E.g. in terms of access to information, data, financials, strategy etc. I am assuming this happens quite often, so how do teams manage to let the client feel comfortable with sharing information?
E.g. in terms of access to information, data, financials, strategy etc. I am assuming this happens quite often, so how do teams manage to let the client feel comfortable with sharing information?
Hi,
Great question.
Typically there are very strict rules in terms of:
Hope this helps to clarify!
You are correct, this is a problem that is faced quite often. At Bain, it is especially an issue in multi-bidders with private equity clients (i.e. multiple funds considering the acquisition of the same target).
There are several ways companies deal with these issues:
Hi Kay,
As you can imagine confidentiality is essential to consulting firm business development. In most firm there is a culture of condentiality, never sharing the name of client with colleagues,or even more outside the office.
Regarding your question about working with competitors : this is actually what make part of the consulting value added. As a third party you can work with different players accross the industry and have a sens about best practice or references on many dimensions (weither its quantitative or qualitative). In any case no data from competitors is shared directly to another client :
- either we gather and sanytize some analysis we produce to produce "market average player" points
- in case two teams are working on the same and with two different clients at the same time, there is letteraly a chinese wall, and the team can't speak to each other for the time of the job
- very strict "clean desk" policy is observed, making sure no document remain on the table at any time, in case a client from competition would visit the office and could see something not intended to him.
- high level of data protection, with systematic password to protect critic files
Best
Benjamin