Bain & Company Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Q1. Hi Bhavya, how has your day been so far?
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Q2. Tell me about yourself.
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Q3. How was your experience at Bain earlier this year?
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Q4. How do you like to spend your weekends prior to IIML?
Ans. 
I enjoyed exploring new places, trying new cuisines, and spending time with friends and family.
• I loved traveling to different cities and countries

• I enjoyed trying out new restaurants and cuisines

• I spent time with my friends and family, either by going out or having them over

• I also enjoyed reading books and watching movies in my free time
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Q5. What projects did you work on during your time at Deloitte?
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An IT company is seeing decline in profits. Diagnose the issue & provide recommendations.
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate] 

I: (Interviewer realized I was a bit anxious and stressed, so had a candid conversation about Bain, her work there and general stuff about IIML for 5-7 minutes).

Okay Bhavya, let's get started with a case. Our client is one of the top 3 IT service providers, you can imagine it to be a Wipro/Infosys. It has 5 verticals: CPR, Manufacturing, Tech, Media and Financial Services. Of these, CPR, Manufacturing and Financial Services have a sales Department. The work of the IT company involves building applications, infra maintenance or building of servers, app maintenance, data work (e.g., Cloud) and IT consulting work. Now the focus here has to be on IT Consulting.

For procuring these projects, the company has salespeople. They have targets they have to meet based on which their salary is dependent.

Now, it has been observed that our sales have decreased while the salesforce commissions based on the targets have remained the same. It has also been observed that the average time period per project has decreased. Can you help us diagnose this?

C: Sure! Firstly, could I know since when this decline has been there and whether it has been there across the verticals?

I: It's a secular decline, taking place for the last 1 year.

C: Alright, secondly, I'd like to understand the salespersons' salary structure a little better. I'd imagine there would be a fixed and variable component, and the variable component is based on them meeting the sales targets?

I: Yes, and let's assume the variable component makes up most of the salary.

C: Great, could you explain how the commission structure is designed?

I: The structure is designed as No. Of projects * Conversion Factor.

C: Oh okay, what exactly is the conversion factor?

I: Good question. The conversion factor is defined two ways: 1) Number of projects won/ Number of projects bid or 2) value of projects won/value of projects bid.

C: Oh, so if I get this correctly, there's one based on no. of projects while the other is based on the sales value of projects?

I: Yes, that is correct.

C: Oh alright, I'd want to dig deeper into this a little bit before I proceed. Have both metrics seen a decline?

I: No, so while number of projects won is at par, the value won has declined.

C: Understood. So here I'd want to explore potentially something were doing wrong because of which the value we're winning is low.

I: Go ahead.

C: So, I believe there could be a couple of things. Either there's some problem with the projects itself, with the way they're being pitched by salespeople, or the competition is offering something better.

I: Hmm, well the pitch is fine. But the competition is largely providing longer term projects while we aren't.

C: Understood, so in that case, that seems to be the issue. We aren't able to pitch longer term projects which might have higher dollar value. Now, I'd want to understand differences between the competition and us in terms of securing these longer-term projects. Can I assume similar types of projects and similar salespersons?

I: Yes.

C: Okay, in that case, if the salespersons are similar and so are the projects, there might be an issue in pushing the projects from our salespersons. Is the conversion factor we talked about linked to Number of Projects or Value of Projects?

I: Yes, the conversion factor is largely linked to number of projects.

C: Understood. In that case, it's apparent that pushing longer term projects isn't incentivized adequately, is that fair?

I: Yes. However, there are other factors at play too, since till last year the value of projects was at par.

C: Understood. Are there other attributes of longer-term projects that differentiate themselves from the short-term projects? Potentially in terms of nature of projects, time to convert for salespersons or effort involved even in shorter time periods?

I: Yes, the second is the case. It takes more time on average to close the project which is causing the issue. Do you have any recommendations for this issue?

C: Yes, for our current sales,

1) We could incentivize longer term projects better through value-based approach

2) We could train the salesforce to pitch the projects in a shorter time period and close it earlier

3) We could increase the quality/composition of Salesforce that could be more equipped to deal longer term projects. Alternatively, we could think of identifying new areas of sales that could compensate for lost sales through longer term projects, potentially specializing in short term projects and increasing volume there.

I: Great, thanks Bhavya. How do you think it went?

C: Umm, I think I diagnosed the problem, but it took a lot of time to reach there. Could've been more efficient.

I: Yep, I felt it was alright as well, you could've been more efficient. But thanks for your time, and best of luck!

Havells Chief Logistics Head is thinking of employing Bain. What ideas can we propose? (I had worked in the Transportation & Logistics space during Deloitte Consulting, so case made potentially keeping that in mind)
[Please note that I stands for Interviewer and C stands for Candidate] 

(Interviewer proceeded to tell me about himself and experience at Bain. He asked me questions including why don't you tell me about yourself, what was your work like at Deloitte, how do you spend your weekends, post that to ease me into the case)

I: So, you know how these interviews go, I am obligated to give you a case while I'd like to keep chatting. Let me give you something maybe slightly related to what you've worked on.

Your client is head of logistics of Havells. This is our 1st meeting with him, and we're supposed to have a conversation to pitch ideas.

C: Great, just so I understand this correctly, we have to pitch some ideas to Havells' Logistics head regarding potential improvements in their department for reducing logistics costs?

I: Yes.

C: I'd like to understand Havells a bit better before I proceed. Is it the electrical goods company? What sort of products does it have and what is its value chain like?

I: So yes, Havells has multiple factories and produces wires, switches, etc. They manage their own logistics.

C: Okay, and just to be sure about this, they procure raw material, there's inbound logistics, they manufacture the goods, there’s out outbound logistics, they store goods at their own warehouses and sell it to distributors?

I: Yes. You can ignore inbound logistics, however. Just focus on factories to distributors.

C: Great, also are there any specific objectives Havells has, going into this meeting?

I: Yeah, so you can assume they want to improve cost of logistics as a % of revenue. So even a 5% improvement for 10K crore company is high.

C: So, the structure I'd like to proceed with involves assessing Transportation & Warehousing. I can potentially proceed with transportation here.

I: Go ahead

C: Under transportation, aspects I'd want to look at include 1) The Modal Mix 2) The Route design 3) Effectiveness of covering routes.

I: What do you mean by Modal Mix? Havells just uses Road.

C: Oh okay, I could have looked into any scope for efficiency from transports mix that could reduce costs. Is there a constraint only on using roads on?

I: Yes, go ahead with route design?

C: Sure. So, there we could explore the potential routes decided at a network level between plants to minimize time and cost. The permutations could be explored that work best for Havells.

I: How can a consulting firm here provide value? Havells must know it's routes well already.

C: I understand, but:

1) Consulting firms typically have access to huge amounts of data and analytics tools that are unique solutions for such kinds of problems. We could leverage them to optimize route design for them.

2) Business owners/heads have their own biases while approaching such issues, an objective route mapping could help check for any bottlenecks.

I: Okay, go ahead?

C: Under route effectiveness, I'd want to look at if there's any internal or external factors that inhibit truck owners from covering these routes adequately. In internal issues, aspects such as truck capacity/truck effectiveness in carrying goods, driver issues can be explored. In external issues, aspects such as stoppages, bribery etc. could be explored.

I: Okay, but why does this even matter?

C: Improving effectiveness in routes would mean lesser time taken on these routes.

I: And how does that help? They pay fixed amount per ton to drivers.

C: Well time saved would mean more tons delivered in the total time present. Then the incremental revenues in the time saved would be the benefit to Havells.

I: Hmm, let's move forward.

C: Right, I'll move to warehousing now. Herein, I believe again either optimization at the network level can be done or within warehouses can be done.

I: What sort of optimization at network level are you talking about? And how would we do it?

C: This would involve the ideal placement of warehouses on the routes to minimize time and costs, as discussed earlier for route design using data and analytics. Herein the aspects to optimize would include:

1) Number of warehouses

2) Location of warehouses.

I: Hmm. Can you provide aspects within warehouse improvements?

C: Sure, this would include aspects such as improving turnaround time of trucks at warehouses and improving logistics operations within the warehouse.

I: Examples of within warehouse improvements?

C: Few that come to mind include improving inventory management, assembly and roll out of goods in shortest time. Labor and Role of automation here could be explored for improvements in time.

I: Hmm. Alright, we can stop here. How do you think it went?

C: I think it was alright, I tried to cover the board but there could've been improvements.

I: Right, I think you largely covered everything. Just could've taken more pauses and been more concise. But that's fine. Alright, best of luck and take care Bhavya!