Hello everyone,I have been working at Commercial Due Diligence with the Big Four for 2 years now. I feel I want to keep leaning new things and so I am pondering a move to Operations Excellence or Corporate Strategy. What differences between projects would you say are most obvious between those practices?Thanks for your help.

Hi there, I want to move the other way (currently working for a strategy arm of one of the big 4 consultancy firms) and I think i'd prefer a bit more accountancy (believe it or not) and tangible analysis in my role: the analysis I do tends to be centred around a few days to derive the results of our hypotheses and the rest of the time I'm preparing to give slides to the doc production department!Can you give me a breakdown of a typical day/week, your tasks and what someone would need to be good at/enjoy to do well in CDD?Cheers in advance

Sure, basically there are many peaks here and there since the standard project lasts 3 weeks. Its very much like doing some standard analyses and then really doing the due diligence in terms of "whats good and bad about this firm". It very much depends on whether you are doing a vendors due diligence or a buyer due diligence as you can imagine. Teams tend to be 4-5 people the most (although some big projects will demand a lot more). I have seen plenty of times too how there's this tradeoff between quality and speed which tends to fall back more on the speed side. The clients that ask you for the due diligence are also very important. PEs are extremely picky and they are so ultra-smart that they have to know about everything more than you do. Commercial buyers are a bit more open and relaxed, but they really know their stuff.I hope this helps a bit, let me know if you have more questions.Likewise, could you please answer from your side the questions you asked me (bearing in mind the comparisons with CDD)? Also, what kind of consultancy do you do?

oo, wow, I et my post hijacked. I am helpful to the hijacker and i dont even get a reply!Not bad for someone who wants to improve his/her clients business!

For the sake of being polite I apologise. I'm pretty snowed under with work and my 18 hour shift yesterday meant your post is moving towards the bottom of the list.I'll reply when I have the time to write mroe than three sentences.