How Are Computer Consultancy and Facilities Management Classified?

Computer consultancy and facilities management in ISIC Rev. 5, UN Statistics Division, cover advising on computer systems and operating computer facilities for others. Consultancy includes analysing a client’s needs, advising on hardware, software and systems, and planning an installation, without necessarily writing the software itself. Facilities management means running a client’s computer systems and data processing facilities day to day, under contract, as a service to that client.

When does advice stop and day to day operation begin?

Advice and operation look alike on a contract summary, yet they involve different daily tasks. A consultant studies a client’s existing setup, asks what the system must do, compares hardware and software options, and writes a plan for an installation. The work ends, in the usual pattern, when the recommendation is handed over and the installation is overseen. Facilities management starts where that handover ends. The provider takes responsibility for running systems that belong, in operational terms, to the client: keeping them available, watching for faults, applying routine changes, and answering when something stops working. One sells judgement about a future setup. The other sells continuity for a setup already in place. That difference in daily tasks is what the UNSD wording in ISIC Rev. 5, UN Statistics Division, is trying to capture, and it is more useful than asking whether a firm calls itself a consultancy, a managed service provider, or something else entirely.

What does a hospital review show about the two kinds of work?

Take the hospital example already used for this topic and slow it down. In the consultancy version, a team walks the wards and the records office, maps how patient records move between departments, notes where the current system delays staff, and proposes a new configuration with a sequence for installation. Staff from the hospital still run the old system while the plan is prepared, and the consultants leave once the new arrangement is in place and checked. In the facilities management version, a different provider signs a contract to run the hospital servers every day. Its staff monitor performance through the night, restart failed services, log faults, arrange repairs, and keep backups running. The hospital’s own clinicians never see that work unless a fault interrupts them, which is exactly the point of the contract. Same hospital, same servers, but the first provider is paid for a decision and a plan, while the second is paid for keeping machines running week after week.

Which neighbouring jobs sit just outside this pair?

Several nearby jobs are easy to confuse with this pair, and naming them helps keep the pair tidy. Writing custom software belongs to computer programming, even when the programmer also gives informal advice during the project. Hosting data on the provider’s own infrastructure as a separate service belongs to computing infrastructure and hosting, even when the host also operates machines for a client in a narrower sense that the UNSD entry must be checked for. Selling computer hardware is trade, not a service over a client’s systems. General management consultancy, about organisation or finance with no computing core, sits outside computing altogether. A reader who finds two of these descriptions in one business should not force a single label onto the whole firm. Statisticians look for the principal activity, the largest part of the work, and the UNSD wording decides which entry fits that part best.

Why do statisticians keep advice and operation apart?

The split matters because advice and operation grow for different reasons and are bought in different ways. Advice rises when organisations plan change, replace systems, or merge services, and it tends to arrive in projects with a start and a finish. Operation rises when organisations decide they would rather buy reliable running systems than employ the staff to run them, and it tends to arrive as a continuing contract with monthly charges. If both were counted as programming, the software creation total would swell with work that created no new code, and the market for outsourced operation would disappear from view. ISIC Rev. 5, UN Statistics Division, contains 22 sections from A to V, with 87 divisions, 258 groups and 463 classes in total, so a small shift in wording at group or class level can move an activity between published totals. Keeping advice apart from operation lets an analyst ask whether spending is going on new systems or on keeping old ones alive.

In short, this guide treats consultancy and facilities management as statistical descriptions only. It does not settle any reader’s code, principal activity or registration, and anyone using a description for a real return should confirm it with the national statistical institute or business register that holds the record.