SJMSOM, IIT Bombay Organizes Business Seminar Series

SJMSOM, IIT Bombay Organizes Business Seminar Series
Post-event Press-release

Consulting Continuum

The first speaker at the consulting continuum was Mr. Shishir Kapoor - Lead Principle and Country Head at Opera Solutions. He advised caution, suggesting that instead of jumping on the bandwagon, a firm should carefully think out its strategy.

Mr. Kapoor recommended using data analytics to achieve this. By determining trends in customer value perception, maintaining a focus across the lifetime of customers, and then tailoring products to a "segment of one", a firm can deliver customized products and services that truly provide the greatest value to its clients.

Next, Mr. Sameer Bapat, Operations strategy leader, IBM, spoke about IBM's approach in the recession and recovery. He stressed three priorities: making use of low prices to target scare resources including talent. Driving cost efficiency and using a targeted approach to grow revenue were the other pillars.

The two seminars were followed by a panel discussion on the topic "Rising from the Ashes: Who would be more effective? Specialists or Generalists". On the panel were Mr. Kedar Gadgil- Managing Consultant- PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mr. Ryan Lowe- VP Avalon Consulting, Mr. Rajesh Iyer, Director, Cedar Management Consulting and Mr. Sameer Bapat of IBM. Moderating the discussion was Mr. Thakor, Ph. D. student of SJMSOM, IIT-B.

In the course of an invigorating discussion, it emerged that consultants usually begin their careers as generalists and then proceed to become specialists. Also, according to Mr. Iyer, individuals then became more generalist in their approach as they moved further up, to lead the organization. However, the choice of a generalist or specialist in a consulting team entirely depends on circumstances, and what is right for a particular project. In the end, the panel concluded, that for a B-School student while making a choice between generalization or specialization, what is important, is following one's dreams.

Next, Mr. Vinod Kala, Founder, Emergent Ventures, gave a very interesting seminar on clean technology. He spoke of consulting in environmental services, where a consulting firm might undertake external projects, such afforestation, on behalf of a client, to lower the client's carbon footprint. He believed that as renewable energy is becoming economically viable to produce, and as consumers develop preferences for "green" products, there is a great future in going green. He estimates a $1 trillion p.a. investment in green projects by 2030.

Following this was a speech by Mr. Tarun Mishra- co-founder of Covacsis, who spoke of a need to change the way a consultant thinks so that creativity and innovation could be added to structured, linear thinking. He stressed an interdisciplinary approach to consulting, which he termed the philosophy of design. He also suggested that current, numbers based measures of success should be changed and also, new business models for consulting should be defined.

The day's final speaker was Mr. Rakesh Barik, Director, Deloitte Consulting, who spoke on consulting as a career. He stressed the importance of teamwork and networking in a consultant's job and placed a lot of emphasis on trust. He then proceeded to humorously debunk various myths of consultancy: including the popular idea that consultants do not have a work life balance.

The consulting continuum was preceded by a national level online quiz and case stimulation competition which saw participation from over 150 teams from across the world including teams from UK.

Concluded.

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Contributed By-
Ashish Rijhwani,
Online PR Co-ordinator,
Public Relations Team,
SJM School Of Management, IIT Bombay.

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