The tough summer challenges offer huge development opportunities — and sometimes lead directly to offers of employment.
“Students come out with additional skills and experience directly relevant to their intended career path. It’s just a massive win-win for all involved,” says Grahame Brown, corporate relations manager.
The “Corporate Challenges” are the fourth of LUMS’ action-learning projects, designed to pull together the learning MBAs receive during the duration of the program.
“The Lancaster MBA focuses on the concept of action learning throughout,” says Grahame.
“We give the students live, in-company exposure to complex consultancy challenges as the course progresses.”
Here are three examples:
- Saatchi & Saatchi
Sharon Loh says her group of four was tasked by Saatchi & Saatchi with finding a way to better deliver value to a large supermarket’s customers.
They did this by determining the supermarket chain’s value proposition in the eyes of the consumer. And more importantly, what sets the company apart from its competitors.
“We conducted market surveys and interviews with industry experts, analyzed the data and came up with recommendations,” says Sharon.
The project was an opportunity to put the team’s MBA learning to the test. “We witnessed how it brought value to our client,” she says. The group delivered a final presentation to Saatchi & Saatchi. And it was well received. “They will be taking on board some of the recommendations we put forward,” says Sharon, whose team carried out the work in London.
LUMS students pay for their accommodation on campus and receive a subsidy when in the UK capital for the Corporate Challenge. Travel and accommodation costs during the taught element of the program are included in the fees. This gives The LUMS MBA a distinct advantage over its competitors, Sharon believes.
“This helped to ease the burden of the high living costs in London,” she says. “Undeniably, the value for money of the Lancaster MBA program is very high.”
- EasyJet
The objective of the project was to create a framework that will allow EasyJet to better understand how its individual “change projects” contribute to its overall strategy, says Eric Afriyie.
To do this, Eric’s group of three had to extract information from the airline’s employees. He says he had to draw upon his global leadership skills — the LUMS MBA cohort is made up of 22 different nationalities. “It put those skills to the test.”
It also provided excellent exposure to EasyJet management, from project managers to senior board level executives, Eric says.
Last but not least, it gave him a sense of fulfilment to create a framework from scratch that will have made an impact to EasyJet’s business: “They will use the framework that we created,” Eric says.
- Barclays
Ankita Srivastava’s team of four had to design and recommend new mortgage products for Barclays, to enable the bank to enter the lifetime mortgage market in the UK.
The group carried out market research and due diligence, she says. “The scope of the project was to analyze and evaluate this product’s origination, potential market, financial value, associated risks and relevant regulations.”
They delivered a report and a presentation on their findings to selected members of the mortgage council at Barclays.
“Our final client presentation was well received from all the attendees and we got encouraging feedback and comments from them,” says Ankita.
This gave the MBAs the opportunity to showcase their talent to a potential employer — and pick up new tricks along the way.
“Our project supervisor at Barclays, Bill McCabe, was really supportive and most importantly, he was really open to sharing his expertise and knowledge with all of us,” Ankita adds.
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Lancaster University Management School
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