Careers in Consulting Alexander Mallett St Johns Leatherhead

We started off the session by talking about what consultants do. We spent some time naming brands from logos, and were told that Accenture employs over 730,000 people, helping over 9,000 clients in more than 120 countries, it is really a global business!

After this we listened to the representative who broke down the structure of the company, showing us all of the different roles involved, from the actual consultants, to those in technology who visit the companies and try to introduce new, more efficient technologies to streamline the business, those in Human Resources who try to retain qualified staff as well as attracting new talent. Finally, there are those in operations, who work closely with the supply chain to try and optimise deliveries, maximising profit.

Then we started what I found the most enjoyable part of the session, the challenge.

We were given 1 of 3 challenges, which gave us information about a company which we worked for and a challenge we are facing. My Partner and I had been asked to help a company in Brazil who makes palm oil products, but their supplier from Indonesia had raised prices by 25% citing the cost of living an the need to donate money towards environmental causes.

We where tasked to create three solutions, to then present them to the CEO on the best way to move forward. We had to think about it from the perspectives of different employees, such as finance, marketing. For instance, we decided to negotiate down the price raise to cover a pay increase, and then separately pay for the environmental certification which we could use to run a marketing campaign on the good our company is doing for the planet, increasing sales. After 15 minutes we came back together as a group and presented our findings, before we then analysed the other teams strategies to try and improve them. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the workshop,  and it has made me think more about a career in consulting!