Curious about Management consulting?
Last winter my brother introduced me to the book “The Mckinsey Way”. That instilled a sense of curiosity in my mind. Being a commerce student my interest took acceleration when I conversed with my seniors they explained to me about 2 main types of consulting- “Accounting consulting by big-4” and “Management consulting by big-3”. In today’s world where you can learn almost everything online, it was very hard for me to get my hands on a good and benefitting consulting course.
One day while going through my LinkedIn feed, I came across a post with an experience in a virtual learning program related to management consulting through InsideSherpa.
So, today I am going to share some of my key takeaways from the course:
The course was broadly divided into 5 topics. To begin with, my first topic was “Market research”. The task included a small video briefing me with the task and a couple of resources to help me during the task. The task was all about doing market research for a company providing telecom services regarding whether to or not launch telephone leasing.
The resources provided with the task was a great relief as it mostly covered all aspects I required to touch before preparing a report. Whereas resources were sufficient to help me prepare a good report, the main challenge was that The task had a time limit, I had to completely analyze different aspects of telephone leasing and file a report suggesting whether or not to move ahead with the plan of telephone leasing, all in an hour.
So, before starting the actual analysis I made a plan in my mind on how to approach each resource provided to me. First, I skimmed through all the links given and noted key sub-topics that are to be read in detail.
I completed the entire research and screening process with 10mins spared. Then I followed the format of the sample email that was given to me and prepared my report and concluded the task with some of my suggestions.
The first task pumped me up, I realized it was not going to be as easy as I expected it to be. But I was ready to face the upcoming speed breakers with confidence and an optimistic view.
Then came the second task or I can say the most challenging and engaging task of all 5 tasks. It was titled “Data Analysis”. I had to do a detailed financial analysis to assure that the “leasing of telephones” is a profitable idea.
This time the resources were in raw form, I had to use my financial knowledge to first analyze the various financial data given to me then I followed the guidelines to calculate various comparables required to study the various situations that can take place. Firstly, I listed out the various metrics that are important to facilitate an organized analysis, the metrics was Operating Revenue, Net Profit, and ARPU. The first situation was “If the company didn’t implement the plan of leasing telephones, for that I had to analyze a similar company that hasn’t implemented leasing of telephones and had to measure its current performance and had to predict its future performance as well.
The second situation that is possible is that if the company implements the plan of leasing telephones, to find out the financial viability of this option I had to find out the industry average growth and compare this data with a company that has implemented this strategy. Another element that played an important role in the analysis of this data was ARPU i.e. Average Revenue Per User. It is calculated by dividing the total revenue generated divided by the total number of users. This provides the company a granular view on a per-user or unit basis and allows it to track revenue sources and growth.
After obtaining all the required comparables, using my objectivity I completed the half presented data and submitted my second task.
The second topic energized me more and gave me a lot of confidence moving into the third task. The third task was all about understanding “Consumer Needs”. Firstly, I skimmed through the consumer survey and penned down my observations. Then I carried out a detailed analysis of the price strategy and derived an evaluation matrix. The consumer survey showed clearly that our target market was the people with an age below 30 years, as they used to replace their phones more frequently and were attracted to the new technology.
While the third task tested my ability to think critically and the capacity of giving a sound business judgment, the fourth task was devised to test my skills of business communication and stakeholder management. It asked me to prepare a summary and bind together all the findings. So, I prepared a PowerPoint presentation titled “Project Summary”. I mentioned my suggestions and listed out the various findings. I tried to keep it short and suggestive. This task helped me improve my presentation skills.
My final task was to prepare a presentation to cater to the queries of the top executives of the company and give them suggestions to solve each of the anticipated problems. I listed out all the anticipated problems by clubbing them into various departments. According to me, the chief marketing officer and the chief financial officer will face difficulty in implementing this strategy. As the plan of leasing telephones was new to the market it might make the consumers confused and many might not even know about it, the most practical solution to this was aggressive marketing and holding campaigns before the launch. The main problem for the finance department was its relatively less price as compared to the existing plan, and it might lead to a decrease in revenue. But during our research, we found that as the market share increases, revenue growth also picks up the speed.
The course educated me about how the consulting industry works. Before the start of this course, I was filled with curiosity but now I feel confident to at least some extent regarding whether or not to pursue “Management consulting” but I guess there is a lot to still explore. But books and courses like Mckinsey way and BCG virtual experience program teach us about their functioning.
