Driving Success Through Collaboration and Partnership

“The programme teaches you not just theoretical concepts and business models, but also how to benchmark yourself against others and apply your personal learning experiences, which is absolutely fundamental in the progression and development of a person.” Alessandra Del Centina, Principal Consultant at Vendigital

Having already seen significant success in her career from an early stage, Alessandra Del Centina, Principal Consultant at Vendigital, was keen to explore new opportunities to accelerate to a more senior level within her organisation and open up new challenges.

“After graduating in Management Engineering in Milan, I moved to the UK and worked on a graduate scheme supporting the different functions and departments across a business,” she says. “I realised very early on that I really enjoyed the variety of working on different projects and with different clients and so, took on a role as a Principal Consultant at managing consultants, Vendigital. It’s been a really fantastic opportunity to work across different sectors and companies, helping clients to rebuild their business models post-pandemic.”

“I’ve now come to a point in my career where I want to accelerate my success, expand my network and learn from others, surrounded by the best lecturers, support and opportunities that I can.”

Alessandra joined the Bath Executive MBA programme in 2021 with the support of her employer. “Having a background in engineering and business meant that a lot of the theoretical concepts are already known to me, but I was keen to revisit them as a professional and explore how different the experiences would be from my undergraduate studies,” she explained.

“As a management consultancy firm, we sell expertise, professionalism and skill, so the human element and the cultivation of talent is really important. I had seen colleagues grow and develop whilst they were completing their MBA so I was in a privileged position and could already see the benefits.”

Vendigital have been working with the MBA team at the University of Bath for almost 4 years. In that time, they have worked collaboratively to help identify and nurture potential candidates for the part-time Executive MBA programme, with the aim of developing talented colleagues with the right skills and knowledge to take the next step in their career ladder.

Anita Maguire, People Director at Vendigital, explained the strategic thinking behind their partnership with the University of Bath, “We were first introduced to the Bath MBA through the University’s graduate placement programme. It showed us the quality of graduates that come out of Bath and so we wanted to explore further how we could use this to develop our people, progress their careers and ultimately, deliver to our clients.”

“When thinking about succession planning, we consider how we equip our colleagues to reach their full potential and support their ambition to progress their career and move into bigger roles in the Vendigital team. We are always looking across our teams to identify motivated and passionate candidates who we think would benefit from an MBA. We quickly realised that there is a large appetite for it across our teams that was going to be of benefit to the organisation, but also to each of them as individuals.”

Anita stressed that there was more than simply good people development practice on the criteria list when looking for opportunities to develop their future leadership teams. “Have we seen a commercial benefit to our investment and partnership with Bath? Absolutely. We have seen a huge difference in every team member as they have progressed through the Bath MBA program. All of the students that we have sponsored have progressed in seniority levels.”

“Vendigital are expecting to grow by 30-40% this year alone and we see the MBA executive programme as a key enabler of developing our team and the leadership team of tomorrow. The impacts have been far-reaching, providing us with a competitive advantage and level of credibility that allows us to compete with the big consultancies.”

Alessandra recognises the impact the course has already had on her personal strategic development, and how she applies this to her role at Vendigital. “The programme teaches you not just theoretical concepts and business models, but also how to benchmark yourself against others and apply your personal learning experiences, which is absolutely fundamental in the progression and development of a person.”

“There is this fantastic, immersive learning atmosphere where it is safe to challenge one another and be really open and honest about some of the things that we can do better as professionals but also for our organisations,” she explains. “The modules and assignments encourage a strategic frame of mind and constantly challenge you to consider the bigger picture of why are we doing this and what are we trying to achieve? You can then apply this to your work and make changes that have huge impact and make you so much more effective in the workplace.”

Anita’s advice for anyone considering an MBA partnership for their employees? “If you are serious about succession planning and how best to develop your teams, do speak with the MBA recruitment team at the University of Bath. They are incredibly knowledgeable about the programme, the content, the type of individual that it would really benefit but also how to make it work for your organisation so that you get the most out of your investment.”

“We’ll absolutely continue our partnership with the MBA at Bath to help drive our business forwards.”

Visit The Bath MBA for more information or contact Becky Gallagher at [email protected]