My last semester as a business student at the small private university in Texas, I was tested on the culmination of my educational experience. The university is an AACSB accredited school that valued theory and application to business theory and case studies. The business school created a means to explore current business problems with real constraints. The university used its relationship within the community to develop this new teaching model.
The final semester, nervous students clumped together into groups and factions headed by the project manager, the professor, and bid for projects from companies that wanted consulting perspectives. The companies received a different perspective to their current predicament, and the students attained real experience. To a student, real projects seemed like a mountain of work with not only failure as a possibility, but potential company disaster.
Frustrations abound, my group struggled with schedule conflicts, social media scandal, and several all-nighters. A few days before the presentation, the professor drops a bombshell. The culmination of group work and direction was wrong. Faced with a few more all-nighters, three of the five group members started cranking out numbers and models.
We looked through the data we were given, three months of sales figures, and had to come up with a potential solution to the company’s major problem: decrease costs, while maintaining or increasing profits. Also, we did not have the luxury of meeting with the professor again until the presentation. Ultimately, if the professor or the CEO did not like what we had to say, we had no recourse but get a failing grade.
The three of us, the hardest working of the five, decided to work away until our eyes, and fingers were numb. I was in charge of making calculations that allowed numbers to speak for our inexperience. I saw a major obstacle, changing the viewpoint from sales force to management. The problem was simple, how can the sales managers deplore a better strategy that would lead to better sales? Looking at job descriptions, the problem worked itself out. The sales managers relied heavily on the sales force, and the sales force were the delivery drivers.
Living in South Texas, Spanish is an important language, but many business deals use English as the sole language. Speaking with the sales force/delivery drivers, many expressed their insecurity using English and the growing communication barrier had lead to poor sales.
The sales managers have been comfortable speaking with the companies they did business with to create a contract, but after the contract was finished, the sales managers focused on other companies and products. In all, the business was losing money because it stopped communicating with its customers.
To strengthen the argument, I had shown a comparative chart using a linear programming model. I compared the current employee pay expenditure with a new employee pay expenditure that we, the three working group members, had collectively created.
The group expressed concern about leaving customer communication to a group of employees that did not feel confident in the respective role. By simplifying the role, and setting the employee benefits differently, switching the sales force from commission to a flat salary, the expenditures changed.
Also, the group felt the sales managers would benefit from increased sales if the sales managers maintained communication with their customers within their field. The group changed the sales manager’s pay expenditure from salary to a performance-based commission. Ultimately, the sales managers’ pay increases based on their performance.
Restructuring the organization would save the company more money than maintaining the current structure. The owner and CEO would also stand to lose more money based on customer dissatisfaction, and employee incentive programs. The group was not finished yet though. The next part changed how processes could potentially bring in increased value to the company.
Utilizing the restructuring plan, the next phase focused heavily on the internal processes and automation. Based on the savings gained from the restructuring plan, the company would be able to move assets to investments in particular to grow the business from the current model to a more efficient model. The outputs used to express the gains were from the linear programming model and the implications the model posed. The employee structure and number of staff prevalent played an important part to the secondary plan. Thus, to meet the second phase, the company has to utilize the first or primary phase.
The secondary phase used a more advanced decision science model and project management program that expressed future value, and performance. In order to demonstrate the process, the group had to monetize the yield. Numbers would mean nothing if the numbers did not have an expressed relation or value important to the company. In this case, the value was profits.
With the revelation aside, the group had 36 hours left to write and print the final presentation and recommendation. Working with the other group members, two had the ability to express the information in a way that was relevant, understandable, and educational. Within the 10 hour deadline, the other group member and myself counted the hours down as we frantically typed up our thoughts, praying that we can find the energy to present the next morning. Tik. Tok. Two hours left, and we managed to create a presentation and consulting packet.
Within that period, we had no choice but to rewrite sections based on the information given to use from the two group members that had created both increased workload and distractions. The two of us finishing the documents felt disrespected and perturbed by the events. Working with groups does not mean that every person gets along, but we felt the other two were taking advantage of us.
The project and presentation was a success. The group received compliments from faculty, staff, and the company employees. The Dean of Graduate Studies expressed his amazement of the advanced thought processes we used, and the Dean of Business stated that this was work usually seen at a graduate level. With all the congratulations and work, the only thing I wanted to do was eat breakfast and go to sleep, and preferably for a long time.
The project in itself helped me see that communication is very important. Communication is an important business tool that, not used properly, could affect work dynamics, productivity, and potentially profits. Even though the company project was not the top choice, the problems within the group mirrored the problems within the company. With that said, the project was actually the ideal fit, and as students, we produced something that generated value.
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