply create a list of the largest companies in the region you are interested in [10]. Obtaining consulting services is not a common practice among small and medium-sized businesses. However, to attract these companies, they should reduce the price of consulting services.

3. Results and discussions

During the study:

1) the economic activity of the consulting company «Institute of Entrepreneurship Problems» has been analyzed; 2) recommendations for improving its competitiveness have been proposed.

4. Conclusion

The result of the conducted research is the conclusion that it is advisable for the consulting company «Institute of Entrepreneurship Problems» to apply a diversification strategy in order to increase competitiveness, increase profits from the activities of the financial and management consulting department and increase its place in the ranking of financial and management consulting services. By expanding the portfolio of financial consulting services, the company will increase customer loyalty. As a result, the number of customers will increase and the profit will increase. An increase in the number and loyalty of customers contributes to an increase in the company’s rating. In general, the consulting services market in the Russian Federation continues to grow, although it is experiencing difficulties along with the rest of the economy. Under these conditions, the elements of strategic management and strategic marketing are the most important tools for managing a company, allowing it to work effectively and focus not only on the current market situation, but also on the long-term future.