PARASPARA: Healthcare Consulting, Sunday - July 27

Smriti Bhatia has worked with AT Kearney for close to three years primarily with the Healthcare practice. She began talking about the scope and the opportunity of Healthcare consulting and the various parties it involves. Healthcare consulting can involve Pharma companies, Hospitals and Health insurance providers, medical device companies and allied industries like pharmaceutical retail. The nature of projects can vary from that of corporate strategy to operations and marketing. She then gave examples of projects done by ATK in all these domains. For a mid-sized pharmaceutical company, she worked on a project that identifies areas of growth for the firm. The client was looking for international expansion and ATK identified 3 Therapeutic areas of focus based on the market potential and client’s internal strengths. Second stage of project then entailed the modus operandi of growth in the three TAs including acquiring target drugs in development, acquiring another company and strengthening already marketed products. Other examples given included improving operational efficiency of a healthcare provider in UK and organizational redesign for a pharmaceuticals wholesaler.

Ankita Gupta worked with Analytic Services at McKinsey Knowledge Center. Apart from other work, she has also worked with National Health Services, UK. Ankita talked about the different kind of studies that McKinsey has done in the Healthcare domain. She spoke about different studies that she has done as a part of this which include benchmarking studies; and studies to determine the optimal service mix that could be offered to the patients. McKinsey improved the processes of different operations like staffing and managing the patient inflow. Ankita talked about her team that was composed of Pharma majors and various other grads. She stressed upon the fact that the healthcare sector is open for all those who have a passion for this sector. This sector is not restricted only to doctors, she herself does not have any education regarding medicine. Aspirants having previous experience in this sector and enthusiasm can look at a bright career.

Anand (ISB Co2006) a Senior Consultant working with Deloitte attended the “Paraspara” session today. He was extremely happy with the initiatives taken by the consulting club and the activities of the club. He informed the club that Deloitte is the world’s top consulting firm in the healthcare sector. Deloitte Audit and Enterprise Risk Services (AERS) and Deloitte’s Strategy and Operations (S&O) recruit from ISB. He had worked in FMCG sector and is currently working in Life Sciences and Healthcare sector. He emphasized on the fact that a background in a certain industry is not the sureshot formula for success. A consultant should be passionate and should know how to come up with solutions to the client’s problems. Deloitte S&O takes up projects for US and APAC clients. Deloitte has a separate firm that does work for Indian clients. Later Anand met up with the core members of the club and discussed the activities of the club and how Deloitte could participate more in those activities. Anand is the “brand ambassador” for ISB in Deloitte and will look after recruitment from ISB.

Consulting Club – BCG Official Event – July 2nd 2008

The Boston Consulting Group, one of the most coveted firms on campus, conducted its first official session at ISB, in conjunction with the Consulting Club, on 2nd July 2008. This was the first time that the batch was brought face to face with some of the Principals and Project Leaders of the firm. The BCG team consisted of the following

Mr Bart Janssens, Principal,
Mr Navneet Vasishth, Principal and Recruitment effort leader for BCG at ISB
Mr Gaurav Nath, Project Leader,
Mr Shaleen Sinha, Project Leader,
Mr Akshit Shah, Senior Associate and ISB alum from Class of 2007
Mr Hardik Manek, Senior Associate and ISB alum from class of 2008
Mr Ankush Wadhera, Senior Associate and ISB alum from the class of 2008

The theme of the event was to go beyond general information about consulting to description of the way problems are actually tackled by consultants, specifically at BCG.

The team started off with a short, succinct presentation on Boston Consulting Group, its ethos and working philosophy. Elucidating on the above, Bart emphasized on the “Sweet Spot” that BCG occupied in terms of people and networks, its ability to impact organizations, and intellectual stimulation. These he said, were crucial to BCG’s success in the consulting profession.

The team also talked about the broad categories of clients with whom BCG worked, namely Industries, Companies, Governments and Non Governmental organizations.

Moving on to the main theme of the day, the team picked three very different assignments handled by them to explain how BCG approached its cases.

The first assignment related to developing a sales and marketing strategy for a motorcycle firm. This firm was facing a rapidly deteriorating financial position and an eroding market share and needed urgent steps to affect a turnaround. Gaurav explained how his team broke the entire value chain of the firm into pieces to identify the weaker links. They realized that one of the weakest links for the firm was its sales strategy, and hence proceeded to counter the same. From creating buzz about the product through word of mouth, social circles in offices and networking sites, to offering “experience centric” test rides to the potential customer, the BCG team suggested very unconventional modes to build up the customer base. The motorcycle firm’s management though initially skeptical, implemented these steps with support from the BCG team. Within a year, the results showed an improvement in overall sales of the firm.


Shaleen was the next to speak about his assignment, one involving creating a winning product in the refrigerator market, for an electronic goods firm that was facing a low market growth, intense competition and rising commodity prices. The firm had ageing products and the brand was not considered contemporary in the market. For Shaleen and his team, the goal was to help the firm create a winning product within the budget cost and shortest time possible. Shaleen explained how his team sat with the combined team of R&D, manufacturing and marketing and analyzed the entire process of taking a good from the design table, through manufacturing process onto the showroom. They first looked at the consumer needs to arrive at a possible design that would appeal to the main consumer – an Indian Housewife. The team then worked with R&D and manufacturing to identify potential cost reduction areas in the process. Based on these, the BCG team gave its recommendation to the firm, and then worked with the firm to ensure that all the recommendations were implemented in letter and spirit. The result was a winning product, that met all the requirements of being within the budget cost and reaching the market on time.

The last case of the day referred to an ongoing project being undertaken by BCG to target what is referred to as the Next Billion. This refers to the lower middle class demographic of any country – one that represents a largely untapped consumer potential. Akshit explained that the project revolved around understanding the specific needs and requirements of this consumer segment, their aspirations of matching the higher demographic segments lifestyle, and how they tried to match those aspirations under the financial constraints. Based on this understanding the BCG team would go about identifying products that would meet the requirements of this consumer segment. Currently the team is working on products from the telecom sector, suited to this segment.

Through the above examples, the BCG team emphasized the rigorous, structured and analytical thought process with which any problem and assignment was approached. It was also mentioned how any BCG team worked closely with the customer both during the recommendation as well as the implementation phase of the assignment.


Towards the end of the session, the BCG team fielded questions from students on their strategies and methods followed for working on assignments. This event was unique in the sense the team gave an insight to the students on how a typical consultancy project worked and thus helped them develop a perspective on what to expect of in terms of work as future consultants.

With more such events planned by BCG as well as other top tier consulting firms through the year, the budding consultants of the batch can look forward to an enriching road ahead as they chart their career plans.

Horizons - Alum Interaction Series kicks off on 21st June 2008

As part of its continuing efforts to tap into the large pool of highly successful alumni base of the institute, especially in the arena of consulting, the Consulting Club organized its first chapter of the alumni series, aptly titled “Horizons”. The event was made special by the presence of our distinguished alumni, representing different consulting firms, sharing the same dais and coming together to address some of the burning queries that the batch had on consulting, as a career.

The following alums attended the event
Rohit Kapoor, ISB Class of 2006, currently with Mc Kinsey & Co
Ankur Warikoo, ISB Class of 2006, currently with AT Kearney
Sunil Rana, ISB Class of 2005, currently with Oliver Wyman
Varun Gupta, ISB Class of 2007, currently with the Boston Consulting Group
Tarun Pandey, ISB Class of 2003, currently with ZS Associates
Aman Sood, ISB Class of 2005, currently with Accenture

The entire event was organized into three sub-sessions, with each session covering questions related to one facet of consulting. The alums took their turns addressing the critical questions in each of the sessions.

Leveraging your past experience for a career in Consulting

Tarun and Varun kicked off the session. Giving a snapshot of his career pre and post ISB, Tarun explained how relevant experience in niche industries could get one into his or her choice of a consulting role. Having started out as an architect post his graduation from IIT Roorkee, Tarun went on to start businesses of his own, designing various web portals such as e-greetings etc, and working on pilot projects for Indiatimes, before joining ISB to pursue his MBA. At ISB he worked on developing his skills in the areas of Leadership and Marketing. Tarun joined Infosys in the USA as a CRM consultant. It was there that he was able to leverage on his experiences in customer relations and marketing to apply and land with a lateral placement offer with ZS Associates. The firm which focuses on sales force and marketing related consulting found a direct match in his experience in marketing and customer relationship management.

Building on Tarun’s observation, Varun, in a trademark consulting style, elucidated the key aspects of one’s experience within three silos:-
· Deriving direct value from one’s experience e.g. in marketing, sales etc to apply to specific roles in consulting,
· Developing transferable skills while on the job, and finally
· Using the courses available at ISB to build upon one’s own prior professional experience.
These three combined, he vouched, could act as a good recipe for success in terms of using one’s prior experience for a successful consulting career.

All the alums were unanimous on the opinion that a right choice of electives was very important in deriving the best out of one’s experience at ISB, in terms of a successful career. “Use your electives wisely and carefully, in terms of completing your overall picture, whichever career you go for” was what Varun had to say. Sunil elaborated further by saying that even though consulting firms never really looked at the electives one had chosen, what mattered was the depth of knowledge one had acquired in the chosen electives. Reflecting on their experiences, the alums mentioned that it was also important to balance one’s workload with respect to electives to allow room for other activities. Some electives required huge amounts of work, while others were comparatively lighter. “Choose a tactical mix of heavy and light electives, and take your alums help for this” – opined Rohit.

What to do to make the most of your stay at ISB

“There aren’t really any trade offs that one has to make here at ISB – you can do just about everything – what you may have to decide perhaps is what the next batch would remember you for” – Rohit said. To concretize the statement, Rohit suggested a strategy in terms of trying and deciding by the end of term 3, what one’s primary focus should be – top of the line academics leading to a dean’s list, very good extra curricula and so on . Without negating the significance of a decent academic performance, all the alums opined that it was more important to do at least one thing really well and to come out on top in that.

On the issue of whether to go for an ELP or a PaEV, Ankur said again that it was more important to do something with full passion and achieve at least a semblance of a good result. At the end of it, “A partner interviewing you would perhaps have no clue about what an ELP is unless you choose to talk about you, but if you do, make sure you are ready to be grilled”. To sum it all up Sunil had this to say “Choose something you really like, put your heart into it, get some results, then go ahead and use it”.

There were some “early” questions on CV preparation and Case Studies, however these were just touched upon, given the fact there would be more detailed sessions on both.

Consulting as a Career
Moving to the last topic of the day “Consulting as a Career” – Ankur addressed the questions in a unique way by talking about three reasons why one should not choose consulting as a career:-

Do not go for consulting if you are not very receptive to change – most firms look for generalists, and you have to be willing to switch between projects in different industries within a short time period.
Consulting requires detail orientation - if you do not have that inkling for detail, this might not be just the right space for you
Do not take up consulting if you don’t like being the weekend parent – consulting is a demanding travel oriented job.
Consulting as an industry is unstructured – do not go for it if you are not adaptable to ambiguities.

Ankur elaborated on the above points; by saying that these were important reasons why many MBA’s would not be happy doing the job, even if they did it well. Having said so, all alums were unanimous on the fact that consulting as a career was immensely satisfying in terms of the impact on clients – financial or related to implementation and change management.

The alums also fielded questions on exit options after consulting and cited private equity, corporate strategy and entrepreneurship as the three primary options for consultants. Sunil and Aman also explained how some of the consulting firms offer short sabbaticals in between projects, where consultants actually go and work in the industry, thus making it easier to choose their exit options. Rohit elaborated on the primary reasons why consultants choose to exit the industry –money, change in approach from advisory to action, or just a general slowdown with more meaningful work being on the top.

One primary concern that seemed to have been raised by quite a few students, was the work life balance – especially for women in the industry. This question was addressed very positively by all the alums. While all them maintained that they would really not be able to elaborate on specific problems faced by women in the industry, but would be glad to direct interested students to their female colleagues, they cited very clear cut guidelines laid down as policy in most firms. Aman for example explained how Accenture has clear cut policy documentation on caring about the female workforce.

Rohit had an interesting perspective on the entire issue of work life balance for all consultants. He explained that first, an engagement manager had a huge incentive to ensure a good work life balance for his team members, for fear of losing a good team in the future. Second, with other industries too catching up with consulting as top career choices, it was up to the consulting profession as a whole to offer a good work life balance as a positive. The alums also gave examples of some of the policies adopted by their respective firms – the 0% travel factor at ZA Associates, to the across the board work from home flexibility. Aman in fact pointed out that Accenture allowed all its consultants to work from home if they were not on a live project. Sunil further advised all students to specifically engage firms coming to the campus in conversations on how well they addressed the issue of work life balance.

This first in the “Horizons” series turned out to be a success in terms of bringing alums from a range of firms up close and personal with the students. All the alums were kind enough to make themselves available for further one on one session even later into the night, both during the barbeque party and outside.

Class of 2009 takes over

Hola,

Here comes another enthusiastic batch at ISB, full of verve and energy. The activities of the Consulting Club were kickstarted even before the elections took place, this is something that speaks volumes about the enthusiasm of the current batch. With the elections over and the core team in place, the club activities are vrooming ahead.

The fundamental philosophy driving the Consulting Club’s activities would be a spirit of “engagement”.
1. Engage with a wider variety of firms to provide the student body with greater insights into the world of Consulting from a perspective relevant to the courses taught at ISB and the level of preparedness required for Placement Week.

2. Engage with Alumni a lot more throughout the course of this year by keeping them posted on the club’s activities, newsletters etc.

3. Engage with firms more regularly through multiple interaction points such as sharing research, recent happenings and case-based info sessions rather than the regular pre-placement presentations.

Lots of new initiatives have been planned and will be implemented shortly. This year will prove to be a benchmark for the coming batches. One of the greatest strengths of ISB has been alumni support. We have got a widespread support of the alums who are going to guide us as we march ahead.

Here's to an exciting year ahead. Do keep reading this space for further updates.