Good evening, dear members and guests! I am Elena and this is my CC5 speech: Two lessons I learned from Accenture.
I am doing my internship job in Accenture now, one of the biggest consulting companies in the world.
When I told my friends that I was doing internship in Accenture, they would say:” Cool! How is the consulting industry?” ”What do you usually do every day?”
People are so curious about Accenture and the consulting industry.
So, my fellow friends, tonight, I am going to share with you about two lessons I learned from Accenture. Let you know better about this industry.
The first lesson I learnt from Accenture is being Professional
It is also the biggest feature of all consulting companies.
Usually the clients pay for millions of RMB to hire consultants from Accenture to implement a project. So they expect that consultants are professional enough and can help them improve the working efficiency to a higher level.
To be short, from outside to inside, you should be professional.
At first, you should dress professional, so you will leave your clients an impression that you are a professional consultant. Say no to jeans and sports shoes and say yes to suit and leather.
Then, a consultant should always bring his laptop in anywhere in anytime. A consultant without his laptop is like a man without his hands . They have to work at anywhere, in anytime.
More importantly, being professional should embody in your work. In other words, consultants are supposed to be experts in the industry or the company they serve. For example, one of our clients is State Grid Shandong electric power company. So we have to know the How the power system is operating, and the main duties of every department. When I first came to our project team, I was confused by so many terms , Such like 业扩报装、配网抢修. But every Accenture employee is supposed to be an expert in the industry you are serving for, so that your clients will trust you.
Being professional is also reflected in other aspects, too, such as documents management and PPT making. There are so many documents in a project. We have so many versions of one document, from version 1.0 to version 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 …… 2.1 I can’t remember how many versions we have. But there will always be a latest version. Delivering a presentation is one important part in the job, and a consultant must be good at this skill, for you have to give a report every week to your client.
The second lesson I learnt from Accenture is how to identify your key clients and their demands.
Usually, a consulting project involved many departments and many people. You have to find all the interested parties and then identify your key clients. Who is your big boss, second big boss and third big boss.
As sometimes they may have different views on an issue, what will you do? The big boss’s opinion is most important and you should do your project according to their opinion.
For example, the project I am attending, is to design and explore a display screen to monitor the operation of the whole company. At first we communicated with the department manager 刁主任，and conducted the project according to his requirement. But there is a bigger boss 蒋总. He liked a simple and practical style. Our work was a little complicated, so we had to modify our work to cater his taste. To let him better understand it.
So we have to identify the key clients. Then another problem came out: they had so many requirements, but the time and money in a project were limited, we couldn’t meet all their needs.
Simply speaking, their demands could be divided into 3 categories: must, want and nice to have. Must means the project must have some functions, in other words, the basic demand. Such like we have to dress clothes every day. Want means they want the project have some functions, such like I want to wear a skirt. Nice to have is they want you to add as much functions as possible to the project. More is better. In other words, they want to have different colors of skirt. If you pay attention to Nice to have all the time, it could be very dangerous; your project might not be completed in time or cost excessive money. Don’t pay much attention on the nice-to –have functions.
All in all, the two lessons Accenture taught me is not only useful when you work as a consultant but also useful no matter what kind of job you are doing, even useful in our daily life too.
Be professional. You have to master professional knowledge and skills and your work should be professional. And act professionally, communicate and work in a professional way.
Identify your key clients and their demands. If you could identify your key clients or their key problem, the work would be much easier for you. You will know exactly who your boss is and who you should be responsible for. And what you must do, want-do and nice-to-do.
Hope the two lessons I learned from Accenture will help you in your work and your life.