I worked on several cross-functional projects, and I had the opportunity to work alongside (virtually) the lead generation, customer acquisition, and communications teams. A big hurdle that Oradian is facing right now is to how to best keep track of all client and prospective client data insights in a consolidated and coordinated way. My main project was to work with each of these teams, understand their source and use of customer data, and devise a way to best store it in a consolidated database. Despite being a late-stage startup, Oradian does not have a CRM tool in place. My task was to aggregate all customer data and develop a protocol that engaged all teams. Oradian is aggressively targeting the Filipino market right now and developing an all-encompassing tool for current and prospective clients is essential in solidifying their business development strategy. Another important aspect that I covered was tracking perspective clients and identifying which marketing campaigns were most effective. For this, I worked closely with the team based in the Philippines to create a tool that showed progress over time and could be filtered by various customer characteristics.

Given my prior experience from my SIPA capstone, I have a good understanding of the operations, challenges, and performance goals of many microfinance institutions. This underlying knowledge of the microfinance industry was able to provide adequate context to the business development goals that I was supporting. Something of particular interest for me is the regulatory landscape in each country in which Oradian operates. While I did not have firsthand exposure to the regulatory hurdles Oradian must overcome in each country they operate in, I found their previous webinars and educational materials very informative and appealing.

My project was very data intensive. I was working in multiple spreadsheets downloaded from several platforms and my task was to synthesize the data in a way that made it useful for future projections. So many of my MBA courses made these types of tasks simple for me, but nothing prepared me more than my internship last summer. My MBA internship in M&A consulting gave me an excellent toolset of analytical skills to manage large sets of data and produce constructive outputs. Working mostly in Excel, I was able to use logic tests and shortcuts to simplify large data sets.

I found working remotely and in a different time zone relatively challenging. My conversation with Oradian about the summer internship started in early February and we remained in touch as the pandemic escalated. I think we were both hoping and anticipating this experience to be in-person in Zagreb, Croatia where the headquarters are located. The onboarding experience was very minimal and the resources provided did not offer profound insights to some of the key aspects of the business model and team structure. Specifically, it was unclear at times which teams were responsible for certain business functions. As time passed, it became clear that, internally, they were not even clear about the delegation of roles and responsibilities. I started highlighting some holes in their processes and it became apparent that team members were dodging these responsibilities and hoping someone else would manage this. This was a bit of an awkward role for me, but I tried to put forth several solutions through process mapping to clearly highlight where the missing pieces were. Another challenge was that I was reporting into three teams, and these three teams disagreed about how processes and operations should be managed. Several times, I felt the need to schedule a call with all team members so they could have a direct conversation, rather than funneling information through me.

I was very grateful to have this experience with Oradian this summer. Several times, I recognized that this experience could be very similar to a project that I will be assigned as a consultant. I will be starting with EY Parthenon as a consultant in just a few weeks, and I think many of the skills that I refined this summer with Oradian will be great assets to me early in my new career. As for the quantitative skills, I was required to synthesize massive amounts of data and produce summaries and gather insights, which is certainly something that will be required of me in my new role. In terms of the soft skills, having to navigate competing opinions about how to develop a cross-functional process was a huge challenge, but I learned a lot from it. I also reflected on moments where I felt stuck, frustrated, and even bored. I want to continue developing in these moments such as these so that I can grow. Something that was difficult to identify this summer was a mentor or at least a peer with more experience that I could bounce ideas off of or turn to when I felt stuck. This is something that I will prioritize as I start my career with EY.