Student teams are generally made up of 5-8 members who are upper division students in our Knauss School of Business. The most common majors of students in SIBC are: marketing, business administration, finance, real estate and international business.

As a Knauss School of Business faculty member, I oversee all student projects.

We work with different company types and across a wide variety of industries. The potential deliverables are many, as long as they are relevant to an undergraduate business student. Here are some examples:

CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAPPING

Map out service business processes. Propose modifications in service delivery to improve operational efficiency.

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

Define objectives. Identify target audience. Establish metrics. Set up accounts. Create content. Develop a social media calendar. Evaluate.

SEO STRATEGY

Optimize website effectiveness to improve its ranking and drive valuable traffic though search engine optimization.

VOICE of CUSTOMER

Analyze the needs and requirements of customers by capturing what they are saying about a product/service. Interview, focus group, surveys, social media.

EXPORT PLAN

Design an international market entry plan for a product/service to be sold in a new market abroad. Includes market analysis, key success factors, competitor analysis, positioning recommendations, mode of entry strategy and adaptation of key marketing mix elements (product, price, place, promotion, etc).

SOPs

Develop standard operating procedures that employees must complete to maintain efficiency and consistency. Ex) customer service, new hire training, operations.

SWOT

Analyze a company’s competitive position by identifying internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats. Recommend strategies to strengthen competitive positioning.

BUSINESS MODEL DESIGN

Map out the firm’s current business model. Identification of opportunities to improve current model, through an enhanced customer value proposition.

SOCIAL ENTERPRISE SCALING

Drive growth of mission based enterprises through the development of programs designed to scale operations and impact-staffing, communicating value, alliance building, lobbying, earnings generation, replicating success, stimulating market forces.

PESTLE

Identify key opportunities and threats in a business’ external environment: political, economic, social, technological , legal and environmental variables.

INDUSTRY ANALYSIS

Analyze a competitive environment in a given industry in home country or abroad. Identify critical success factors, key trends, potential for competitive success using Porter’s five forces analysis or similar frameworks.

COMPETITIVE STRENGTH ASSESSMENT/POSITIONING MAP

Analyze the competitive strength of your firm's product, service in a given market vis-a-vis top competitors using critical success factors as a point of comparison. Recommend unique positioning in a given market.

BENCHMARKING

Compare a company’s products or services with local/regional industry leaders. Use information to identify gaps in an organization’s processes and to achieve a more competitive position in the market.

STRATEGIC COST MANAGEMENT

Identify ways to achieve savings in operations through careful review of business processes and operations. Recommend ways to instill a cost-conscious culture throughout the company.

SUPPLIER SELECTION AND EVALUATION

Identify, evaluate and recommend suppliers based on their performance on define supplier selection criteria.

MARKET DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

Increase sales in an existing market. Develop new market segments. New channel development (e-commerce). New product development/product service innovation.

CASH FLOW ANALYSIS

Examine how a business generates and spends money over a specific period of time. Determine where money is going and how much cash on hand.

FINANCIAL FEASIBILITY ASSESSMENT

Determine viability of any new project/investment by analyzing market, technical and production issues, as well as financial analysis, including the rate of return on investment.

DATA ANALYSIS

Extract useful information from data to make recommendations for future store locations and rank opportunities.

DISTRIBUTOR ANALYSIS AND SELECTION

Research and identify key distributors. Compare and assess and recommend best fit distributors based on key criteria for industry success.

CONTENT CREATION

Generate topic ideas that appeal to your buyer persona and key demographics. Create written or visual content around those ideas, including staged photoshoots, written blogs, social media, and recommendations to incorporate website SEO.

.