Visiting associate at the Boston Consulting Group
Floor Roduner on his internship at BCG, August 2007
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“After obtaining my Bachelor in Astronomy, I continued with the Master track Astronomy and Science Based Business. A significant part of this track is an internship at a company. From November 2006 till February 2007 I did my internship at the Boston Consulting Group.
The Boston Consulting Group is one of the leading worldwide active strategy consultants. The Dutch office is located in Baarn and was started in 1993 by taking over the Dutch consulting firm Horrenga en de Koning.
The Boston Consulting Group helps corporations solve management problems. This is done on a project basis. Typically, these projects are on company structure changes, mergers and acquisitions, cost-cutting operations, company strategy planning, etc. Strategy consultants limit their contribution to giving detailed advice, and only seldom help to implement the suggested changes. With no specialization in specific industries, they have a very broad client base. In general their clientele are larger, e.g. listed and multinational, corporations.
As an astronomy student I am accustomed to solving complex problems by analytical means. These skills, in combination with the business side of my Master track, makes consulting a very natural extension. The prospect of being able to use my astronomy skills to a business problem was my reason to apply for a consultant internship. I chose BCG because I felt comfortable with the people that worked there, and I liked the social and motivating atmosphere.
My project at BCG was for a client in the financial sector. The client had made the decision to centralize several divisions. These divisions were scattered over three countries. Our objective was to help determine what parts of the divisions should be centralized and what parts should remain locally.
To be able to define the structure of the new organization, the current status of the divisions and markets had to be mapped. Furthermore, the differences between the markets of the countries had to be assessed.
My contribution to the project was the mapping of the market and market trends, and the assesment of the differences between the country markets.With no prior knowledge of the industry, I started by reading a lot of available information. I expanded this activity with gathering more information and trying to draw important conclusions for our client.
To get all the right information, I used various sources: BCG has its own internal database with a great deal of industry data from previous projects. In addition, I interviewed several BCG industry experts and knowledge group employees from other BCG offices and some experts from the client’s side. Also the internet was a very helpful resource.
In this process of collecting and analyzing data I was supervised by my project leader and coached by an associate consultant in our team.The outcome and results of my mapping activities were described in two PowerPoint documents. These documents were considered very helpful by the client in determining the framework of the new organization.
During my internship I not only expanded my knowledge on the specific industry, but I obtained a more general business understanding. My information gathering skills improved, as well as my communication and presentation skills.
I learned that my overall analytical skills are very good, but that I also need to better fill in the details and draw sharper conclusions.During my internship I have become very enthusiastic on strategy consulting and on BCG in particular. Using my analytical skills in a business environment and applying these to a broad spectrum of problems is something I very much enjoy.
September 2007 I will start as an Associate at BCG.”
http://www.bcg.nl/
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