For your reference, we've included some sample project ideas below. We encourage educators to mix-and-match components from various departments so that the projects are cross functional in nature. In all cases, we customize the projects based on company goals and course teaching objectives.

Growth Plan and KPI Performance Assessment

1. How has the business evolved over time? How does the team feel about the past, present, and future of the business?
2. What key metrics does the company use to run the business and make key strategic decisions? How are these calculated? What does the company envision for the future for each metric? Does that seem to align with management expectations?
3. What are some key concerns and areas of focus that the host company should consider when preparing for the future of the business?

Industry Benchmarking Assessment

1. Who are the biggest competitors and how do they stack up against the company's model? Do a SWOT assessment.
2. Do any companies present interesting opportunities for partnerships? What about potential mergers and acquisitions?
3. Who are the key thought leaders and media outlets in the space? What are they publishing and how do they interact with companies like yours?
4. Design a comprehensive industry overview report. Pay close attention to the key players, their growth trajectory, and the major regions where they find the most success.

Customer Retention & Growth

1. How well does the company address customer needs from a product and service perspective? Do their customers seem happy with their purchase?
2. What’s the general customer perception of the company’s brand?
3. How large are the largest accounts compared to the smaller accounts? What makes the difference between these two contract-types?
4. What percentage of accounts can scale to becoming 50-200% larger? Does the company seem positioned to scale?

Establish Company Goals & Projections

1. Analyze the company’s growth plan. What areas of the business seem most opportunistic and/or concerning? Consider their growth plan and existing traction.
2. How does the company today compare to the company months and/or years ago?
3. What does the company want to look like in the future?
4. What are the KPIs and how well well do they tie to your assessment of company performance in strategic areas?
5. How do you think the KPIs will change as the business scales?

We've included some sample project ideas below. We encourage users to mix-and-match components from various departments for the best cross functional project experience. In all cases, we customize the projects based on company goals and student learning objectives.

1. What is the company’s product and business model? Does the company have competitors internationally? How do their products and services stack up against international competitors?
2. What regions/countries/cities around the world seem ripe for expansion. Why? What metrics can you use to justify this?
3. What regions seem the most strategic? Why? How would you suggest entering? What resources and/or changes to the business model would be required?
4. What cultural or governmental norms might have an effect on the proposed plan? How can you mitigate negative risk factors?.

1. What is the company’s business model and product?
2. Why do they plan to expand into a new specific region?
3. What is the language, education, religion, values, customs, socio-economic, and geo-political make-up of the new target region?
4. What is the company’s plan to mitigate risks when entering the new market?
5. Would you recommend that they move forward? Why or why not? If so, how would you measure success?

1. What is the company’s business model and product?
2. What competitors does the company have in the country and/or region?
3. How have similar companies entered the market?
4. What risks exist domestically and regionally from a political perspective? How might that relate to the user adoption and market potential?
5. How risky is the opportunity? What is the potential upstate? Do the benefits outweigh the costs?

We've included some sample project ideas below. We encourage users to mix-and-match components from various departments for the best cross functional project experience. In all cases, we customize the projects based on company goals and student learning objectives.

• Industry Marketing Benchmarking Analysis

  1. What is the company's target demographic, product, and business model?
  2. What is the customer’s problem and how the company's product or service is solving that problem?
  3. How would you compare the company's products with the rest of the providers in the industry? Pay close attention to how other companies are marketing their products and positioning the brands.
  4. How would you compare the company’s marketing performance to competitors?
  5. What improvements would you recommend based on your assessment?

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  Marketing Strategy Impact Analysis
  1. Examine the company's past marketing strategies. What worked? What did not? How would you showcase progress over time?
  2. Compile data into a visualization to track trends of successful and less successful strategies.
  3. Compare the company's marketing tactics with competitors to showcase what works effectively - or not effectively - with certain customer demographics
  4. What other marketing strategies could be used to benefit the company?
  5. What technologies could be involved in different marketing strategies? How can you use them most effectively? How would you measure success?

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  Marketing Strategy Development

• 1. What are the company's past marketing strategies? What worked? What did not? How would you showcase progress over time?
  2. What is the customer’s perception of the company’s brand, product, and services?
  3. Propose 2-3 digital, experiential, or social, marketing strategies for the company to consider. Assess cost, reach, mediums, and any other components needed for a full understanding of this investment.
  4. Select one campaign and develop a road-map that will prepare the company to launch your campaign. Keep in mind timing, required resources (budget, people, etc.), projected results, and how you would measure ROI.

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  Customer Brand Perception Analysis

  1. Does the company assess their brand perception at all? If so, what do you find interesting about the process or findings?
  2. Conduct structured customer interviews to gain a better understanding of their customers’ preferences, purchasing habits, and decision-making processes. Consider: Demographics, Discovery Channels, and their Product Aptitude
  3. Suggest a new effective process to collect more customer data on brand perception and customer experience.

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  Marketing Mix Assessment & Recommendations

  1. Consider a 360 marketing approach when deciding the appropriate channels to utilize. What is the current marketing mix for the company? Analyze where the company spends the most and where the company performs bests.
  2. Propose an alternative marketing mix for the company that you think will work best for the product, industry, and customer type. Where should the company allocate resources to generate better performance? Consider paid advertising, social, display, content, guerrilla , experiential, affiliate, partnerships, etc.
  3. What are the costs and benefits of using your strategy? What are the key risks and costs? Compare these risks with potential reach and benefit.

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  Industry M&A Temperature Check

  1. What makes the company unique compared to competitors in their industry?
  2. Review existing data and current plans. Analyze the opportunities that the company is considering through strategic company interviews with key stakeholders.
  3. Hypothesize potential synergies with other players in the market. Is this market ripe for consolidation? How are you making that assessment?
  4. What benefits would these mergers and/or acquisitions present for the company?

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  Competitor (or Target List) Analysis

  1. Who are main competitors in the market?
  2. What unique offerings does each competitor have? How does the company product, service, and brand compare to these companies?
  3. Do any of these competitors see reasonable to acquire? Do any of them seem ripe to acquire you?
  4. Create a detailed profile of each competitor in the industry with a buy/sell assessment.

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  Merger or Acquisition Simulation

  1. Select a company and walk through the procedure of exploring a merger or acquisition. What are the costs, benefits, and likelihood of success with this potential transaction?
  2. Would this potential merger or acquisition be beneficial to your host company if it were successful? Why or why not?
  3. What key strategies would you use to initiate OR implement that merger or acquisition?

We've included some sample project ideas below. We encourage users to mix-and-match components from various departments for the best cross functional project experience. In all cases, we customize the projects based on company goals and student learning objectives.

• Analyze and Suggest Improvements for Internal Communication and Tools

  1. Investigate current ways the company’s team is communicating internally. How active is the company from a communication standpoint? What suite of tools are they using? How well are these tools integrated with one another? Consider: calendar, chat, email, and project management at the very minimum.
  2. Does the team seem to be using all of the same tools and doing so effectively? How do these tools compare to similar tools on the market? How do these tools affect productivity and employee satisfaction? Note: This assignment requires interviews and surveys of significant internal stakeholders at the company.
  3. Is there a cheat sheet when it comes to communication and project management at the company? If so, review the manual and provide recommendations on updates based on what you’ve learned from the company personnel. If not, produce a rough draft of the manual or cheat sheet and review it with your project managers.
  4. Provide the company with a proposal including the analysis of the status quo of communication in the company and thoroughly examine recommendations for future improvement.

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  Automation Assessment & Recommendations

  1. What suite of tools is the company currently using? How well are these tools integrated with one another?
  2. How can the company be better automating certain processes to improve productivity?
  3. Find 2-3 areas that could use automation.
  4. Select one area of potential automation to focus on. Build automation or suggest step-by-step process of how automation can accomplish the desired business objective. How would this automation save money and/or time for the business?

Cross Functional Departmental Cooperation Assessment & Recommendations

1. What are the different functional areas?
2. How do they interact with each other?
3. What improvements could you recommend to improve internal interdepartmental communication? Think standing meetings, internal newsletters, new checklists, and other mechanisms that might help improve cross functional department collaborations.

We've included some sample project ideas below. We encourage users to mix-and-match components from various departments for the best cross functional project experience. In all cases, we customize the projects based on company goals and student learning objectives.

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  Analyze the Role of Public Relations on Enhancing Customer Experience

  1. Do similar companies at a similar stage and size have a PR function? If so, how is that role designed? How do they use PR to enhance the overall customer experience? If so, how?
  2. Interview the folks responsible for Public Relations at your host company to get a sense for how they have been doing PR so far. What is the relationship between customer satisfaction and PR at your host company? Are they related at all? Which aspects of the PR activities influence the overall customer experience?
  3. How satisfied are the customers of the company? Administer customer interviews and/or questionnaires to determine how satisfied the customers are with the product, service, and overall purchasing experience.
  4. What recommendations do you have for the company on how they can improve their overall PR process in order to further enhance the customer experience? Are there specific campaigns or processes that can be implemented to enhance the overall PR function and customer experience?

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  Analyze and Recommend Improvements of Public Relations Strategy through Social Media

  1. Conduct a comprehensive analysis on what media channels (including social and others) that the company currently uses for Public Relations. To what extent is social media being used for PR purposes as opposed to other channels? How does this compare to their industry peers?
  2. Collect data from the company’s social media accounts and analyze: Does the company differentiate their marketing initiatives from their PR initiatives on their social media? How does the company balance PR and marketing on social? What reach and impact do these two initiatives typically have? How do they compare to one another?
  3. How can the company enhance their PR when it comes to their social media channels? What do similar companies do when it comes to PR through social media? What are best practices you could recommend when it comes to PR through social media?

Deep Dive on Public Image & Suggest Performance Improvements

1. Establish a way to assess public image through surveys and interviews.
2. Analyze the difference of company image between current and potential customers.
3. You may also want to include employees and publicly available information to help with your analysis.
4. Based on your findings, how urgently does the company need to address their public image?
5. How would you recommend making improvements to the PR strategy in order to enhance the overall public perception of the company’s brand?

Crisis Management Process Mapping & Performance Improvements

1. How does the company define a crisis? Have they encountered any public crises yet? How was that situation managed? What did they learn from that experience?
2. Does the company have a crisis management process? Is this a clear process? Has it been detailed and mapped out including all stakeholders, approvals?
3. What key criteria need to be analyzed when administering a damage assessment after a crisis has occurred?

Design a New Product

1. Become familiar with the company’s core competencies and current product offerings. How does the company categorize and organize their products? How do these products compare with competitors?
2. Assess the company's product roadmap and goals for new product development. Who are the critical stakeholders (including internal and external)? Brainstorm and ideate product development ideas with the team. Identify the potential market opportunity and clearly define the problem. Propose 2-3 new product ideas given the company’s current product portfolio and desired goals.
3. Select one product for further development. Is this a similar customer base to the company’s original product or is this product for a new market entirely? Collect user feedback on the idea and/or any prototypes/drawings.
4. Develop official target audience personas for the new product. Explain why these personas are potential customers and why you feel these groups present a reasonable market opportunity. Write user stories to detail why users need the product to solve a problem or accomplish a goal.
5. Create a product roadmap including assessment of time, budget, and resources required to get the product to market.
6. Create a prototype of your design: the prototype could either be a drawing, digital asset, or physical mock-up.

• Design New Packaging

• 1. How is the packaging currently designed? What are the basic materials that go into the packaging? How does the packaging impact the manufacturing and distribution process? What does the packaging cost as-is? How does the packaging compare with industry peers?
  2. How do the current customers feel about the packaging (or unpacking) experience? What did they like about the experience? What do they feel could be improved?
  3. How does the company’s packaging compare to industry peers? What best practices can be adopted from similar companies to improve the unpackaging experience?
  4. Suggest 1-2 specific packaging improvements for the company’s product. Analyze the impact these changes would have on required materials, vendor relationships, the manufacturing and distribution process, and overall cost.
 

• Design Product Extension

  1. Assess the company’s product portfolio over time.
  2. What products are ripe for new additions or complete reinventions?
  3. What product extensions can you think of with your group?
  4. Select one product for further assessment. Assess the potential cost, benefit, and impact of adding your proposed product extension.

• Industry Sales Benchmarking Assessment

1. Familiarize yourself with the company product and business model.
2. Create a comprehensive list of key competitors and industry stakeholders that sell similar products and/or services. Compare your host company with competitors in the following areas: pricing, features, services, regionality, customer demographics, etc.
3. Who are the biggest competitors and how do they stack up against the company's performance? What do the biggest competitors in the space tell you about the industry?
4. Do any companies present interesting opportunities for partnerships?
5. What additional channels can the company tap in order to scale more effectively?

• Sales Process Assessment

1. How has the company’s business model change over time? What has changed about the product, service, and team?
2. What is the current status of the sales process within the company. Do you think this is more or less effective than previously? How does the team feel about the sales process and overall performance?
3. Where does the company hope to be in 1-3-5 years from a sales perspective? How will the sales process, team, and structure need to change in order to address these changes?
4. How satisfied are the current customers with the product or service?
5. Craft a survey and administer customer interviews to help identify where the company can improve. Pay close attention to how the company may be able to provide additional value to existing customers.

• Prioritizing Sales Initiatives

• 1. What is the company’s sales strategy? How many different lines of business exist? Are they separated by different products and services or divisions?
  2. What lines if business are providing the most revenue for the company currently? How was this book of business built originally? How does the company expect for this to grow over time?
  3. What new sales opportunities are on the table? Is the company prioritizing this sales initiative? What do you think the potential is for this new line of business?
  4. Are there alternative ways to sell that the company hasn't considered? Would they be more effective? What data do you have to support your reasoning?
  5. How would you prioritize the sales team’s time and resources with regards to the sales plan?

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  Inside vs. Outside Sales Strategy Assessment

  1. What’s the difference between an inside and outside sales strategy? What has the company tried to-date? How effective was that process? What types of results did it yield? What resources were required? Can you measure the ROI and growth rate?
  2. How could you adapt the sales process to include either more inside OR outside sales tactics?
  3. How would you go about implementing this sales strategy? Do you think it would produce better results?
  4. What goals would you set for the new team over the next 3-6 months and/or 1-3 years? How would you measure success?