Everyone is talking about social media but everyone wonders who is doing it! In a recent study at ZENeSYS, we looked beyond "who is doing it". We looked at who is doing it effectively?
A recent study done by our certification candidates of leading corporations who are doing social media marketing indicates that they are engaging in social media marketing for six reasons:

1.       Increase brand awareness
2.       Promote new products and services
3.       Differentiate themselves from competition
4.       Get customer feedback
5.       Get their own employees engaged for job enrichment
6.       Improve their website rank on the net

On the other hand, the target audience for social media marketing are individuals. They have a different set of reasons for engaging in social networking with corporations.

Here are the six top reasons why consumers would want to engage in social media marketing:
1.       Knowing what's next: An example would be iPhone users wanting to know about the next release.
2.       Issue resolution: My garage door opener stopped working, and I need to find out if there are some common symptoms being discussed by others.
3.       Price Shopping: Where can I get a bargain for a set of my favourite brand of shoes? When is the next sale?
4.       Connect with the like-minded: I want to connect with VW Beetle club members in my area.
5.       Promote own agenda or business: I saw a great video on how to fix my screen on my 2nd generation iPod Nano. No surprise, it was posted by a precision tool manufacturer.
6.       Making synergistic connections: A software developer wants to know someone at Microsoft so he/she can seek some technology mentoring.


Needless to say, the winners in Social Media Marketing will be those that can effectively match the six goals with the six consumers want. 

Consultants are hired by companies who need a fresh outside perspective along with the problem solving and analytical skills.

Management consulting firms can be classified on the basis of their functional area such as specializing in giving advice on general business strategy question, or providing advisory services in niche and specialized areas like technology, marketing, finance, operations or HR. An alternative/parallel way of classification can be on the structure followed, i.e. some concentrate on a specific industry area like financial services or retail, while there are some which are huge and have divisions that provide advice on everything from top-level strategy, to choosing which software to install, to interesting things like saving money on paper clips.

Consulting firms are typically organized according to industry and type of problem as well. For example, a firm like Bain & Company might focus on strategy problems only but in virtually any industry. On the other hand, there can be firms which focus on a particular industry only but advise on nearly any type of issue. Many of the larger firms however have a matrix organization, with both industry practice groups and functional practice groups.

Saying this, there is one thing which management consulting firms have in common: they all are powered by their people, their IP. The only product which a consulting firm ultimately has on offer is its employees’ ability to solve the problem. As a consultant, you are that problem solver.

Ask yourself these questions and if the answer to these is yes more often than not, then maybe consulting can be the career for you:

Are you a team player?
Are you a multi-tasker?
Are you someone who likes to talk to people?
Are you creative?
Are you someone who loved going to school due to sheer excitement for learning?
Are you very comfortable with numbers?           
Are you willing to put in long hours (70-80 per week)?
Most important, are you willing to travel frequently?

Management consulting firms provide services in 6 primary categories: Pure strategy, Operations strategy, marketing strategy, IT strategy, Financial strategy and HR strategy. The figure below shows how these areas fit together.

Strategy Consulting: It helps client’s most senior executives understand and face the macro level challenges of running their companies. Eg. Recommending a new strategic direction for a growing telecommunications company or to understand why a particular company always lose money and how they can re-position themselves to milk profit from new markets.

Marketing Consulting: Consultants work with senior marketing or BD leadership to shape overall marketing plan or develop detailed approaches to launch a new product or optimize existing ones. E.g. To evaluate the ROI in various marketing and sales activities.

Operations Consulting: Investigating customer service response times, reducing inventory and backlog levels, looking at the supply chain are some of the works that a consultant working in this domain does.

IT strategy Consulting: Helping clients achieve their business goals by leveraging in depth knowledge of computer and telecom hardware, software etc. There are two kinds of consulting, IT strategy and IT implementation consulting.

Financial Strategy Consulting: 3 primary categories, Corporate Finance, Risk Management and Insurance, and Corporate restructuring or turnaround consulting.

HR strategy Consulting: Putting the right people with right skills at the right place at the right compensation is what an HR consultant will do. They also restructure organizations, and help in change management.

2012 has a been a significant year for ZENeSYS. We grew by 150%. ZENeSYS  delivered 21 projects in year 2012. We lauched our new Moodle based Learning Management System @ www.zenesyslearning.com We now have 110 trainee interns from top business schools of India. Watch out for our new products for 2013. The first one is ZIP Research - ZENeSYS Intelligence Pack which will be micro consulting engagements for our clients that can be submitted online and turned around in 2 to 5 business days and and ZENeSYS MIND or Market Intelligence Dashboard for Corporations to track customized views of their market on a regular basis. Welcome 2013!!!

According to a study being conducted at ZENeSYS, 20 to 25% of revenues at all major consulting firms are coming from the use of analytics. Have Management Consultancies finally found their own “automation platform” for delivering answers to business problems?

Karan and I have been conducting Consulting Induction Programs (CIP) at various Management Institutes across India over the last two weeks.
It has been a very rewarding experience for us. It was very refreshing to see so much interest at the PGP-1 level despite the fact that they have just started their academic year. It would seem that career prospects is already on top of their minds.
There were many questions after each workshop. Here are three questions to give you a sense of how our future consultants are thinking...

1. Should I go into strategy consulting or domain consulting?
   In an ideal world, going into strategy consulting is better. You must first learn the fundamentals of consulting such as how to break down an issue into root cause, formulate a problem solving approach and then develop practical solutions. In strategy consulting, you are totally focused in on this aspect. Applying such fundamental consulting skills in a domain consulting role is a natural progression. However, in reality, you may have a tough time getting into strategy consulting so try to work on more strategic projects when you are hired into domain consulting roles. This way you can build a bridge towards a strategy consulting job.
   
2. How are consulting skills relevant for domains such as Finance?
   Think of it this way. You are writing a Pitchbook in an investment-banking project. If you take the Initial Hypothesis approach we talked about and use that to figure out why your target company needs to fetch a certain market price, you will automatically start thinking like a consultant and follow it through to a well structured, to the point, and powerfully crafted pitchbook.
   
3. How should we solve guesstimation problems in a case interview?
   This can be done by a combination of logic and commonly known facts. If you do not have any facts in your head for that case, then try to guess at a level that is safe to guess. Here is an example. One of the participants asked me this question and put me on the hot seat “How many cricketers are there in Trichy?”  I had to think for a couple of minutes (its important to think – don’t jump to conclusions). My thinking was confined to what logical figures could I safely guess about Trihcy (I have never visited Trichy).  I settled on high schools as a yardstick. Then I developed a strategy around school size and a percentage of students who might be into cricket. So I guessed the number of high schools then assumed that there are 300 students per grade, applied a 20% figure to size the avid cricketers in the batch, multiplied by the cricket playing age range (16 to 24years therefore 8 years). So the answer I came up with was (300 x 20%) x 10 high schools x 8 (age band) = 4,800 cricketers in Trichy! Now I could be wrong but its unlikely to be way off the mark. But you will agree that my approach makes sense. That’s what counts in guesstimation case interviews.