Motivations

In my second year of University, I had a feeling that my engagement with operations management and business strategy was mostly theoretical. And since I know that I learn best by doing, I was interested in supplementing my academics with more practical experience.

Consulting is a career path that I was particularly interested in exploring because of both the breadth and type of work. I enjoy the way that consultant break down problems to their core and then construct creative, but calculated solutions. In terms of gaining valuable experience early in my career, I also thought consulting would be a great way to work closely with various industries and functions.

The application and interview process for this position, albeit stressful, was actually really fun. In my interview, I had to estimate the current size of the UK’s smart-watch and fitness tracker market. It helped to know some basic facts and figures to support my calculations, but past that, the interview assessed the ability to work through the problem rather than necessarily assessing how close I got to the real market size.

Consulting Project

Fortunately, I was selected to be on the team that represented the University of Bristol. Our team of five was paired with a BCG Consultant who mentored us throughout the process. Our brief was to recommend whether an oil and gas multinational should move into the UK mobility market and design a strategy for their market entry. This was a long-term strategic consideration for the firm, and therefore we had to break the mobility market down into its subsections, evaluate their market trends, potential growth factors, and forecast what they would look like by 2030, 2040, and 2050. While I had academic experience presenting on market entry recommendations from a marketing standpoint, this BCG project was on a much larger scale.

From the initial research to statistical analyses to our final presentation, I learned a lot throughout the six-month project. Our team members were from different years and courses and therefore could all contribute different skills, frameworks, and perspectives which really rounded out our approach nicely. Our strategy was split into three recommendations which we suggested should be staggered from short to long-term implementation based on what infrastructure each of them required. In the end, we learned a lot about the electric and automated vehicle markets, electric charging network, and mobility as a service both for delivery of goods and transportation of people.

Last-Minute Precautions

Just as it came time to present at the BCG London offices, the UK began reacting to the COVID-19 pandemic and the day before our presentation was planned, it was moved online. While it was a shame not to be able to present in person as planned at the BCG offices in London, this was a necessary measure and reminded me how businesses must be agile and adapt their practices when faced with new challenges.

Ultimately, we really enjoyed tackling one of BCG’s cases from last year and learned a lot from the process and final presentation.