Do you want to gain experience within retail consultancy during your studies? And discover whether consultancy is the right fit? This might be the perfect opportunity for you to get a glance and experience whether or not this is the case.
When writing your thesis at IG&H you’ll get to experience the consultancy profession during your studies. Together with you, we’ll shape the thesis.
You can either come to us with a suggestion, or you can use the following description as a place to get started:
Description of the ‘Instant Network’ thesis opportunity
Creating an ‘instant network’ is highly costly and requires high volume to operate cost effectively. Instant networks are only offered by few parties in NL (Thuisbezorgd, Deliveroo, Uber Eats, some start-ups). This challenging business model hinders swift introduction and/or expansion of new ‘instant’ services.
The concept is to integrate plannable flows to instant (point-to-point) demand and create a step change in the cost curve. Every ‘instant order’ is combined with adjacent stops with next day orders, effectively lowering the instant drop costs by >50% without adding costs for plannable flows.
Why this topic is highly relevant for IG&H
Combining different time-windowed volumes to create a cost effective and scalable instant network to enable a sustainable advantage in NL high service delivery segment.
• Creating an ‘instant network’ is costly and cannot be operated stand alone, and few ((r)e-tail) parties in NL expected to have the required volume.
• Opens up opportunities for services / customer value propositions / USPs for which currently there is no positive business case / business model.
• Could potentially lower threshold to expand instant / 2hr network to new locations that stand alone are not interesting.
Key Questions:
• What is needed to create an ’instant network’ that can delivers against <50% of costs of existing instant networks (e.g. Thuisbezorgd, Deliveroo, …)
• How do costs develop with volume? (from whole network perspective, incl. shipping, sorting, distribution, last mile delivery)
• What is the ‘break-even’ point when costs are lower than of a dedicated instant network?
• What is minimum volume needed for this to work? (on a local level – e.g. Amsterdam, Utrecht, Haarlem, etc.)
• What neighbourhood characteristics are key drivers for enabling such instant network?
• What ‘needs to be true’ on operational, tactical and strategic level to combine different time-windowed volumes?
What will you learn from this experience?
What’s special about joining IG&H is that everybody will do their best to help you in any way they can. Which also means helping you with your personal development, by setting goals and making sure you progress. During your thesis you and your IG&H mentor look at your personal and professional development. In addition to your thesis, you also participate in our Consultant Development Program. This development program consists of training courses, inspiration sessions and social activities.
Among many other things, you’ll learn to:
• Structure ambiguous problems and make a roadmap on how to solve these problems
• Use both quantitative and qualitative analysis to get a good understanding of the company’s situation
• Making sure solutions work out in real life, not just on a whiteboard
• Present information in a way that’s new and understandable for everyone involved
• Become a great communicator