Every industry, every client, and every team is different. As a result, each project at BCG is different-in structure, in the issues addressed, and in the solutions found. There are, however, some roles and tasks that are typical early in the career of an associate or a consultant.
When sales and revenues recently reached a plateau, the company began looking for new ways to grow. GeckoCo has turned to BCG for help in answering the big question: Are mail order catalogues a good growth opportunity for the company?
Primary responsibility: Managing the client relationship
Jill, a partner at BCG in Sydney, developed the initial relationship with GeckoCo and has been instrumental in helping the company expand. GeckCo's president has asked Jill to help the company determine whether the mail order channel represents a growth opportunity. GeckoCo knows its brand is strong and that its distribution network covers a major portion of the Australian market. Its executives also know that other Australian companies have tried the mail order business before, but with mixed results. Is this a potential opportunity for the company — or might a move into this channel be a mistake?
Jill's role will be to manage the relationship with the client and oversee the project, as well as the other work currently underway for GeckoCo. She will need to integrate all of the company's issues.
Primary responsibility: Developing the project plan, maintaining communication between the client and the project team, and providing intellectual leadership
Mari-Ellen, a principal in Sydney, has experience with pricing strategy for GeckoCo and with BCG's consumer goods and retail practice area. Her experience will likely be valuable to this project and Jill asks her to manage this project with GeckoCo.
Mari-Ellen will be responsible for understanding the client's needs, developing the project plan, and ensuring that the BCG project team addresses the critical concerns of GeckoCo's president.
Mari-Ellen and Jill conduct interviews with the senior management team of GeckoCo and spend time developing a framework to address GeckoCo's concerns. Together they brainstorm some hypotheses about what GeckoCo might do. They determine that there are three main subjects to address: retail market trends, the competitive landscape, and how well GeckoCo's economics and infrastructure are suited for such a venture.
Mari-Ellen will need a committed team, including a project leader and two or three consultants/associates. She immediately contacts the Sydney office administrator, who will help her identify a team with the desired skills from among staff now available.
Primary responsibility: Providing organizational and intellectual leadership
Jeff has a strong interest in consumer goods and retail, and is excited by this project. Together with Mari-Ellen, Jeff breaks down key questions into clearly defined research tasks and deliverables so that the associate, the consultant, and the summer consultant he will be managing can get to work. The team will have only six weeks in which to identify the gaps that exist in the market and understand what capabilities the retailer can bring to a mail order business.
Jeff's first task will be to ensure that the project team develops comprehensive work plans to complete the required analysis. In addition to undertaking part of the research himself, as the project moves forward, Jeff will be responsible for assisting consultants and associates in shaping and finalizing their analyses.
Primary responsibility: Analyzing the retailer's capabilities
After working on a project in the automotive industry for the preceding eight months, Trevor is looking forward to the challenge of learning about the retail industry.
Trevor has read the client's history and talked to consultants who have previously worked for the client. He has identified a few key areas he will need to understand, including:
- The client's current profitability and the drivers of this profitability
- The client's organizational strengths
- How the client's strengths can be applied to the mail order catalogue business
Trevor reviews his preliminary thoughts with Jeff, who suggests that Trevor develop a work plan. The plan will help the team see how much analysis needs to be done, the sources and types of data needed, and of course, how long it will take.
Trevor has lots of ideas about how to approach his part of the project. He stops by Jeff's office and ends up spending half an hour outlining these ideas and the timing of his analysis.
Trevor realizes he will be working closely with Stephen to find the answers he needs. He will also be working with a relatively large client team. That's good news - he finds this type of work to be the most rewarding.
Trevor's first step will be to understand the client's current performance, and that means doing a profitability analysis. But instead of starting from scratch, Trevor turns to another project team that has worked with this client and has probably already done some profitability analysis. He sets up a meeting with Elaine, a consultant on the pricing team who was responsible for the economics module. Because Elaine might also have some information on GeckoCo's performance compared with its competitors, he makes sure to invite Stephen to the meeting with Elaine.
Trevor also pays a visit to the BCG Sydney library. He reviews GeckoCo's five most recent annual reports and requests some analyst reports on the company, which went public three years ago.
As Trevor begins to make sense of the company's numbers, he turns his attention to determining what is driving the company's current performance and, more importantly, how the company is applying its key strengths to its current business. Trevor decides to schedule interviews with members of the client team who work in different areas of the business.
Finally, Trevor will need to develop a general understanding of the mail order business - particularly, what makes for a successful enterprise, as well as what aspects of the catalogue experience consumers are dissatisfied with. He gathers some of BCG's latest research reports, as well as an armful of industry magazines, newspapers, and journals.
Trevor spends the following week meeting with BCG and client team members, and doing background research. At the end of the week, Trevor realizes his next challenge will be to make sense of the picture that is emerging from his discussions and research. He will probably spend next Monday and Tuesday in front of his laptop, synthesizing his findings and building a meaningful picture of GeckoCo's performance and profitability to share with the team.
Trevor's To Do List
- Meet with members from pricing project team to find out what economic information on GeckoCo is already available within BCG
- Meet with Stephen to discuss work plans and ensure work is not being duplicated
- Analyze GeckoCo's annual reports to get an initial economic overview and understand GeckoCo's sources of revenue and key cost drivers
- Set up interviews with client team members for next week, and develop an interview guide of key questions and required data
- Read recently published thinking about the mail order catalogue business, using internal reports and external data sources
- Visit a local GeckoCo department store to begin understanding the customer experience, and how GeckoCo positions itself to customers
Primary responsibility: Assessing market trends and emerging business models
This is Sarah's first project. She knows that this project will move quickly and that she will have a great deal of responsibility. She is eager to prove herself! Her role will provide an excellent opportunity for her to do this.
Sarah will be assessing the state of the mail order catalogue business in Australia and identifying "best in class" business models - that is, companies that have been successful in the catalogue business. She begins by brainstorming some questions she believes she needs to answer and then considers how she will go about answering them.
As a new associate, Sarah is not sure how she should tackle the seemingly huge task of assessing the Australian mail order market. When she joined BCG, she knew that she would have to learn to deal with ambiguity. She is just starting to understand what that really means.
Sarah has some ideas about what information she will need. She finds that her ideas lead to four questions:
- How does the mail order business change the economics and experience of purchasing retail goods?
- What is the dollar value of the potential mail order market in Australia, and how does the size of that market compare with other countries?
- What and how do consumers purchase by mail order catalogue, and how are they dissatisfied with the process?
- Who are the major retail/catalogue players in Australia, and how are they performing?
Sarah then makes a list of possible sources of information, which includes existing BCG research, BCG experts, external research, consumer interviews, and client data. She now feels more comfortable that she knows what she'll need to do over the next few weeks. But she's not sure where to begin. How will she figure out who the best people to talk to at BCG are? How will she get access to external research? How will she find consumers to talk to about their experiences?
She picks up the phone and calls Jeff, her project leader, who suggests she stop by his office so they can discuss what needs to be done. Together, Jeff and Sarah develop a plan that outlines what questions she will focus on and what sources she will need to use.
Sarah's To Do List, Week 1
Sarah's main goal is to get a solid understanding of the Australian mail order catalogue business. She plans to:
- Access BCG's internal knowledge management intranet to better understand how mail order has changed industry dynamics, particularly in the retail sector
- Call the BCG consultant in Munich who recently worked on a similar project for a German retailer
- "Mystery shop" other Australian catalogues to get firsthand experience (finally being paid to shop!)
- Prepare a short presentation summarizing key findings for the project team meeting on Monday
Primary responsibility: Competitive analysis and market trends
Stephen is working with BCG between the first and second year of his MBA program. He's thrilled to be part of the GeckoCo team because he is keenly interested in retail. The short duration of the project means that Stephen will probably get to see it through to the end, when the team makes its recommendations to the client.
At first, Stephen was a bit concerned that his lack of experience would be a liability. But he quickly realized that his academic background has prepared him well for researching the major players in the retail market and predicting what they may do in the coming months. He knows this is an integral part of the project and is eager to get started.
Stephen has many ideas about how to approach his research. After the team meeting, he goes back to his office and starts surfing the Web to get a sense of what other retailers are actually doing. What catalogues do they offer (seasonal, holiday-focused)? What services do they offer, what needs do they fill? He is surprised to find that only a small percentage of the overall merchandise available in a store can be purchased by a customer from a catalogue. He picks up the phone and calls an industry analyst he has met to get another perspective.
Later that day, Stephen and Jeff meet. Jeff is pleased that Stephen has shown such an interest in the project. He suggests that they spend some time defining more clearly how Stephen can best contribute so that the rest of the team can capitalize on his work. It is becoming obvious that this project will require a great deal of teamwork; answers to many of the key questions are essential for everyone to understand before they can complete their respective work.
Stephen and Jeff come up with a long-term plan, as well as a list of things for Stephen to get working on immediately. This list includes:
- Read client background material to understand the key traditional retail competitors they face
- Write an interview guide for discussions with industry analysts
- Meet with Trevor and Sarah to share what they've all learned about the gaps that exist in the market
- Write an interview guide for meetings with client team members who are working on gathering competitive intelligence
- Meet with these client team members
Primary responsibility: Providing industry expertise
After working at a research firm, Leslie decided to join BCG to gain business experience by applying her knowledge of the retail business sector to individual company situations. Since joining BCG, she has played a role in different types of BCG client projects, from business launches to general strategy. She is essential to the project team because of her extensive knowledge of the industry.
Topic analysts at BCG work on more than one project concurrently, performing different tasks for each individual project. They serve as expert resources on a technology or an industry, providing support to project leaders and project team members. They act as essential links between project teams and BCG's intellectual capital resources, which come in many forms, such as internal research and publications.
