Senior Consultant - Rup Banerjee

Consulting makes for a brilliant business bootcamp and will be attractive to anyone who wants to get under the skin of lots of different companies and find out how they work. Many of the people we spoke to loved the exposure they were able to get early on in the role, taking part in meetings with the senior managers of client businesses almost from the start.

Many consultants will specialise into a particular area of consulting like restructuring, integration, technology or logistics. There is also a broad distinction between strategy consultants and those that actually implement a strategy. The routes into consultancy are almost as varied as the job. You can join with no experience or, as many do, move into consultancy having gained some specific knowledge within a business. We found that quite a few consultants were also chartered accountants, as they had seen great benefit in really understanding how company finances work before embarking on a career in consultancy. 

The huge variety offered by consultancy brings with it a great deal of travel and this may or may not be a positive thing depending on your preferences. It’s very common to be sent away to work on projects at a client site for many weeks at a time and very often it will be too far away for you to travel to from home. So spending long periods away is part and parcel of many a consultant's life. The work itself is likely to peak and trough quite a lot. When a project is on you’re likely to be very busy, regularly putting in late nights and weekend work. When projects finish and before the next one begins you could find yourself leaving the office at 5.30. 

Salaries in consultancy are good and often include bonuses. Those starting out at the big firms should expect in excess of 30K, rising to about 50K with three years' experience. After seven or eight years, all being well, you’ll be looking at upwards of 100K.

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Rup Banerjee, I am a senior manager at a supply chain group at Accenture, here in London.

What is Consultancy?

So for me, managing consulting is about helping businesses improve and become better businesses and by being better for them, I don't just mean better for them and their stakeholders, but also by better in terms of delivery, and customer service and meeting their customers' expectations. You know, at the right time, at the right place, with the right product. Ultimately that is what managing consultancy is all about.

What attracted you to this career?

For me, in management consulting, I wanted to move into a career where I would be working with lots of different clients, a career that is quite fast-paced; so a very defined and clear career structure, very much based around meritocracy and the fact that I am working with a group of people that are absolutely fantastic and very enjoyable to work with.

What does your job involve?

In my role as a senior manager, typically I am responsible for leading large projects or major change projects at a clients, and these clients could be from lots of different industries. So typically I will have a team working for me and we will have defined a programme of work around changing a business to make a particular part of the business better. For example, a recent client I worked with was to set up a warehouse to serve customers all across Europe so we set up a team of 15-20 people looking at different aspects of how we wanted to set up that organisation and that new operation up and I was responsible for leading that and delivering it the client. Supply chain is very simply about; how do I buy something, so the materials for the product I am making, where do I make them, how do I then move them to my market and how do I store them for my market and how do I then get that product to my customers in my market? Supply chains kind of cross all industries, so when you go to do your local food shopping, that is the end of a supply chain, when you go to buy a car that is the end of a supply chain, when you go to buy petrol fuel that is the end of a supply chain as well. So all those different components that I talked about, makes up what a supply chain means but it is very much an integral part of the rest of a company's organisation, so interfaces to the sales and marketing organisations, the financial organisations, obviously the legal and government organisations. Very much in the middle of a company's organisation, I would say, that is where supply chain sits.

What do you do on a typical day?

It is a real mix - for me I am an early starter so I like to be in the office between 8-8.15, and certainly for the first couple of hours I am usually just trying to make sure I have very clear instructions of what I am doing, have some initial client meetings, but most of all I like to have a bit of 'me time' at the beginning of the day just to make sure I am clear. But then through the day, typically my day will consist of a number of client meetings, so if I am at a client’s site I will obviously be having meetings with them at a client site. If I am off site either working in our offices or perhaps even working potentially from home, then I will be spending quite a lot of time on the phone so there is a lot of interaction through my day with my clients, but equally, I will be working very closely with my team and giving guidance and input as they need it or some advice for example or reviewing the work they have been providing. Then also a lot of essential internal work that needs doing and organising as well, and that pretty much fills my day.

Describe the process of your work?

To give you an example of my current client - this client that I am working with at the moment, they are contracted to a Government department to deliver a service and we have worked with this client previously and we helped to shape the solution, etcetera, from a supply chain perspective. So what they realised at the beginning or the early part of this year that their service was not delivering at the service levels they were required to. So they contacted us to say look we are not sure what is going on, we have a warehouse that isn't operating the right service level, we are not getting the right stock in place, things are going missing on our trucks, we are not sure what we need to do, we need some help. I have been working with them for a couple of months and I guess the first couple of weeks was almost a short sharp diagnostic to find what is it that is going wrong, in terms of there is some productivity issues, there is some issues around purchasing stock but actually we are purchasing the wrong stock, my warehouse seems full but it is full of the wrong stuff, so we need to go and buy the right things. So I did a quick diagnostic to understand what are the key issues and understand what is the route causes behind them. Having done that I would say here is what we need to do or I believe you need to do to address these and then put a small plan in place to drive improvements across the operation and that is what I have been doing for the past four to six weeks, having done the diagnostic and come up with the plan, next is to work with them to put the plan in place to obviously improve their service levels and get their stock levels up and also improve the client management as well so my client, one of the things I have been helping him with is actually managing his client so I actually spend quite a bit of time working with the Government department and the senior officials there just to understand some of the issues and their concerns so I can obviously help that relationship as well and you know I am pleased to say in the last couple of weeks, they have hit the service levels that they are contracted to do so we are very happy, I don’t think we are out of the woods yet, there is still some work to do but it has been great to see from a position where things were not going great and there was a lot of heat and light and noise about things, you know we have really moved on and actually we are having good positive conversations about things we can really do to really sustain the operation and make sure that they can carry on delivering and hitting the service levels that they need to.

I guess from an Accenture or supply chain perspective, one of our unique selling points is we can do the entire spectrum of consulting in terms of identifying and diagnosing the problem, structuring it, making recommendations and then delivering on those recommendations. But to be honest, clients may cherry pick at any one of those points so they may say can you just come in and do an assessment and diagnostic for us and make some recommendations and then say, thanks very much we will now go and do those recommendations or we don’t really have the money to do it we will look at it next year, or they may say well actually we would like you to look at the whole end piece from the diagnosis right through to the implementation process but we are not sure how it would work so we will ask you to do the work, but you have to meet this criteria, so you have to be successful doing the diagnostic and you do it in this way at this level and if that is good then we will ask you to give some initial recommendations but part of that you need to be able to generate some immediate business benefit, ie cash back to the business and assuming you do well, you will be able to fund your work to do some more, because we as a business are starting to see the benefit.  So in reality it can be some or all or lots of different ways.

Why supply chain and logistics?

So for me, I effectively grew up doing supply chain jobs. When I first graduated from university I spent the first eight years of my career working for Exxon Mobile and whilst doing that I pretty much worked in lots of different parts of an oil company supply chain so consequently at the end of those eight years when I was looking to move, it seemed a very natural for me to move into a supply chain part of a consulting organisation.

What are the specialisms within your industry?

I sit within the managing consulting part of Accenture, specifically within management consulting we have a number of different areas that focus on finance and performance management, customer relationship management, talent and organisational performance, so certainly within management consulting those are some of the different areas I could have worked in, but then more broadly at Accenture, we specialise in systems and IT integration and we also specialise in business outsourcing as well so certainly from my skills and my background I was more suited to the management consulting area but within Accenture there is always the scope to move to work in different areas as well clearly depending on your skill set.

Are there different types of consulting company?

Yes there are, from an Accenture perspective I would say in the spectrum of management consulting and associated services, but there are other firms out there who only specialise in strategy consulting so for example, McKinsey springs to mind, they are very well know for being a sort of strategically focused organisation but then there are also other niche firms that do operational consulting so for example, specialising in purely warehouse operations for example, so all their people are people who have worked in warehouses and they will just come in and trouble shoot for you and there is an absolute range but certainly from Accenture’s perspective here we can do strategy consulting, operational consulting, business process consulting, and then the system there is an integrational element as well in terms of providing business input to that as well, and certainly my career here I have worked in all elements of those.

Interviewer: Can you explain to me what the difference is? You've mentioned operational and strategy consulting?

Sure, so from my perspective sitting in supply chain, I was doing a project with a client about four years ago, they said to us, look we would like some help to understand what our supply chain strategy should be for the next five years.  So what that meant we went in and there was some diagnostic to see how the supply chain was currently structured but it was then understanding what are their growth projections in terms of what products, what geographies, revenues, etc, and then understand what is the right supply chain and model to meet all of those, so it was assessing from an organisational perspective if they are growing more pan-European or more to the east of Europe well actually are they organisationally structured correctly, do they have the right logistics network to do that, are they offering the right customer service element to their different customers, so for example at this organisation they sold to individual retailers, independent retailers, but they also sold through the major retailers but also to wholesalers. But what they had was a customer service that said regardless of what you are you get the same, you ring up and we deliver it in 72 hours. So for example we said to them, we think your strategy should be based around a more differentiated customer service, so if you are a major wholesaler where you get this type of service, if you are a major retailer we will always guarantee you 48 hours big pallets that type of thing, but if you are a small independent well we can give it to you in 48 hours but we think it is going to be more economical for you and for us if we can deliver it to you in 72 hours, smaller parcels whatever it is. So for me that is an example of what I use strategy consulting to be around. Operational consulting is more around for example what I am doing at the moment, I have a specific business problem and my operation, my logistics operation, my planning operation in my supply chain, please can you come in an very tactful way help me fix it. So what are the short-term changes I need to make to make to either plan better, deliver more, improve my stock, and increase my service levels. It is focused more around the actual business process and the outcome it is achieving to improve that so that is the real difference between strategy consulting and operational consulting.

What are the best bits about your job?

The best bits for me are the people I work with, we have a fantastic group of people, certainly within the supply chain practice, but across most parts of Accenture, that I have worked with, I have had a great time working with all the different people and I have made some great friends - you know, some of those people I haven't even met, I have a fantastic relationship because we can spend an lot of time working virtually over the phone or remotely so that for me of the organisation is the people I work with but also the fact that I can work with lots of different types of clients, different organisations in different parts of the UK or the world, I do enjoy that diversity and variety so it keeps it interesting.

What are the worst bits about your job?

Bad bits, like any job, is suddenly feels like I have got so much going on, there aren't enough hours in the day or days in the week - so there are times when you are working very hard, but there are peaks and troughs. When there are the troughs Accenture is very good at allowing you to take the time, work a bit more flexibly, work from home, leave slightly early because you have potentially had a couple of weeks where you have been working very hard to get to a milestone in a project.

As I said I have worked in industry, so I remember when we were approached or we had consultants in the organisation, and it was kind of well why are you telling me how to do my job, so it is a normal human reaction, but certainly one of the things we try and do, it is not about having the consulting done to you we very much try and work in a consulting working with you to achieve the outcome so you know very much one of the key parts of the job is how we manage that and how we get the engagement and how we get the buy in from the client and not just at senior executive level because it is very easy to get the buy in at the senior executive level, it is about all the different levels of the organisation so everyone from the senior executive down to the more operational individuals it is working with them very closely to bring them along that journey and yes it can be difficult at times.

What has been your greatest achievement?

I guess there has been some real highlights certainly. In my first job I was actually responsible for setting up a new warehouse, I have done a number of these now but it was for a global telecommunications client, it was just when the internet was taking off in 2000, 2001 and their hot product was all about broadband internet and they suddenly realised there were unable to cope with it. So we set up a new operating model for them so this is how your organisation should look to deliver this product and here is the logistics network to deliver it as well.  So at the end of that, I could walk into this huge warehouse that I could effectively say I put together, trucks running over the warehouse, delivering to customers that I had obviously organised so that for me was a great first achievement. 

On a kind of non-work related thing, one thing I am very proud of is within Accenture, we have the use of charity days, so a few years back when London was bidding for the Olympics I volunteered to use some of my charity days to help the Olympic team. And so one of the things I did on the day was, when the Olympic teams assessment team visited, I was actually working with the team - literally running around lots of the venues around London making sure things were ok - and all I was doing was driving a car but to find out, as we know now, that we won the Olympics, was a fantastic feeling.

Any regrets?

I would say that potentially take the opportunity to learn more earlier, so one of the things I find in consulting is it is so fast pace and obviously clients expect you to know things immediately you arrive and so the more you can prepare yourself the more you can learn so whether it is either do additional learning or increase professional training then I think those things are very useful.

What is the pay like and are there any perks?

I would say the pay is very competitive, from my understanding Accenture sits itself at sort of the upper end of the market, because clearly it is a very competitive market and so I am very happy with my pay. 

From a perks perspective I guess apart from the base salary, there are things like pensions, health, car, share schemes, but also softer benefits we have things like flexible working for example, which I think is very good and I think Accenture has been very much leading the way or certainly trying to lead the way around having very diverse workforce, so from my perspective I am a relatively new dad and so I found out recently, I went on a half day seminar there is actually a lot of policies at Accenture for flexible working perhaps having a slightly different career model for a short period of time, being able to take additional paternity leave, things like that, to try and help you as a new parent, where potentially both of you are working, so some of those benefits are really good as well.

How long is a working day and do you have to work out of hours?

I find it varies, for me it usually starts 8-8.15 I certainly like to leave the office by about 6.30-7.00. Even if I have got more to do I think that is my limit at least being in the office, but then maybe having gone out, gone for a run, had dinner or whatever, I may settle down and do a couple of hours work in the evening and I would say that very much works for me.  I would say that is where there is a very intense area in the project and times where it is a lot more steady or consistent, normally my start time is always 8-8.15 but you know I will try and leave the office at 5.30-6.30 - especially if I am in London as I can go home and see my little girl, so I do try and do that. Certainly weekend working I do try and avoid it, again sometimes there are things you just have to do for example and one of the things is there is always client work and the client work always takes priority but I guess at my level within the organisation there is always other things, which are very internal or Accenture related different things you need to be getting on with and of course once you have got your client work out of the way in the week, there is kind of well, I do need to do it at some point so the other stuff sometimes happens at the weekend but again because we do have the benefit of being able to work flexibly, we can achieve that.

Is there much in the way of travel?

Certainly in consulting there is an expectation that you are flexible and mobile, and for the first six years of my career I probably spent 80% of my time out of London and a lot of that time was actually working in Europe so potentially I would leave my house at 5.45 in the morning to go to Heathrow to fly to somewhere in Europe and in reality it became like getting on a bus in the morning. Every morning I would get on an aeroplane and spend three or four nights away and then come home. To be honest, over the last two to three years I have been quite lucky in that most of my clients have been around London and the South East so I have not travelled as much but there is always the expectation of travelling but also certainly within the supply chain section of Accenture, we have also made a conscious decision to try and have more UK based clients so to try and reduce the amount of travel people are doing because there was feedback a few years back when people said, look I am never at home I never see my family, and so the company responded to that and tried to shape the business so it is more UK-centric but certainly if you are an individual who has the desire to travel a lot then that opportunity is always there. 

Do you have to be based anywhere in particular?

Absolutely, from Accenture’s perspective we have a number of offices around the UK so London is our main hub, if you like, our main campus where our UK based people are, but we also have a number of offices now in Edinburgh an office in Warwick and Manchester office as well so absolutely you don’t have to be physically in Manchester or physically in Edinburgh. I have a friend, so for example on he lives in Bristol, he works out of the London office, but to be honest we don’t have that many clients inside London, certainly from a supply chain perspective so it is almost immaterial where you live.

What is the working environment like?

We very much dress to meet the clients’ environment so Accenture’s policy is very much business causal so open neck shirts and a jacket if you so choose. Clearly a lot of clients are like that and a lot of organisations are like that these days, some industries, potentially banking or government departments they are still quite formal, so you will wear a suit and tie to work but it is very much governed by the client and from my perspective the first day I go to a client if no one had told me otherwise, I will usually turn up in a suit and tie because I certainly feel better to be over dressed than under dressed but we always respond to what the clients environment is like. From a demographic perspective it is quite a diverse workforce within Accenture, I would say it was fairly well balanced between male female ratio but also from a guess ethnic diversity it is also a very diverse organisation as well and certainly from Accenture’s point of view it really values and tries to promote the fact that it can have a very diverse workforce whatever the level of diversity might be and I think Accenture certainly has a number of societies or a real initiative around including diversity to make sure they attract the right sort of talent to the organisation so whatever your background etc people can work in this organisation and feel comfortable.

How did you get into your job?

For me I went to Imperial College and did an engineering degree, so when I graduated or was coming up for graduation for me I was very proud of the fact that I did engineering and I wanted to stay in an engineering type environment but with a slight business sense. So I didn’t want to be a pure engineer but I did want to use some of it but also to start to develop business skills. So my first job within Exxon was within their supply and distribution department looking at engineering projects and managing engineering projects, so I used my engineering background but it also gave me an opportunity to broaden my business skills as well. So they were the main reasons I chose that, because that was a role that allowed me to do both things. 

Certainly from Accenture's perspective they are looking for good talented individuals, so from an academic perspective a 2:1 is a very minimum criteria. From my perspective I joined as an experienced higher so the fact that I had good industry experience very specifically within the audit industry but also from a supply chain capability, that was something for me that clearly helped my application process. Certainly within supply chain I think our group, the majority of the group are from industry and I think just because of the nature of that type of environment being able to have that type of experience first is very valuable, that is not to say that you can’t join straight from university we have a very good consulting group which takes analysts and gives them exposure to different parts of the managing consulting business, but for me it, the experience route was what worked for me. So I guess fundamental things you really need to be relatively numerate, articulate, structured, well presented so some of those kind of basic skills as a given, and then depending on the part of the organisation you may need to have experience or you may need a particular degree but certainly I have worked with people that have come up and joined Accenture straight from university and clearly become a senior executive or people like myself who have joined and equally progressed through the organisation and they could have come from a variety of academic backgrounds as well.

What's the application process like?

My understanding is that Accenture certainly participates in the milk round process.  Accenture’s application process is open through the year so it is not just at a specific point in time that you have to apply you can apply at different points of the year. Then the application process, there is a screening process where obviously the CV is screened and once it is passed through screening you are brought in for a number of interviews. It is a sort of first and second round interviews and could involve case studies, meetings with different parts of the organisation, people like myself, who are actually within the business, but also our colleagues from our HR department who obviously understand the individuals capability to do a role within Accenture.

What are the key skills required for your job?

I think key skills are, certainly you have to be quite motivated to do the job. You have be very much a self-starter, because a lot of the role is around the need to structure and develop your own work, no one necessarily gives you the answer a lot of it is here is the problem, please figure out how you can solve it for me so you need to be good at motivating yourself to putting the plan together, you need to be able to solve problems. I think inquisitive is a good thing to have so the desire to actually try and get to the bottom of a challenge or a solution is good and also the ability to work with people, this is a very people orientated organisation and certainly clients are individuals as well and one of things my mentor or senior executives say to us is people or clients don’t actually buy from organisations they buy from people, so it is a very relationship based type of work. If you are a person who can establish good trusting relationships with people then certainly consulting is a career that those skills would be very well used in.

What's your top tip for breaking into your industry?

I think Accenture offers a number of ways to get your face known if you like, or your foot in the door, one for example is the internship scheme where you can spend ten tow twelve weeks over the summer holiday working with Accenture and you actually come and do a real job on a real project. So you can actually touch and feel and see what it is like. And I know certainly one individual she came and worked on one of our teams, she was fantastic and we said to her at the end, you have done a great job, if you would like to apply then I am sure we could view you in a favourable light, and we are very pleased when she did apply and we were very happy to recruit her. There are also things called sampler days when you can come in for a day and understand a bit more about business and what people do when they are managing consulting. 

I think things that would make you stand out are being able to demonstrate continued success and progression both academically but also outside your academic studies, you know what are your interests so whether it is in music, sports, arts or whatever your passion seems to be. I think the ability to show that not only your academic skills but also you are a broad and rounded individual but also you can succeed in those kind of things and I think that is good. If you had work experience that is very valuable as well because certainly coming in to the job market now it is very competitive and there is a real war for talent out there and so if you can say, rather than spending the summer in a sandwich shop, clearly that is a great thing to keep the shop busy and to pay for your next term in university, but if you can perhaps get yourself into a more business environment to get more specific skills to consulting, I would say they are a couple of top tips for graduates.

What's the career progress and how quickly can you move up the career ladder?

Accenture as a whole is a meritocracy, so you know if you perform you are rewarded and certainly in management consulting it is quite structured in terms of the career levels and time at levels and how you progress so just to give an example if you cam straight from university you will join as an analyst to Accenture and typically you will spend three years at analyst level and there are a number of levels within that level. You then move into consulting level and again you are expected to spend up to three years at that level, but it depends on the individual, some people take a bit longer and some people who are high performance may take a bit shorter. Having spent a time as consultant, the next level is manager, then senior manager, and then obviously a senior executive, which is the new term for what used to be called the partners.

Interviewer: And how would your job role change over that time?

Over time certainly at analyst/consulting level your role is very much delivery focused, very much being part of a team on a project, being very responsible for a piece of work and being responsible for driving that piece of work to completion very much against a plan, against specific milestones etc. Certainly at analyst level it is very much here is the work I would like you to do that - off you go. As you go through to consultant a bit more responsibility around can you do a bit more planning for this, you start to manage a smaller team and as you get to manager you start to develop more exposure to the client and the client responsibility and relationships but also the greater responsibility around planning structuring and being responsible for a larger team. And as you get to senior manager and ultimately to executive, your primary role I would say is ultimate responsibility for the project but limited actually delivery focused because your teams will be doing that for you. But what you are doing is making sure they are doing that on time in the way they should be but also a lot of your responsibility is around managing the client relationship so is the client getting what they want, is it their expectations is the right quality but also starting to explore individual personal relationships and then of course trying to identify potentially are there any other additional business opportunities for Accenture  and of course generate other revenue and sales and obviously as you move to senior executive, clearly that is a lot more around to managing the business, managing not necessarily an individual client in terms of one person but it could be account or a number of accounts or it could be depending on your responsibility the part of the business for example supply chain.

Where do you see the industry going?

Certainly sitting within supply chain, I would like to say it is a hotspot and the reason I say that is people have talked a lot about the credit crunch and this sort of thing, but one of the things I said to someone recently at interview as well, is whatever happens to the economy supply chain is an area that is if the economy is growing then supply chain may be a real differentiator to drive additional sales additional customer service etc. But if the economy is shrinking or a company is trying to cut costs, then supply chain is about operational efficiencies and reduced costs, so either way we are in a great place. But also from what industries are growing I would say we are seeing pretty strong growth in all the sectors, you know we work in energy, utilities, government departments, the finance sector, and you know again the finance sector has had its ups and downs lately but here is a great opportunity as well to help organisations to make sure they are doing the right thing and they have reacted in the right way to some of the external factors that have happened over the last period. So I actually think across there is a lot of work across the different industries.

Is there scope for movement during or after this career?

Absolutely, I think one of the real good things about consulting is the fact that you develop, not just consulting skills, you develop disciplined business skills and they will be applicable whatever you choose to do. If you want to run a florist, for example, or whether you want to start your own company with an internet website or you want to become your own consultant, every single one of those or lots of different careers will take the skills you have learnt in consulting because not only have you learned how to be a consultant, which is working with people, driving change etc, you have also need to know about the business world. So if I have a set of accounts, what do those accounts mean to me for example, how do I interact with senior people in an organisation regardless of whether it is a consultant/client relationship or whether I am working or a multinational and I am talking to a senior executive in that organisation so there are a phenomenal amount of transferable skills to be honest.

What are the industry resources that someone interested in joining must know about?

I am a chartered member of logistics and transport so I try keep up to date with what is happening in that area. I guess I also read the Economist, in terms of just understanding what is going on in the world at large, what is going on in business, politics and I guess just keep abreast of the media. Certainly in the business pages, I will try and focus on the industry sector I may be working on but again some of my colleagues are member of the Institute of Purchasing, Procurement and Supply, so they will read similar industry blogs but there is naturally a wealth of information out there to be honest, and one of the other challenges as well of being a consultant is around well I think I talked about self development so I need to understand and keep abreast of what is working and also need to do my Accenture stuff and also need to do my clients stuff so it is always kind of a juggling act to be able to do all that stuff at the same time.

If you weren't in this career, what would you be doing?

What would I be doing? I would love to be running a small bar off the North coast of Panama.

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