NMIMS – Full time MBA – Trimester: V – Risk & Advisory Consulting – October 2020

Delivering on a Business Transformation Engagement – Case Study

Some Context: You are an Assistant Manager in B&M Consulting, and work with their Mumbai
office. As a premier firm, B&M Consulting offers Business Consulting and Management
Consulting services to carefully selected clients. Your firm has expanded over the years to provide
integrated services and specific solutions to solve complex client problems, devise high growth
strategies for your clients, and enable them to achieve high revenue growth and profit margin
expansion.

9 months ago: It is May 2019 and the summer has set strongly in Mumbai. You are in your last
week of a consulting assignment that has gone reasonably well. You are being rolled off and, on
the look,-out for a new

One evening, you hear that your firm has won a large business transformation assignment for an
upcoming infrastructure developer in India. It is a large value win and will see teams from 5
different service lines working collaboratively. You are immediately interested, given that this
would be a large and prolonged change management assignment involving problem solving,
implementation, technology, etc. Obviously, this assignment will also offer the promise of high
visibility across the firm, and a chance to work with teams outside your service line. The duration
will also afford prolonged exposure to multiple dimensions of the strategy and operations, and
you put a word in about your interest.

Interest turns to excitement when you and few of your team members are requested to lead
delivery for few of the planned work streams. This will be your first transformation job and the you
quickly jump to prepare. You start reading up on the proposal and methodology in particular, seek
out time with the engagement partner and manager to catch key client problems, and start reading
about the industry. You make copious notes, a summary of which is enlisted below.

Engagement Title: Enable SuperInfra to achieve 5x growth in 5 years

High-level Mandate:

The current mandate is a year-long assignment:

Phase 1 – Diagnostic (3 months)

— Conduct a current state assessment of SuperInfra’s strategy, operations and support

functions, its organisation structure, governance protocols, and technology
— Conduct peer comparisons, identify deviations against desired benchmarks and highlight
areas of strength and weakness, and potential bottlenecks that would prevent SuperInfra from
achieving a 5x growth
— Recommend improvements and best practice ideas for adoption
— Develop a detailed work plan and specific work steps with justification for management
approval

Continued

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 NMIMS – Full time MBA – Trimester: V – Risk & Advisory Consulting – October 2020

Delivering on a Business Transformation Engagement – Case Study

Phase 2 – Solutioning and Design (3 months)

— Develop detailed models, organisation structure, operating frameworks comprising processes,

controls, templates, decision-making frameworks, risk management protocols, etc.
— Conduct workshops to fine tune the deliverables and seek sign off
Phase 3 – Implementation (Month 6 to Month 12)

— Prepare for change management

— Enable teams, handhold and support the functions in implementing the new ways of working
— Employ measurement tools to capture the benefits and results of the new structure, processes
and systems
— Measure the results achieved vis-à-vis plan, escalate deviations and showcase successes

Core Business Model (All India operations):

— Invest in Roads, Water, Energy assets that are available for bidding and/or under construction
— Create value by providing engineering, project management and operational expertise
— Exit assets at higher valuation (that is when the asset is completely built, operational and
income generating)
— Manage costs with a lean team and strong core capabilities, others to be outsourced

Key performance metrics:

— Billing for Engineering and Construction activity

— Timeliness in achieving project execution targets
— Execution within budgets
— High construction quality
— IRR on development projects maintained
— Compliance to rules and regulations, nil safety events, compliance to internal policy and
procedures

Other notes:

— The industry has become tough with many players, making new bidding opportunities very
competitive
— The internal teams are still forming, and hence there are different cultures and work
procedures at play

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 NMIMS – Full time MBA – Trimester: V – Risk & Advisory Consulting – October 2020

Delivering on a Business Transformation Engagement – Case Study

Current day: The past 9 months have been a blur. First with the whirlwind of meetings to
understand SuperInfra and its projects under construction, the multiple site visits and time motion
studies, discussions with the other stakeholders, understanding priorities of functional heads and
the management and their pet peeves, reading through status reports, safety standards, quality
conformity reports, etc. The 5 teams worked collaboratively, well almost all the time … there were
some disconnects and reprioritization of meetings, etc. but that happens on most transformation
jobs you are told. The Management bought into most of the recommendations and your
workstream survived the first phase. This took the full 3 months from the original timeline, although
it felt like 30 months… but you / your team, and the other 4 service line teams managed to keep
all 5 workstreams on track.

The second phase started with some gusto – each of the 5 work streams undertook ambitious
targets and planned to wrap up the solution and detailed design phase in 2 months instead of 3
months planned. The Management was pleased at this decision from B&M Consulting and
eagerly awaited your outputs.

However, things did not go as planned and each workstream took almost all of 3 months to get
the draft deliverables out to the client. This was justified at that time, given that you and the other
work stream leads maintained continuous conversations with your client counterparts to keep
them abreast of the developments. However, when the comments started flowing in on the
deliverable drafts, they were several, and came in parts. Clients complained that the documents
were too large and could not be commented upon quickly. Given that the nature of change was
intense and the far-reaching ramifications of the processes, organisation structure, the client
claimed that B&M Consulting should have worked a lot faster in getting the first round of
deliverables out a lot quicker.

It was thus agreed that some obvious changes be emphasized, and that partial implementation
of new processes and structures should start. The teams were thus hard pressed to work overtime
to help support implementation (start Phase 3 in parts) while they worked towards finalisation of
the pending areas of the solution and design and obtained signoffs (complete Phase 2 in parallel).
Grudgingly the teams got to work, realizing that this was in the best interests of both, the client
and the firm.

Current day: 9 months since commencement, and after a particularly grueling session with the
Client Management, your firm is faced with a major situation. The industry and economy have
changed significantly, and things need to be relooked at again. The Management expects the
specific problems enlisted below be solved promptly. They acknowledge the scope creep but
highlight the importance of these 5 specific issues faced by SuperInfra as critical for the way
forward. They are willing to drop the unimportant areas, if B&M Consulting so feels, but are clear
that it would not be possible to increase fees in these difficult times or sanction any work outside
of these priority problems. Your firm makes a decision to support the client given that
transformation jobs are required to be flexible. More importantly, some areas can be dropped
which allows bandwidth to be freed up. This also demonstrates that B&M Consulting is focused
on the top 5 issues highlighted by the client and has under-emphasized other areas deemed
unimportant by the Management.

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 NMIMS – Full time MBA – Trimester: V – Risk & Advisory Consulting – October 2020

Delivering on a Business Transformation Engagement – Case Study

Problem #1 – Group 5 and 6 – 21 Nov 2020 – Infrastructure Business Segments

— What are the contemporary Infra segments / sectors of interest and opportunity given our
business model ?
— What kind of returns will we enjoy for the Infra development segments / sectors ?
— What segments would B&M Consulting recommend to us, considering margins and risks?

Problem #2 – Group 3 and 4 – 28 Nov 2020 – Risk Profile

— How has the risk profile changed for us – what are the new risks faced by our business ?
— What in your view are the top 10 risks ?
— How should we go about mitigating our risks ?

Problem #3 – Group 1 and 2 – 28 Nov 2020 – Capability and Organisation structure

— What should be the competencies that would be required to be developed?

— How should the new organisation structure look – What should be retained in-house and
outsourced?
— What are the trends in capability building internationally and domestically ?

Problem #4 – Group 9 and 10 – 28 Nov 2020 – Digital and technology strategy

— What are the current technologies and digital tools that are in used for the sectors of interest?
— What are the top 5 tools that we should adopt and why ?
— Any specific technology platform(s) we should consider?
Problem #5 – Group 7 and 8 – 28 Nov 2020 – Performance management

— What are the trends in performance management for employees and for businesses ?
— What are the new performance metrics that we should adopt?
— What are the performance metrics adopted by our peers ?

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 NMIMS – Full time MBA – Trimester: V – Risk & Advisory Consulting – October 2020

Delivering on a Business Transformation Engagement – Case Study

Instructions to groups:

Each of the groups are assigned specific problems as enlisted. You are required to conduct
research, brainstorm solutions and develop a concept presentation for the Management in 4
weeks as per the schedule defined below.

This presentation session will be competitive in nature between the 2 groups presenting on each
problem in pairs, and hence to keep things fair, Group 5 and 6 are requested to send final
presentation by 22:00 IST of 20 Nov 2020 which is exactly 4 weeks from now.

Based on the decisions and selection of the business sectors / segments from the presentation
session on 21 Nov 2020 (Infrastructure Business Segments), the remaining 8 groups are
requested to submit their final presentations latest by 22:00 IST of 27 Nov 2020.

Remember to make assumptions where necessary to explain your logic and rationale. A detailed
study about core infrastructure sectors would be useful. All presentations are expected to last 15
min with 5-10 min of questions and answers. You should therefore not showcase more than 4
exemplary and tasteful slides that would make the consulting domain feel enriched!

You may have some slides in the annexure if you need to demonstrate reference data. Do not
use the annexure of content on concept and problem solving (that is to be contained in the first 4
slides). Wish you the best !

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