Indranil Ghosh provides part one of a two-part series on efficacy and impact of ESG investing. This article pertains to the effects of the coronavirus on ESG investing. Five years ago, many people dismissed environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) investing as a fad because it put purpose alongside profit. But today, ESG investing seems to have become mainstream as global flows into sustainable investing are worth upwards of $4 trillion annually. Furthermore, as the Covid-19 crisis mounted in…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Sara Zanichelli. Sara has 10+ years of strategy consulting experience, as core member of Financial Services Practice at BCG and previously at Simon-Kucher & Partners (recognized as world leader in pricing consultancy). After BCG, she held managerial roles in ING Bank (innovative digital bank, agile pioneer), being responsible for customer value management (marketing, pricing, customer intelligence, complains) and later serving as tribe leader for lending products. Sara spent the last 6 months in Qatar, working…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Himanshu Sharma with Avolve Group.  Himanshu has 15+ years of experience across strategy and operating roles across both in industry (Citi, Capital One) and consulting (4+ years at Monitor Deloitte Strategy), serving medium-large global clients. Himanshu has particular expertise in financial services and insurance, with a functional focus on strategy, new product solution development, partnerships and product marketing / go-to-market. He lives in Jersey City, NJ with his wife and daughter, performs stand-up comedy in…

  As all areas of business move into digital technology, Ramesh Subramanian explains why the digital transformation requires infrastructure engineers to expand their software skills.  Several years ago I started my career as a C++ programmer but to be relevant as a software engineer today would require many more software engineering skills. The same logic holds for Infrastructure engineers. About 94% of enterprises (and 50% of Governments) use some form of cloud (private/public) today. And as per an estimate from…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Christopher Rischard.  Christopher Rischard spent eight years as Digital Leader in the TMT practice at Booz & Company based in Paris and Madrid focused on digitalization, data and tech-enabled growth strategy. After several years as a Principal, he set off as an independent consultant in London in 2014. Prior to Booz and his MBA at INSEAD, Christopher lived in Washington DC where he was raised and he worked for 8 years in enterprise solutions sales…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Rijul Takkar. Rijul Takkar is a Strategy and Operations Consultant specialising in the Metals and Mining sector. He worked with a boutique consulting firm, The Smart Cube, for four years where he led the business transformation programme for the largest steelmaker in the UK. He has extensive experience in setting up transformation offices, driving operations excellence and managing change in large-scale manufacturing organisations. He also worked as a Specialist Consultant with BCG in their Industrial…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome David Uriarte with Horvent. David Uriarte, former BCG consultant, has an outstanding track record of achievement in customer experience, business management, digital transformation and development in travel & leisure and other service industries. Senior international advisor, entrepreneur and executive with more than 20 years of relevant experience. Digital and people passionate, optimistic, flexible, with a strong strategic vision and leadership in high growth business. Managing Partner in Horvent Advisory Services and Partner of GuestPro (Leading…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Swan Sit.  wan Sit is an independent consultant specializing in digital, marketing and strategy. Having spent the past decade of her career accelerating digital into legacy companies, she held two key roles as a Vice President at Nike — overseeing Global Digital Marketing during the Emmy-winning “Dream Crazy” campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick, and running Digital Operations, Product, Supply Chain and Service for a $2B ecommerce business during the Air Jordan 11 Concord launch, the largest…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Richard Cho with Growing Abundance Mindsets.  Through his time at Gartner, Bridgewater, and McKinsey Richard developed a set of tools, frameworks and practices that have been adapted from leading business thinkers and applied across multiple Fortune 500 company teams to successfully drive new initiatives. Often times technology problems are usually business engagement problems, and he has a track record of getting these initiatives on track. Richard is passionate about building world-class cross-functional digital teams that go after big…

  This in-depth article from Boris Galonske explains how digitization helps improve resilience in commodity trading. Commodity trading suffers from shrinking margins and in some commodity classes also from low price volatility. At the same time operating environments struggle with manual routines, legacy processes and systems resulting in high cost income ratios (CIR). How can this challenge be addressed and how can the profitability and the resilience of trading businesses be increased? Situation today Commodity trading exhibits still several manual…

  C.V. Ramachandran discusses what it takes to institute digital transformation successfully by engaging a holistic approach that provides support for every part of a company’s value chain. Big data, machine learning, connected vehicles, industry 4.0, robotic process automation, blockchain … No matter what industry you are in, you have surely come across these popular buzzwords in recent years. These are the phrases that define digital transformation, a modern industrial revolution that has the potential to dramatically transform companies and…

Stephen Redwood provides a post that addresses a common problem most companies face when shifting to a new system: how to organize all the moving parts to prepare for the transformation.    Not since the world went from moving around by horse and cart to the use of steam engines, has the pace of change accelerated as much as it is now. So, when back in February 2018 Forrester published a paper entitled Digital Rewrites the Rules of Business it…

Kaihan Krippendorff provides three signposts that can direct your organization towards a successful pivot.   If people try to tell you that pivoting is the new thing, that it’s the fresh Silicon Valley approach to business designed for today’s fast-paced digital world, don’t believe them. Consider Fairfield University, a private school founded just outside of New York in Fairfield, Connecticut, by the Catholic Church – a 2,000-year-old organization. In 1941, the society that runs the Jesuit school system had acquired two…