Welcome to the BA Real Deal Blog!

Welcome to the Deloitte Consulting Strategy & Operations (S&O) Business Analyst (BA) Program blog! The goal of this blog is to provide candidates with a view into Deloitte from the perspective of current S&O BAs. We hope to bring the Deloitte Consulting experience to life for you through a first-person, “straight-talk” narrative from our Analyst contributors. You can get to know those contributors here. You’ll find entries on a wide range of topics from training to first projects to travel tips. Stop back by frequently for new posts from our bloggers, and don’t miss out on the BA website to learn more about the program.

We encourage you to comment, share experiences, and provide feedback for topics you would like to hear more about.

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The Sprint - Brittany Genelin

4:30AM
Phone alarm. Snooze it. 15 more minutes. 15 more minutes wrapped in familiar smells and purple sheets with photos of family faces and places traveled looking down on me.

4:52AM
Phone alarm. Snooze it. No, don’t snooze it, remember last Monday? Running to my flight gate in high heels is never fun. Try to get up. Open one eye; its dark outside. Who wants to see this side of the morning? No one. Just get up.

5:12AM
18 minutes until my taxi gets here. 18 minutes?! Frantic panic sets in. Quick: did I bring enough clothes? Will anyone notice if I wear this suit twice this week? Where’s my toothbrush? Where’s my hair brush? Where are my running shoes?

5:34AM
Zip my suitcase and run downstairs right now. Wait: brush my teeth first. Brush, brush, read emails from manager who is also already awake and… working… brush, brush, brush, respond to urgent email, brush, brush, brush, read reminder email about team social outing event in New York City this week. Oh no, I completely forgot. Brush, brush, spit. Run, get jeans, get shirt, and stuff them both in the top of my suitcase. I heard the taxi honking: run, for real this time.

6:05AM
Check in. Print boarding pass. Enter priority line. Still wait 15 minutes. Security. Coffee. Yogurt. Coffee. More coffee. Board flight. Attempt to stuff carry on in overhead compartment. Gate check carry on… darn those jeans. Sit down. Window seat. Pretend to read the paper. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Didn’t I drink coffee this morning? Bumpy landing. Deplane.

10:45AM
Time to breathe. Rent a car and drive to the client. This will be a 45 minute process at least. What do I do? Listen to my own music, get mentally prepared for the day, and know what’s coming. What’s on my plate today: two client meetings, a deliverable review with my Manager, and a feedback session with my Senior Consultant. I’m ready for all of those things. When am I going to get to that Minneapolis office recruiting to-do list? Later.

The things I’ve learned from working at Deloitte in the past year span across professional, personal, and general life lessons. What a typical, and albeit hectic, Monday morning rushing from my condo to the airport to my airplane has taught me is to always keep it together. Monday mornings aren’t the only time that I, and let’s say many consultants, are rushed and stressed. In fact, Monday mornings are a great anecdote for many of the situations that you’re guaranteed to find yourself in once you become a consultant. Take a couple of very typical situations for example: the week of a deliverable deadline, a last minute ask from the Lead Client Partner, or the second a mistake is found in the financial model you’re about to present to your Manager. While all of these scenarios can be a little bit scary, can get your heart pumping a little higher than normal, and can generally make you sweat, they are also all situations that, as a consultant, you become very familiar and comfortable with. It is in these moments that you, even as a junior resource, are called on to identify a solution, develop a plan to achieve it, present your next steps, and deliver a great product. The Firm, the Partner, the client, or maybe just the waiting plane, depend on you and the feeling of being able to deliver is one of great achievement.

Let’s just say, that even when I think I could wake up a little bit earlier on Monday morning’s and get to the airport with enough time leisure time to hang out in the lounge, I hit snooze one more time, fall back asleep for 15 more minutes, and get ready for the hectic, stressful, and perfectly timed morning that I know and love. 

 

Brittany Genelin is a 2nd-year Business Analyst out of the Minneapolis office. She earned a degree in Marketing from the University of Minnesota. 

In Transit - Brooke Kingsland

Spending time “on the road” is part of the Consulting lifestyle. We sprint through airports, catch cabs, and wheel our suitcases in and out of hotels, constantly on the go. With our Going Global, Giving BAAC consulting service trip, I recently joined 19 other business analysts and consultants and journeyed to a client site 2500 miles away, where time slowed down a bit. As our bus plunged over the unpaved roads of Panama’s El Darien region, occasionally surging through the flood water of the rainy season, being “in transit” took on a new meaning. We were literally passing between a highly-connected center of global trade — Panama City — to a part of the country isolated from such capital. In the rural village of Platanilla, individuals often aren’t able to personally access modern banking institutions, among other resources.

Over the course of four days working with community members, my team and I worked with the two local organizations, a finance co-operative and an agricultural association, and helped them uncover and address some of their immediate requirements. We helped them design a “scorecard” that the finance co-op could use to more rigorously analyze the risk of new loans. We also sat down with the co-op’s president, treasurer, and the secretary to teach a three-hour accounting workshop. At the end of that session, the co-op leaders were able to document loan transactions in a ledger book for the first time on their own. By working with the agricultural association, we outlined structures for decision-making and prioritizing project planning. Other teams helped them understand how to prepare applications for government subsidies, analyze the costs and benefits of building a slaughterhouse (a big interest for the livestock industry), and learn personal financial planning techniques.

Identifying how to move from issue to impact was challenging, especially with added linguistic differences. (Despite my full-fledged efforts, mi español needed interpretation.) However, problem-solving across cultural and language boundaries pushed me to engage not only as a business-oriented consultant but also as a global citizen.

I have long been skeptical of “volun-tourism”, but our deliverables left me confident in the way that our work aligned with the community’s long- and short-term development goals and strategies. Our clients in Panama were at an earlier stage of business maturity than most of the eight corporate and non-profit clients I’ve worked with over the past year-and-a-half as a Business Analyst (BA). They had many ideas, but required the tool set to carry them forward. For example, some farmers in the agricultural association grew multiple crops but had limited understanding of their profitability. Working together to re-evaluate, strategize actionable next steps and jump start initiatives can be an important part in helping to improve outcomes and enable growth.  

Being “on the road” — or, at times, even off the road — during this trip, built upon my prior pro-bono projects with the organization, and makes me grateful to be able to serve organizations of varying resources and share that experience with colleagues to whom doing so matters.

Client situations that probably—most likely—will occur as a BA - Polly Rodriguez

There are certain scenarios that tend to reoccur more than others to Business Analysts at Deloitte. Below, I’ve highlighted three semi-tricky situations that I’ve personally encountered fairly frequently, along with some simple dos and don’ts:

• You will have to figure out how to print at the client site. Let’s face it, as BAs often we’re responsible for essential / basic tasks for the team. If there’s a huge presentation at the client site, odds are, the analyst is going to be responsible for getting the deck printed, bound and ready to go in time for the meeting. Odds also are that there will be minimal time and restricted access to the client’s network printers. So what do you do?
  • A nonstrategic plan would be to wait until the last minute to inform the team you have no idea how to get anything printed in the building. Next steps? Proceed to draw the slides by hand using the napkins you picked up from the cafeteria at lunch
  • A strategic plan would be to make friends with the administrative assistant at the client site on day one so that when a presentation needs to be printed at the last-minute, they’re happy to help. This person almost always holds the keys to the kingdom.
• You’ll attend a client dinner. Depending on the project, the Partner or Senior Manager might ask the client(s) if they’d like to grab dinner with the team. I’m not sure what you’ve seen on TV, but let’s clarify what does and does not occur at consulting dinners with the client: 
  • It’s highly unlikely that the dinner will be at the most expensive restaurant in town, everyone will order the 4 lb lobster, drink too much and end up at karaoke singing a glorious rendition of “My Heart Will Go On” Celine Dion style.
  • It’s more likely that the team will go to a very nice restaurant, everyone will order a reasonable entrée, maybe have a drink or two, discuss an upcoming meeting and then head home
• You’ll forget your security badge. In a rush to get to the client site before your 8:30am conference call, you throw your laptop, wallet and phone in your bag, only to realize that you forgot your badge at the hotel and are now standing in front of the client site with a large security officer staring down at you asking, “And, where’s your badge, miss?”
  • It’s probably a horrible idea to channel The Hulk and tackle the security guard, screaming, “NOTHING CAN KEEP ME FROM FINISHING THIS POWERPOINT!!!!!!!!”
  • It’s probably a good idea to text and email someone on your team as soon as you realize that you forgot your badge. Ask if they can sign you in for the day as a visitor. If not, you’ll have to trek back to the hotel, get your badge, and get back to the client site ASAP

My First Magical "Ah Ha" Moment - Rebecca Weidler

BA’s at Deloitte come from a wide range of academic backgrounds. Some of us spent four years of undergrad taking business classes and interning at banks. Others had pure liberal arts majors and spent our summers working with non-profits. I fall into the latter category.

As an “Inequality and Social Policy” major at Davidson College, I never went anywhere near Excel for my Gender & Globalization and Classical Political Theory classes.  Upon arriving at Deloitte Orientation exactly one month ago, I quickly realized that I was approximately three finance internships behind several of my peers. As I worked through Excel pivot tables with the help of the other BA’s, I began to worry that I would never live up to the expectations of my future project teams. 

Fast forward two weeks. I had been given my first assignment, creating an Excel document to track outreach between Deloitte and a major pharmaceutical company. For this project, I had to create a series of “h-lookups.” I knew from training that “v-lookups” and “h-lookups” are used to fill in target cells based on reference cells, but I had assumed that I wouldn’t use such complicated formulas until months into my first year. Now, two weeks later, dread overtook me as I stared at an h-lookup example on my laptop, slowly realizing I had absolutely no idea where to start.

I took a deep breath, and then started to translate the language of Excel. After a few stressful minutes, I started to feel resolved, almost calm. I can figure this out. I intently worked through the meaning of each part of the “code”—indication of the cells to be populated with new data, selection of the location of the reference data, framing the reference cells on which the data will be based… Piece by piece, I came to understand what each input into the formula signified, and then I saw the relationship between the parts. I suddenly understood the logic behind h-lookups. I had cracked the code.

It was one of those beautiful, all-too-rare “ah ha” moments. Suddenly, I understood. Suddenly, I was an h-lookup Jedi. This was easy—I could do h-lookups all day! My new Jedi status didn’t completely assuage all my fears from orientation, but I realized that I could learn. I know there will be many times in the coming months when I feel like I’m trying to decode the foreign language of Excel or Finance 101, but I also know there will be many “ah ha” moments scattered throughout the challenges. 

Network. Network. Network. - Rebecca Shmoys

During week 1 training for the Summer Scholar Program, Deloitte’s undergraduate internship program, I think I heard that word “network” more than any other word. Including words such as “hello” or “Deloitte”. The training team insisted that networking would make or break our experience at Deloitte. Moreover, they informed us that people at every level of the firm, right up to the most senior partner, would be happy to meet with us.

Understandably, I was skeptical. Networking would be more important than my project experience? A senior partner would want to have coffee with an intern? Why? But as it turns out, the training team was absolutely right. Some of my most rewarding experiences at Deloitte were through coffee with another practitioner and every individual that I reached out to was not only willing, but also enthusiastic about meeting an intern.

One of my most memorable networking experiences was lunch with one of the partners. Noticing that she was involved in the education sector, I reached out to her via e-mail in hopes she might be willing to briefly meet with me. She responded in less than 10 minutes and suggested lunch. Not only did she take the time to talk to me about education sector work in Deloitte, but she set me up with several other contacts who work in the education sector. Our lunch conversation, which went an hour and half over its allotted time, spanned everywhere from the education sector to advice on simple foods to cook (advice I sorely needed), and ended in a tour of the HIVE, Deloitte’s high tech innovation center.

The generous and welcoming spirit that I experienced on this occasion extended across the board at Deloitte. On another occasion, I sat down with a consultant who had done work on one of Deloitte’s pro bono projects. Not only did he tell me about the project he had worked on, but he also set me up with several other contacts, gave me advice on the firm, and gave me his personal e-mail should I think of any other questions.

It is experiences like these that made networking one of the most valuable parts of my summer scholar experience. It helped me to learn more about Deloitte, build relationships within the firm, and understand the value that Deloitte places on development of their employees at every level.

What to expect…when you don’t know what to expect: The First Two Weeks as a BA - Chase Daughtridge

In honor of my two and a half week anniversary with Deloitte, I’ve decided to indulge in a little reflection. And luckily for you, I’m letting you in on the inner thoughts of this seasoned Deloitte practitioner.

If you’re wondering about the day-to-day life of a Deloitte Business Analyst, ask my colleagues…. I’m still trying to figure it out! The good news though, is that I’m in great company.

I began at Deloitte on August 13^th with fifteen other BAs, many of whom I‘d met earlier at Explore Your Offer weekend or Giving BAAC day. We all arrived with a little trepidation and a lot of excitement. Ready to meet new people and learn new skills, we were anxious to jump into our careers. My first day was a whirl of new faces and information.  My inbox alone was an avalanche of promise and dread: a friendly and welcoming email from my Deloitte counselor, then one about training, and one about training, and one about training….

I was overwhelmed, but so was everyone else. We talked to each other and asked our training coaches lots of questions. Everyone knew someone in the firm who had given advice about one thing or another, and our collective knowledge was strong.

Better than sharing knowledge, however, was sharing the experience of being a new BA. We were all new, but we all had confidence in each other and in ourselves.

Blue Tattoos and Banana Juice - Stephanie Liu

Amidst blue tattoos, late night games and a tour to Panama Canal, one of the most rewarding experiences so far as a BA was the opportunity to travel to Panama for a week community service trip with Global Bridgades with fellow BA/Cs chosen to develop sustainable solutions for community business challenges. Our group focused on providing capability building workshops and recommendations for a new savings and loans business started in the community. During that week our team was able to put together workshops around accounting, governance and communication workshops to help them have a clear understanding of how to run their business. The opportunity to lead our own project was very rewarding when it came to tackling the business challenges firsthand. Other groups also worked with local artisan groups to help them redefine marketing and pricing strategies.

The trip, of course, still allowed us to sustain the consulting mantra of work hard, play hard. One of my favorite experiences included interacting with the local community where we got to buy local artisan groups, dance with the locals and get these blue tattoos. We have a festive night of dancing with the locals to original indigenous music, have late nights of cards, scintillating discussions about random topics from “The Game”: the mastery of pick-up artists, to talks about running. I had the unfortunate experience of not properly covering my tattoo while it dried overnight. As someone who tosses and turns a lot in their sleep I ended up with a tattoo. On my face. And on my neck, hand, and on my arms. It was a flashback to watching Hangover 2 when Ed Helms wakes up to, also, yes having a tattoo on his face. Unfortunately unlike Ed, I couldn’t attribute the morning “what happened?” to a drunken, drugged stupor. The unique quality about these blue tattoos is when they are first painted on, they are very faint, but are oxidized by sunlight and become very dark over the course of the first few days. So, when I woke up in the morning, what looked like only a faint blue designs on my cheek, arm, hand, neck-- turned into a dark blue uniform of ”Stephanie is ready for war” battle tattoos. Fortunately mine wasn’t permanent—at least for two more weeks.

I was so grateful that Deloitte provides us with the type of opportunities such as this Panama trip to help us grow our BA/C network nationally but more importantly hone our consulting skills in a project that lets us apply our consulting skill set in a different setting.

Earning Your Stripes - Ilan Gluck

One of the most attractive selling points for Deloitte to college graduates is the immense amount of responsibility bestowed on the new hires.  You hear stories all the time - some good, some scary – about first year analysts getting thrown into conference rooms with C-level clients, managing client deliverables, or leading an entire work stream.  While these stories may just sound like selling points to close the brightest on campus, I can speak first-hand that in your first few months with the firm you will likely be given an immense responsibility, and it is up to you to earn your stripes with your project team.

The biggest challenge for any Business Analyst is proving to your project team that you are trustworthy and can produce a high quality finished product.  This trust is not built overnight and can sometimes take months to develop.  As a new hire, you have not yet had the opportunity to establish a reputation for yourself, so you have to prove yourself to your teammates from Day 1.  I understood this going into my first project, and always made sure to go the extra mile to gain the trust of my colleagues.  Even the smallest actions - from staying late to help a manager finish a deck, organizing a team function, and even being sure to spell check your work – can change the way your team views your role as a Business Analyst.

The first time I felt this trust from my project team was a big step in my young career.  We were working closely alongside the client to develop a risk assessment for one of their most important strategic initiatives.  In a last-second meeting with the client, they requested our team to develop an introductory deck they could show the executives that would provide an overview of the training.  My manager, in a sign of trust, assigned me sole ownership of this task, including the presentation of the final product to the executives.  This was my time to prove that I was deserving of the responsibility bestowed upon me.  Developing the deck and presenting to the executive group proved to be a vital development opportunity for my career and will only lead to more ownership of critical tasks. 

Being an Analyst at Deloitte Consulting LLP can challenge you every day to achieve to the best of your abilities and beyond.  Once you prove yourself and earn the trust of your colleagues, they will often assign you stretch roles that will test your professional fortitude and mold you into a top-notch consultant.

Managing Up (What Does that Even Mean…?) - Seiyonne Suriyakumar

The phrase “managing upward,” pops up in so many feedback and project evaluation discussions, that junior staff may mistake the commonality for low importance. The reality, though, is quite the contrary. Effective upward management not only makes the lives of project leadership easier, but it can make the life of the junior resource easier as well. Several of the managers and senior managers who I have worked with maintain that their achievement is in part due to their upward management skills.

The concept of managing upward revolves around project leadership being confident in your ability to self-manage to expectations. Simply put, it is the confidence that they don’t need to be constantly checking on you to know that work is being completed. Managers who are less worried about your ability to execute your current tasks will be less stressed, which can result in them giving you more autonomy, responsibility, or opportunity to outperform expectations.

A manager I have worked with several times noted that one of the best junior resources he worked with anticipated the next few steps beyond the current task and would update the manager regularly on his progress and next steps. As a result, the manager was never forced to micromanage the resource. The junior resource ended up having the opportunity to manage and present his own work stream, a task normally reserved for practitioners several years his senior.

So how does one manage upwards? The list below is just a few of the tips that may help one manage upwards.

• Proactively set checkpoints with your manager or team lead to ensure they know the status of your current task and any risks you may encounter
• Think about the next step after your task is done and take steps to ensure you are able to execute on it. Confirm and validate your hypotheses with your manager or team lead
• Think about the questions one may ask when reviewing your material – what additional information should you know so you can answer these questions?
• Double-check your work so that when it is reviewed, you have reduced errors and oversights

The Top 10 Reasons Deloitte University is One of the Best Training Experiences Imaginable - Rebecca Weidler

I just got back from a week of training at Deloitte University, and it was even better than all those YouTube videos made it out to be. Here are my Top 10 Reasons DU is one of the best training experiences imaginable:

1. The welcome. Imagine walking into a ballroom to be greeted by dozens of cheering partners, managers, and peer coaches as the most upbeat Top 40 songs serenade you into the room. It was the most enthusiastic and exciting welcome I could have imagined.  

2. Learning through simulation. No boring lectures at DU; we learned through doing. In one week, we essentially conducted a condensed client engagement, doing everything from research to financial modeling to presenting our findings and recommendations.

3. Meals. I was warned about “The DU Five” (a slightly milder version of the Freshman Fifteen) before arriving, but didn’t realize what a real possibility it would become. The buffet-style dining room had station after station of amazing food, from prime rib to gourmet fajitas to chocolate chip French toast.

4. The snacks. Every fifty yards, there’s a snack alcove filled with yogurt parfait, fruit, hummus, cupcakes, fresh-baked apple turnovers, and more. And did I mention that it’s all free?

5. Full-service Starbucks. That’s right, free.

6. The coaching. Our coaches mentored us, gave us advice from their time at Deloitte, and guided us through the trials of Excel. We grew to respect them even more on our last night after watching them do a choreographed dance to “Call Me Maybe.”

7. Our ability to laugh at ourselves. One of my best memories from DU is of everyone in my classroom collapsing in laughter as each team debriefed a disastrous mock interview designed to humorously trip us up. Deloitte knows how to bring levity to learning, and there was definitely far more laughter than angst that week.
8. The hotel. Designed by consultants for consultants, DU is the most detail-oriented conference center imaginable.

9. Teamwork. As an Inequality and Social Policy major at a liberal arts college, my financial knowledge extended just far enough to Profit=Revenue-Costs. However, my amazing teammates always took the time to teach me what they knew. In turn, I contributed my liberal arts ability to help structure an argument. The six people on my team were each remarkably intelligent individuals, but we achieved our goals as a team because of our ability to work together.

10. The people. The people were the most important part of DU. Everyone was smart, but that should go without saying. My new friends and colleagues were remarkable because of their passion and genuineness. From my teammates’ earnestness as they taught me Excel basics to the laughs we shared over dinner, I was continually struck by how happy I was to be a part of the same organization as these people.

As stories about summers spent volunteering in Namibia or Kenya morphed into conversations about international development, I was thankful that Deloitte had managed to bring together people with such depth and diversity of experience. As I stayed up late into the night talking about the harms of anti-gay bullying (the subject of my thesis) with three engaging partners, I realized how lucky I was to be a part of an organization where people genuinely care about the world and about each other. I learned so much at DU, but I gained just as many new friends as I did new skills, and that’s what makes DU truly remarkable.