My first consulting assignment
Business check up (BCH) is a core course that concluded today with our presentation to the client. I capture the up's and down's of my debut consulting assignment.
I had become part of a new team in the first week of May 2005. Mark (Britain), Lily (China), Yandi (Indonesia), Chris (Scotland) and Miah (Britain / Honk Kong) were the other members of yet another culturally diverse team. We had chosen the project with a niche recruitment agency in UK.
On 4th May, we had an alumni from last year join us together with the client with whom they had done their project. Both, the alum and the client had shared their experiences with us and how this is a brilliant opportunity for Cranfield students to work on a small but live project.
Our team soon enough agreed for Yandi taking the role of team lead. We also chose to keep a single point of contact with the client and faculty in the form of Yandi. Our teams proactive approach helped us as by this day we had already scheduled an appointment with the Managing Director of the firm and on 5th afternoon, three of us set off to meet him. The meeting that lasted well over two hours told us a couple of things - the client had a very expectation from us and his view of the scope was much larger than what we had thought.
This was a crucial point for us, given that we had to work on this project in just 6 weeks while survive the grind of our respective electives, submit reports, et al. In our first debriefing meeting with the rest of the team, we decided to talk to our faculty and get the scope sorted out as there was no way we could have done what the client expected from us. Strangely, we were learning quickly and importantly the first lessons of consulting - know and agree to the scope before embarking on anything. The added aspect was that t was us who had to talk to the client and not the faculty to get this sorted out. Thankfully, Yandi's past consulting experience came to the rescue and we were on our journey soon. The scope was to do a complete business check up for the agency and propose a market entry into a new segment of recruitment.
We divided the functions into pairs of two - Miah and I took up Operations, Chris and Mark took up HR, Lily and Yandi worked on Finance. We also concluded that this market has a substantial overlap of Operations with Marketing and hence the latter would be worked upon collectively.
So during these 6 weeks, each of us were working on analysing information, penning down our thoughts, interviewing the MD and his employees, conducting research with clients and candidates, number crunching on excel files and of course making power point presentations. Adding to our woes was that we had to prepare a draft report and a presentation to the faculty just after 4 weeks of start. No marks for guessing - it was a part of our assessment. This also meant getting together one late night, book a room in the SOM and rehearse for the presentation.
Like the way the past 10 months have vanished, these 6 weeks also winded by and it was this day when the clients came in to be presented our formal report and presentation in front of the alumni. Just the way as a real consulting team would do and face the rebuttal from faculty and client. The only difference was that the consultants get paid for it in currency, we got paid in the form of learning.
We thought we did fairly well. After the presentation when we were chatting with the MD and his business partner, we found that they were testing us by playing devil's advocate role as well. Our proposals were in fact "bang on" with what they had in mind. We had received no hints about this from them.
So many times, I used to wonder - how come Cranfield students are down to earth souls unlike the typical image of MBA's that people have? Such exercises go on to reiterate that each of us have some unique strengths - we just need to explore a bit to uncover them.
A great experience! A great team! And of course, a great client too!
I had become part of a new team in the first week of May 2005. Mark (Britain), Lily (China), Yandi (Indonesia), Chris (Scotland) and Miah (Britain / Honk Kong) were the other members of yet another culturally diverse team. We had chosen the project with a niche recruitment agency in UK.
On 4th May, we had an alumni from last year join us together with the client with whom they had done their project. Both, the alum and the client had shared their experiences with us and how this is a brilliant opportunity for Cranfield students to work on a small but live project.
Our team soon enough agreed for Yandi taking the role of team lead. We also chose to keep a single point of contact with the client and faculty in the form of Yandi. Our teams proactive approach helped us as by this day we had already scheduled an appointment with the Managing Director of the firm and on 5th afternoon, three of us set off to meet him. The meeting that lasted well over two hours told us a couple of things - the client had a very expectation from us and his view of the scope was much larger than what we had thought.
This was a crucial point for us, given that we had to work on this project in just 6 weeks while survive the grind of our respective electives, submit reports, et al. In our first debriefing meeting with the rest of the team, we decided to talk to our faculty and get the scope sorted out as there was no way we could have done what the client expected from us. Strangely, we were learning quickly and importantly the first lessons of consulting - know and agree to the scope before embarking on anything. The added aspect was that t was us who had to talk to the client and not the faculty to get this sorted out. Thankfully, Yandi's past consulting experience came to the rescue and we were on our journey soon. The scope was to do a complete business check up for the agency and propose a market entry into a new segment of recruitment.
We divided the functions into pairs of two - Miah and I took up Operations, Chris and Mark took up HR, Lily and Yandi worked on Finance. We also concluded that this market has a substantial overlap of Operations with Marketing and hence the latter would be worked upon collectively.
So during these 6 weeks, each of us were working on analysing information, penning down our thoughts, interviewing the MD and his employees, conducting research with clients and candidates, number crunching on excel files and of course making power point presentations. Adding to our woes was that we had to prepare a draft report and a presentation to the faculty just after 4 weeks of start. No marks for guessing - it was a part of our assessment. This also meant getting together one late night, book a room in the SOM and rehearse for the presentation.
Like the way the past 10 months have vanished, these 6 weeks also winded by and it was this day when the clients came in to be presented our formal report and presentation in front of the alumni. Just the way as a real consulting team would do and face the rebuttal from faculty and client. The only difference was that the consultants get paid for it in currency, we got paid in the form of learning.
We thought we did fairly well. After the presentation when we were chatting with the MD and his business partner, we found that they were testing us by playing devil's advocate role as well. Our proposals were in fact "bang on" with what they had in mind. We had received no hints about this from them.
So many times, I used to wonder - how come Cranfield students are down to earth souls unlike the typical image of MBA's that people have? Such exercises go on to reiterate that each of us have some unique strengths - we just need to explore a bit to uncover them.
A great experience! A great team! And of course, a great client too!
posted by Sandeep Gupta at
5:44 pm
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