Simon-Kucher & Partners (SK) launched the first of its kind management consulting accelerator program in Egypt, to meet the needs of today’s business community, empower students skills and boost their employability; the program is launched in cooperation with the faculty of Management Technology at the German University in Cairo (GUC) and the GUC Student Career & Alumni Development – SCAD – Office.
This Cooperation will further develop academic innovation in Egypt’s higher education sector, by providing tools and expertise that equip business learners with the required skills to expertly contribute with effective solutions to complex challenges facing businesses today across most sectors.
As SK expands operations in Egypt and Africa, this business-education partnership aims to unleash specialists that can unlock innovation and value in well-established as well as early-stage companies through tailored solutions.
With business subjects being some of the most sought after among university applicants, the accelerator program is a first step towards fostering a consulting hub in Africa’s second largest economy, by developing its business education and transferring know-how and utilizing one-of-a-kind tools to Egyptian young talent.
Considered the world’s leading pricing consultancy, SK has designed the program to deliver insights into best practices covering an array of commercial excellence strategies, such as customer segmentation, user experience, offer design, packaging, negotiation techniques, sales excellence and more.
The program starts this year with an information session under the name of “Consulting 101” with students to understand what their career aspirations are, clarify what management consulting is and detail the competencies they need to join consulting firms as well as those they will potentially acquire throughout their consulting career. SK consultants will also advise on how working at SK, or in the field in general, helps develop their leadership skills and enables them to transition to decision making roles later on.
Consulting 101 session will be followed by winter workshops under the name of “Consultancy Upskilling Boot camp” that provide hands-on experience and involve students in solving real management problems through anonymized project cases. Simon-Kucher team will train the GUC students on SK’s as well as other tools taught to GUC management students and give students a flavor of what a day in the life of a consultant looks like, what kind of reports they produce and how they identify the challenges their clients face, develop strategies and sense-check their recommendations.
After diving into business cases and practicing how to think and problem solve, students will get the chance to enroll in a competition where they utilize gained knowledge to apply on real given industry/company challenges. Local and international companies will be recruited for the competition to act as potential clients, and a judging panel, headed by SK and joined by GUC academia and industry experts, will select and award prizes to the winning team(s).
Quote by SK “Becoming a management consultant is highly rewarding, fulfilling and one of the most diverse jobs, as it acts as a window to a wide range of industries, challenges and trends. We are very proud of this program as we take an active role towards business consultancy capacity building, helping soon-to-be advisors become aware of modern-day management and business practices that can grow a company’s topline and profits, in almost any sector. We sincerely hope it contributes to advancing students’ employability chances or entrepreneurs’ skillsets that can help them establish successful startups and owned businesses.” – Ms. Maha Rashad, Managing Director
SK is considered one the first global consulting firms to establish an office in Egypt and serve the Egyptian public & private sector, and has been extending its consultancy services to a wide array of sectors like Banking, Payments, Private Equity, Retail, FMCG, Logistics, and Telco.
Quote by GUC “Employers are struggling to hire the right talent and we believe we can help fill that gap, through constant curriculum development, led by a cooperative approach between academia and the corporate world, to support GUC students in becoming the highest caliber of candidates in today’s fast changing job market. We believe this partnership brings us a step closer towards this goal” – to be quoted by Dr. Raghda Elebrashi
The program launches in December with the info session followed by the in-depth workshops in February, and the competition winners will be announced in May at the end of the semester.
