Jen's MBA blog: A Year at Cambridge

3AM pizza, fondue & raw food... consultant style

I am writing in a state of relief and exhaustion, having just finished our final presentation to ABB in Switzerland. Our MCP (Major consulting project) took place over the past 4 weeks, of which we spent 2 in Cambridge and 2 in Zurich working with ABB headquarters.

To put things into perspective, my teammate Kuoshen summarized our thanks to ABB and our experiences on the project through saying "we've learned a lot about electronic invoicing and corporate projects, and we've also learned that the security cards distributed to us still work at 3am...." ah the life of a consultant.

So if anything I write now is not coherent, excuse the sleepy brain cells trying to compose thoughts in the wake of dreaming about how to structure our presentation and challenges of electronic invoicing implementation from a corporate level.

The project overall was quite interesting, especially compared to the initial perceptions I had. As one of the project sponsors put it, "electronic invoicing is probably not the sexiest project...." What I did like about it was the broad reach of issues touched on, and the relevance of the technology challenges to any business. We dealt with issues including outsourcing, fragmentation/decentralization of business and IT infrastructure, cross-border transactions, Sarbanes-Oxley and accounting standards, finance efficiency, resistance to change, and corporate culture.

So what am i on about with regards to fondue and raw food? oh just a few memories from our Swiss whirlwind... our first night there, we were determined to be authentic and sampled an over-abundance of cheese, fondue, raclette... no more! It will be a long while before I have that desire again.

Then we had an ongoing dichotomy in the group with Munmun loving raw food, and Kenny loving well-done food. This was a challenge to convey to the German-speaking waiter when ordering meat; he became so confused with the gestures and attempts to convey the desired meat temperature that at one point he resorted to acting out the idea of a cow...in case we weren't sure what we were ordering!

The struggle continued as Munmun was determined to get sushi for Kenny, and when he asked the Japanese waitress if the sushi rolls were cooked, she told him "oh no we don't cook the cucumber" in a concerned voice. Sampling of carpaccio (thinly sliced raw beef) was part of the trip, along with conversations about Asian delicacies that practically run off the plate. We also tried ostrich, lots of lamb and veal, and seafood including octupus and squid (new for Kenny). And had plenty of asparagus; they seemed to be obsessed with it in Switzerland....

as for consulting, while I loved the adrenaline, the challenge, the problem-solving aspects of it, I am pretty sure the lifestyle is not for me!! I doubt I had a night where my dreams were not filled with electronic-invoicing and ABB for instance.

I did love Switzerland though...hmmm, food for future thought...

posted by Jen @ 10:32 AM