Insights

Part of the perks of working for global consulting firm (MBB) is getting to attend global/regional training workshops on a regular basis. You get an opportunity to travel abroad to the regional headquarters for a full week, and you also get to meet global colleagues around the world, and see how they have been going through, as consulting projects really differ in dynamics depending on the local context and client.

The battery recycling industry is a gold mine, just waiting for the right market conditions to happen. The technology for recycling is not as complex, and the entire battery industry is slowly coming to agreement that the best usage for used batteries would be to fully recycle the metal contents and materials of the battery rather than the alternative of ‘re-using’ the battery, which entailed the re-purposing of a high voltage battery into a 2nd life ESS, etc.

It can be difficult to network, and get to know your work colleagues when you work in consulting. Since most of the job is done on a different client site on a project basis, you tend to build strong lasting relationships with your project members, but have a limited view on everyone else who works at the firm. Thinking in terms of simple math, you generally work in a team of 3~5 people for a duration of 2~3 months per project. In a given year, you may interact then with only 20~30 people.

consulting firms generally have a big workshop once a year on a company wide scale to get the whole firm together for team-building, but also to share company-level updates, and also just allow the members to indulge and have a good time. We generally refer to this is the company ‘outing’ and is generally a mandatory internal event

K-Food continues to grow in popularity across the world, and begins to become widely acknowledged as much as Japanese or Chinese food in select markets. Therefore, in order to accelerate GTM as much as possible, the project entailed to first figure out the most attractive markets to target first based on the client's food portfolio, and then assess the competitive landscape to develop an appropriate strategy to position its food in the market, especially in comparison with the local players, and also in regards to developing relevant partnership models with local retailers.

Battery swapping is a tricky business. Since motorcyle owners don’t really have a strong incentive to switch to electric model, there was a big reliance on the government subsidies to make the initial investment an attractive one, and the public needed to be educated on how switching to a electric model would do wonders in lowering the total cost of ownership (TCOE) for the owners in the long-run.

This was a project for leading F&B company aiming to expand their fast food and coffee chain operations in Southeast Asia. The scope of the project included a detailed analysis of the market, including consumer trends and an understanding of the competitive landscape, an entry strategy, and also a prospective business model, including the entire offerings that was suited to the market in question.

I’ve counted, and it turns out that I’ve gone through around 40 actual case interviews, interviewing at multiple firms over the course of 3 years…
3 rounds at PwC (got offer), 5 rounds at Oliver Wyman (final, no offer), 2 rounds at McKinsey*, 5 interviews with BCG, (2 occasions, got offer on second try, accepted in ‘22), 5 with Bain (2 occasions: got to final one occasion, dropped process on a separate occasion), 8 with Deloitte (2 occasions, got offer on 1 occasion), 6 rounds with LEK (Final), 4 rounds with Kearney. (Got offer, Accepted in ‘20)

Conducting commercial due diligence for a Private Equity Firm aiming to acquire a growing company in the foods and sports nutrition industry. The scope of course included a detailed view into the market forecasts of each business unit, along with the local market dynamics, and capabilities analyses for the company in question. Moreover, the project was more heavily focused on the value-add creation strategy, requiring financial modeling on each value-add lever that we wanted to recommend for the short term exit plan

Just make sure that the habits you inculcate as a BA are sound and productive. In my personal view, it seems each consultant's style/personality (i.e. the style of slides, the writing, the analysis) seem to really form during your time as a junior, so unless you don't know want to go through a hard time as you go up the ladder, buckle up and embrace the suck.

For our client, who is a global top 5 player in xEV Battery manufacturing, a very ‘hardcore’ benchmarking project. The level of detail required for the analysis was way too deep for a typical consulting project (but aren’t they all?). Because of the nascent nature of the industry, benchmarking in itself is obviously of great value in itself for the client, as they all know how rare information sharing is, and how directly verifiable that information would be were we to acquire it…

For our client, who is a global top 5 player in chemical plant engineering, we were asked to analyze the advanced technological trends in plant construction (EPC) and maintenance (O&M), to see which to adopt to gain a competitive advantage.

In terms of content, one should always be able to fill out, as a general rule of thumb, around 1~3 slides based on a 1-hour interview with an expert. In order to do that, you must have already have a good understanding of the storyline of the project, and the framework with which you will be approaching the work module you are working on. You do not go into an interview without having a framework to work with, and you must be able to filter out any information that does not fit well with the framework throughout the interview.

Submarine cable installations. It is quite an interesting field, as the pre-requisite for any company in this field to own a cable-laying vessel, and be involved in EPCI contracts for large constructions worldwide. Cables are generally separated into telecommunications cables and power cables, but the technology and required equipment to carry out the installations is quite different (albeit not greatly).

I've ended up finishing a project in the telecommunications industry, mostly about improving sales activity and internal processes utilized to analyze the profitability of their businesses. Making a change in sales activities always involves understanding the market, segmenting your customers, and setting goals on an enterprise level to stimulate activity and cooperation across all functions in the organization.

Proposal writing for market entry into water industry. Client was looking for new growth driver, and wanted to understand which segment of the value chain to enter for municipal/industrial water treatment, and the most preferred method of entry.

The industry in question was around the chemical materials (particularly, additives and resins) business; and the project type was geared towards a Pre-DD (Due Diligence) project. The client wanted to enter a particular chemical specialties biz, and the preferred method of entry into the market was through an acquisition, of a target that was recently available for sale.

This proposal was directed towards helping the client grow its online business by decreasing its reliance on third-party shopping malls, whilst increasing its internal Direct-to-Customer capabilities on its own client mall. The client’s main products centered around healthcare consumable goods, and had great brand recognition across the country.