Abhinav
Business Consulting, Associate Consultant
ZS Career Path
Business Analytics Associate Consultant (2012-Present)
General Analytics Associate (2009-2011)
Why ZS?
I was impressed by the campus recruitment presentation given by ZS. The entire recruitment team was so friendly and intelligent. Secondly, I wanted to work at a place where I could play around with numbers, analyze them and make some substantial business decision out of it. Thirdly, for me the workplace environment should be both casual and intense. Since I had a couple of seniors in ZS, I inquired about all my requirements and decided that ZS was the right place.
My Favorite Project
I have been working on a territory alignment project for a U.S.-based pharamaceutical client since I joined. Besides that, I have also done a couple of small alignment projects but, essentially, my regular project is the one on which I had most of my experience. Although this is an ongoing alignment project, the number of franchisees we deal with and variety of problems posed by the client make this an exciting project.
My After-Hours Engagement/Activities
I love music and am a drummer so most of my after hours goes towards grooving on my drum set or jamming along with other musicians.
My ZS Values Story
At ZS, we have a passion to get things right, and if an occasional mistake is made, we own up to it. We were conducting a sizing analysis for one of the franchisees. We performed all the analysis, created the deck and sent it over to the client for approval. After getting the approval, I was reviewing the approved deck and to my surprise, I found an error which had not been caught. There appeared to be a mismatch in the count of physicians used for the segmentation and the count used on the slides and this could have affected the proposed size by at least 10%. So we re-ran the analysis and informed our client about this error and they also appreciated our effort and honesty.
My Advice for Potential ZSers
As you consider ZS: 1. Be sure about the kind of work you would like to do 2. Try and talk to the ZSers and make sure it matches your expectation. 3. Also, you should be analytically strong and should have good verbal and written communication skills.
A Week in the Life
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8:00 am IST
Kick-off call with mentee - Briefly introduce him to the concept of mentorship in ZS and discuss our roles, both as a mentor and as a mentee. We decided that we would keep a bi-weekly touch base meeting to discuss any issues he is facing.
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8:30 am IST
Track Organization Team Call - Discuss how we are planning to structure this meeting and if there is any help which I can do from U.S., since I am there at the moment.
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9:00 am IST
Primary Care Roll-Out - A web based meeting with the Primary Care region managers and district managers to solicit territory alignment changes for their respective regions. Some of the change requests are affecting the contiguity of the alignment
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9:00 am IST
Weekly Alignment Meeting with Client - A weekly meeting with the client to discuss the details of all the sales forces, plan and discuss the steps to assess the alignment for one of the specialty sales forces
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12:30 pm IST
Team Lunch with the Client - Since I have come to the U.S., our entire team is planning to have a small get-together lunch at the Rainforest Cafe.
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7:30 pm IST
Drums Workshop at Chicago Music Exchange - Jazz drummers from all across the U.S. come down to the Chicago Music Exchange and share their drumming experiences and talk about the various ways of playing jazz music
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8:30 am IST
Alignment Team Meeting - A touch base meeting in the middle of the week just to make sure everything is going smooth. Is there any deliverable coming up for this Friday or anytime soon? Do we need somebody to help us on any unresolved issues?
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10:00 am IST
Call with District Manager - I have a call with a district manager of one of the specialty sales forces to discuss the pros and cons of the changes he has requested. He would like to move the southern portion of Georgia into the territory that covers the northern part of Florida. We discuss the ramifications of this change - Florida will now have more customers and Georgia will be left with only a few. Even though the sales rep in Florida has relationships with the customers, I encourage the district manager to look at all options and not simply assign all the customers back to the original sales representative. Together, we find a balance that takes into account travel time of the rep, potential sales in customers who were not targeted in the past and sales rep/customer relationships. We determine territories that are fair for all the sales reps and create maximum potential sales for the company.
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2:00 pm IST
Review the Alignment Summary Deck - We review the alignment summary deck which we have prepared for the sales director of one of the specialty sales forces to get sign-off. There is an alignment change which would lead to 40% disruption for one of the territories. We propose not to move forward with this change and we need to discuss this during our meeting with sales director.
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9:00 am IST
Upcoming Group Practice Account Affiliation Exercise - Our client's tech team has created a tool to help affiliate physicians to a corresponding group practice. They have requested our help to solicit the physician-to-account lists from their internal team, review the list and consolidate it. The client also wants us to design a methodology to affiliate the physicians to accounts just in case the tool breaks down during the affiliation exercise.
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1:00 pm IST
Lunch with PDM - I ran into my Professional Development Manager this morning and we decided to go for lunch so that we can have a casual discussion about my professional development and also discuss the next formal meeting with him.
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5:00 pm IST
Helping Another Team - There is an associate from another team who has to generate a couple of thematic maps, shaded by market share on territory level, for one of their assessment decks. Since he is a new associate, he doesn't know how to generate the thematic maps. I walk him through the process and schedule a meeting with him for the next morning at 10:00 a.m. to discuss the maps.
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10:00 am IST
Follow-Up Meeting for Yesterday's Request - I just looked through the thematic maps he has created, they look good except that some of the shades he has used are non-differentiable so I ask him to change those colors.
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2:00 pm IST
Recruitment Questions - The recruitment team has come up with a new list of questions to be asked during the campus interviews and would like to know how much time it would take an average ZSer to answer those questions. This will help them ensure the interview meets a certain time limit. I volunteered to test this.
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4:00 pm IST
Final Look Up - Send all the required deliverables we prepared over the week that were due today. Also, send over the track meeting prep work I have been working on to the other organizers. Scan through my mail box to check if I am missing anything or not and call it a week!!