12/02/2015

Forever Consultancy Fever

‘Saturday Night Fever’ is a well-known old movie. But its contents are quite actual. If you want to realize your forever consultancy dream, it’s possible. But you will have to fight for it. Step into the IT consultancy meritocracy and experience your personal fever. Stephanie and Tony will tell you.

Stephanie

Both parents of Stephanie were highly educated teachers. In her hometown everybody knew her as a very clever student. As a result, her choice to go to university was quite obvious. Without any problem she obtained her master’s degree in economy. Stephanie applied for a job in IT consultancy and she could start immediately. She was not really surprised that she got a smart phone, a company car and several other advantages. She proactively decided to start implementing the SAP financial module. With a lot of confidence she started her first working day.

Tony

Tony obtained a bachelor’s degree in marketing. His parents were not capable of paying for his study. With some additional weekend and summer work, he funded this himself. He was a little bit uncertain to start his job hunt in this impressive consultancy world. But in his drive to move forward, he did. And he got green light to start. Because everybody was charmed by his natural flavor and enthousiam. They proposed him to start together with several other juniors in the SAP sales module.

Stephanie and Tony starting as junior

All juniors starting in September got the opportunity to learn the software tool in an extensive training program of several weeks. They also learned about the implementation methods how to implement a project, about soft skills and about all the internal policies in the company. Some courses were organized together with other teams, some courses were held exclusively within the team. The first time Tony met Stephanie was during such a cross-team course in the training track. And he was immediately amazed by her self-confidence.

Stephanie and Tony on a project

Was it by accidence? Was it destiny? After a few months Stephanie and Tony were members of the same project team for a famous fashion customer. She was implementing the financial part, he the sales topics. But they had to work together often, because of the many cross-functional integration topics. For the first time Stephanie got a little bit confused when she recognized that understanding the customer business needs was so crucial in a project. It was not just about configuring a tool, you really have to create relationships with your counterpart players at customer side. So called key-users. She didn’t want to admit this, but she was very glad that Tony saved her several times in cross-functional meetings with that difficult key-user. Tony just used his natural flair and the capability to give an explanation with focus on the main points, relevant and important for the customer. Often it was hard working. It was not always 9 to 5. At the other hand they also got the freedom to sometimes work remotely. Nobody was really monitoring working hours, the result was checked, being the successful project.

Forever Consultancy Fever

Together with the other consultants, Stephanie and Tony managed to deliver this fashion project. After implementation they were sitting together during a drink. Talking about the future. Stephanie decided she wanted to continue doing real configuration and implementation work. Maybe it was too early for project management. Maybe in the future after some further experience. She was dreaming about it. Tony was looking to the sky. I want to do sales. I want to sell to customers. I don’t want to implement for the rest of my life. They decided to make their wishes clearly known in the company, and they were eager to go for it. With each other’s support. Together.

Do you also want to join Delaware Consulting and make true your personal forever consultancy fever? If you are committed and motivated, there are several possibilities to start and to grow! But you will have to make your own way! And you will have to prove it yourself!