Proudly Made in Africa (PMIA)
‘Real World’ Consulting Project
Background
Proudly Made in Africa (PMIA) is a social enterprise empowering African entrepreneurs for their businesses to capture value through sustainable and ecological trade practices. This project was undertaken alongside studies to gain real-time exposure to working with a client in a safe environment as the project was mentored by a UCD academician.
Requirements
I was tasked to work closely in a team of 7 with a coffee company from Kenya, Tilisi. The company was looking to expand their geographical operation and targeting Ireland as a potential market. We were tasked to create a go-to-market strategy for the company.
CHALLENGES
There were two major challenges:
The SPOC (single point of contact) from PMIA asked us to redefine the project scope with limited information—the client is market-ready yet has no knowledge of current retail pricing and costs.
The client was unavailable for three weeks after the kick-off call as he was travelling to Somalia which was in political strife and had no internet availability.
Steps
The team began with a traditional approach of identifying and working on the 4Ps of marketing to gain a preliminary understanding. With the guidance of the academic mentor Professor Bernard Faughey, we were able to apply the guesstimate technique and prepare a comprehensive report for the client. We also provided a 1-year timeline providing quarterly goals and key performance indicators to track along with metrics for success.
RESULT
The client was extremely happy with the presentation and mentioned a special thanks for pulling up the project with limited client availability.
LEARNINGS
The project enabled me to learn about the Irish coffee market potential (of which I knew very little). My team comprised of people belonging to different native countries studying different majors such as international business, marketing, finance and supply chain which allowed me to expand my knowledge base and also get exposed to different cultures. Finally, I understood the importance of guesstimation in the life of a consultant.