What I learnt in ten months on a manufacturing, automotive and life sciences project

The base location is four hours away from London, in a town that seems to exist in its own realm. The client’s business dominates the environment with its large warehouses and what seems like the entire population in its branded sweatshirts. Here I realised I would be living and breathing the client’s business while working away from home.

After the initial weeks I eventually found my rhythm as a consultant on the road. Packing succinctly but for all weathers, navigating family-run restaurants (no, not a single high street chain in sight) and bagging the most hotel points soon became my top skills. Work socials included yoga classes, curry nights and bingo games, not to mention the legendary Christmas party featuring pies and mushy peas in a nightclub. Lesson number 1: find a work family to make your new mid-week base feel more like home.

Getting to know the client

The client is a global leader in its industry, producing some of the most complex products possible. It is immense when you see one of these complex builds being guarded by security teams. To make things more complex, there are three different product programmes progressing at once, each with varying designs and approaches to engineering, manufacturing, supply chain and vendor collaboration. With endless possibilities for improvements – it is  a consultant’s dream.

As an engineer of a complex product the client is rather rigorous, functioning on following strict processes, waterfall planning and quality controls. This is critically important for the success of their build programmes yet is a challenge for transformation programmes, I soon learned. A culture of risk aversion and a mantra of ‘getting it right first time’ can prove difficult when being a force of change. Lesson number 2: do not underestimate the complexities in bringing about change within an organisation.

Navigating our account

The account is 300+ strong of Capgemini colleagues, bringing together capabilities from across the business, as well as the country. As the first consultant on the account from Capgemini Invent, our digital transformation consultancy, I needed to assert myself in the pre-existing team. The key was to demonstrate what different skills and qualities I could add, which proved to complement the prevalent technical abilities. With exposure to a broad range of people I have considerably grown my network across the business, vitally important as a consultant in their early career.

As well as varied people, there is also varied work. I have had the chance to move into work I’m interested in; an account with new opportunities appearing weekly creates this flexibility. I have worked across the board from IT programme management to Agile transformation and supply chain advisory. Lesson number 3: as a new consultant always take the chance to get involved in new opportunities where possible to expand your learnings.

Understanding what IT can do for the business

The programme of work is focused on transitioning, delivering and transforming the IT service from the previous provider.  IT is closely aligned with delivering the build programmes in less time and for less money as is increasingly expected from the client’s end customer. Our solution encompasses a broad spectrum of IT services, including service orchestration, DevOps, automation, and a digital service desk. All these items should focus on the increased criticality of IT delivery in enabling an improved product programme schedule.

As it is our speciality, it is easy to become lost in our realm of IT; we are removed from the core business. Such a realignment with the product build is critical for the programme’s success, particularly as the business continues to evolve and change with new business demand and client pressure. Lesson number 4: always maintain a central focus on the client’s core business to understand how IT can best support this.

In conclusion…

So, working on one of Capgemini’s largest accounts has proven to be an invaluable learning experience, particularly as a graduate Associate Consultant. While my assumption was that the key learnings would revolve around understanding a complex business, its complex product and the application of IT to support this, I have come to realise that the softer skills have been of equal importance. And over ten months I feel like I’ve (almost) covered it all. Now for a project a little closer to home please…

Author

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Lucy Johnson

Associate Consultant

Lucy joined Capgemini Invent in February 2019 and is part of the Digital New Services and Platforms team in Future of Technology.