I’m finishing my studies at Aalto University, faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, and I’m majoring in Strategy & Venturing. Our studies bring together both technical and financial aspects of business, so applying for Digital & Strategy (D&S) internship was an easy decision for me. The competence of the D&S team consists of digital advisory, customer experience, commercial excellence and strategy, which perfectly combine my personal career interests and university studies.
My main project during the internship was the annual Digital Leaders Study, where almost 70 Finnish companies’ performance in digital customer interface are analyzed with almost 400 criteria. The study covers multiple industries, and it was extremely interesting to see how, for example, B2B and B2C companies differed from each other. While I was gathering and analyzing the data, I truly understood what it takes to be a forerunner and a market leader in digital marketing, digital product experience, e-Commerce, and e-CRM. In addition to the Digital Leaders Study, I participated in sales processes, prepared proposals, and discussion materials for client meetings. When all these are combined, the D&S internship at BearingPoint gives an excellent view about digitalization-oriented and customer-centric advisory practice.
A typical day of a D&S intern consists of couple of meetings with the project team where we go through the status, risks, and next steps. Between the meetings, I had individual work including data gathering, data analysis, providing insights and preparing materials. I especially liked that interns are given as much responsibility as they like, and whenever support is needed, the challenges are tackled together. This approach provides an excellent learning platform for interns to develop their management consulting skills. In addition, the competence in the office is immense, so when constantly being surrounded by different subject-matter experts the learning curve is very steep.
The people at BearingPoint are extremely easy-going, welcoming and professional, and from the first day the focus was on individual development and providing an excellent internship experience. During the internship, we had many events varying from office parties to sports activities, such as padel and golf tournaments. The events were good opportunities to meet the outstanding people of the office from different teams. I think as a company BearingPoint combines the benefits of both large and small organizations, where interns can develop their management consulting skills in a professional environment but also have fun in a low hierarchy organization and relaxed atmosphere.