MBACatólica April/July 2007 Course: Business Consulting Instructors: Celine Abecassis-Moedas Joaquim Paiva Chaves Paulo Cardoso do Amaral Biographical note: Celine Abecassis-Moedas is Assistant Professor at FCEE-UCP where she teaches Corporate Strategy and Business Consulting. She holds a Ph.D. in Management Studies from Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, a Master in Scientific Methods of Management (DEA), from Dauphine University and a BA in Economics and Business Administration from Ecole Normale Supérieure and La Sorbonne, Paris. Celine was an Assistant Professor at Queen Mary-University of London. She worked in business development in a software firm in New York and in management consulting at AT Kearney in London. As a consultant, she worked in several sectors (media, banking, retail and consumer goods) mostly for the British market. Joaquim Paiva Chaves has a degree in civil Engineering from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and an MBA from INSEAD in France. He started his career as an Engineer, first in Switzerland and then in Portugal, moving afterwards to McKinsey as a consultant. As a consultant he worked in several sectors and several countries such as Spain, Portugal and Brazil. Later he was involved in the Expo 98 project being in the board of Orient Station and Expo Urbe. After he was CEO of Sonae Turismo being also in the board of telecommunications and media companies of the group. More recently, he has been co-founder of Jazztel Plc, and president of the Portuguese company. He is currently member of the board of Group Edifer and co-founder and president of TravelStore and Adicional Logistics.
Paulo Cardoso do Amaral is invited professor at Universidade Católica Portuguesa where he coordinates the information management specialization of the MBA as well as executive programs in information management. He is director of the insurance companies Fidelidade-Mundial and Império Bonança. He graduated in computer science from Instituto Superior Técnico. He has a masters in Information Systems from Paris University, an MBA in International Management from Universidade Católica Portuguesa and a PhD in Information Systems from Paris University. Course Introduction The Business Consulting course is a project-oriented course in which students are expected to act as consultants to solve a real business problem. To do so, the first session is used to evaluate students industry preferences in order to form groups of two to four participants that will work together on a given project for the whole duration of the course. Last year students chose only projects in the banking sector being: - Millennium BCP: analysis and comparison of client-driven versus processdriven organization. - Banco BIG: analysis of internationalization strategy. In previous years students worked for multiple companies in various sectors (IT, telecoms, construction, tourism, packaging, healthcare, etc.) and on different subjects (strategy, organization, product launch, new markets, etc.). Course Objectives This course is intended to contribute to a better interaction between students and firms, by using a real consulting methodology that contributes to understand and solve real management and business problems. In order to ensure that this objective is achieved, the course starts with a presentation of a base consulting methodology, which acts as a baseline of the various steps and work structure. Students are assumed to apply and make use of the management knowledge acquired during the rest of the MBA. In order to realize the importance of methodology development to adapt its use to real problem solving, there will be a number of major Consulting Companies presenting their own methods, and providing real case studies to illustrate this important capability. The direct
professional contact between students and companies is also used to facilitate both career development and companies quest for talent. Course Outline Sessions Date 1 2 May 2 8 May 3 15 May 4 22 May 5 29 May 6 5 June 7 12 June 8 19 June 9 26 June 10 3 July 11 10 July Content Methodology Presentation Group formation Consulting Company Presentation: Innovagency Group presentations step 1: Work program Consulting Company Presentation: Bain Group presentations step 1: Work program Consulting Company Presentation: Arthur D. Little Group presentations step 2: Identification Group presentations step 2: Identification Group presentations step 3: Disaggregation Group presentations step 3: Disaggregation Group presentations step 4: Validation Group presentations step 4: Validation Group presentations step 5: Recommendations Group presentations step 5: Recommendations Methodology Theoretically, the presented methodology is used only to create a baseline of explicit knowledge from what is basically driven up on sheer intuition regarding the typical problem resolution process: - What is the problem? (definition and understanding)
- What are the main causes? (disaggregation and prioritization) - What should be analyzed? (information and interpretation) - What are the solutions? (recommendation and communication) This methodology helps students to develop their own approaches in a coordinated and structured manner. Companies will identify subjects of concern for which they will allocate resources and provide information in order to help the development of real consultancy, hoping to gain insight around the identified problems. The confidentiality of this work has to be assured, therefore each team has to commit to use companies information solely for the development of this specific Project and that recommendations will be shared only with managers of each company. Readings and Reading Plan 1. Turner, A., 1982, Consulting is more than giving advice, Harvard Business Review, Sept-Oct. To read for session 2. 2. Wickham, P. A., 2004, Management Consulting. Delivering an Effective Project. Prentice Hall, 2 nd edition. To read along the project, when needed. 3. Cope, M., 2003, The Seven Cs of Consulting. The definitive guide to the consulting process, Prentice Hall, 2 nd edition. To read along the project, when needed. 4. Haberberg, A. and Rieple, A., 2001, The Strategic Management of Organisations, Prentice Hall. Chapter 14: Managing Change. To read for steps 3&4. 5. Robbins, S. R., 2005, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, Prentice Hall, 8 th edition. Chapter 16: Organizational Change and Development. To read for steps 3&4. Assessment and Grading The evaluation for this course has two components: - Internal evaluation, regarding the focus, structure and quality of the content as well as the relevance of the recommendations.
- External evaluation, from the input given by the company regarding the performance of the consulting team and the importance of the deliverables (adequacy and applicability).