Define Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy

1. Does the company currently engage in CSR?
2. How well does the company’s CSR Strategy intertwine with the company’s core competencies, offerings, and business mission?
3. Is the CSR strategy being effectively communicated throughout the marketing, HR, and PR departments?
4. Does management seem to be aware of the overall CSR strategy?

Team Buy-in Assessment and Engagement Strategy

1. How well does the average team member know about the company’s CSR initiatives? To what extent are they involved in the company’s CSR strategy?
2. How can this be improved?
3. What metrics are used to measure success? What alternative metrics should be included to enhance the feedback loop strategy on CSR?

External Partners Assessment

1. Who is the company helping with regards to their CSR strategy? Who are the end user beneficiaries of the host company’s CSR initiatives?
2. What third party partners are involved in helping reach this group?
3. Are there others out there that could also be helpful?
4. How mission-aligned are these third parties with your CSR goals and overall company mission?
5. How can you profile and evaluate the relationships built through CSR initiatives? How does this set the tone for future endeavors? Are there key criteria for evaluating third parties with regards to CSR initiatives?

CSR Impact Assessment

1. How does the company currently measure reach, impact, and value of CSR initiatives?
2. Is the company fully capturing this value? If not, how can they improve the overall process of measuring impact and results?
3. How should the company report and communicate their impact both internally and externally?

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.

Legal & Regulatory Assessment

1. What laws and regulations impact the company? (Consider: Industry, product, customer, suppliers on state/local/federal level)
2. How confident is the company’s management when it comes to navigating these laws, regulations and future changes?
3. Is the company compliant? What process is used to check on compliance? Can the process be mapped or organized more efficiently?
4. What sources can be used to keep these regulatory maps organized and up-to-date in the future?

Impact of Future Regulations on the Business

1. What laws are on the horizon that would impact the company?
2. What is the likelihood that these regulations will be enacted?
3. How will they impact the company? What can the company do proactively to manage these changes in regulatory expectations?

Influence on Impending Regulations (Lobbying)

1. Does the company try to impact regulation? If not, should they be?
2. What key regulations are the most pressing to consider lobbying? What events, conferences, and key stakeholders are involved in passing regulations?
3. How costly and/or potentially impactful would lobbying be for the company?

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.

• Market Research

• 1. How much information does the company have on the market? What about their target audience and customers? Use this information to get up-to-speed on the business.
  2. What does the competitive environment look like? How would you benchmark your company against competitors? What are your competitors’ current market advantages, weaknesses? Create a competitor research reports including products, pricing, market share, and marketing tactics.
  3. Create a broader industry and market environment research report, which includes: market size and trends, market demographics (e.g. age, gender, income), regulatory landscape, marketing channels and strategies, and sociographics (e.g. beliefs and attitudes, interests, lifestyle factors)

• Customer Research

  1. Who your current customers? How well does this align with the company’s defined target audience? Who are the potential customers? What, when, where and how do they buy your products?
  2. What strategies does the company currently use to attract new customers? To what extent are these strategies effective? What other strategies could the company use to attract more potential customers? Why do you think your new strategies would be effective?
  3. Create a customer research report including customer demographics, social and lifestyle trends, needs and expectations, attitude towards you and your competitors.

• Product Development & Updates

1. What existing products does the company offer? How satisfied are current customers with the current product offerings?
2. What improvements could be made to existing products? How would you suggest updating current products to meet existing and potential customers’ needs?
3. What new products does the company have on the horizon? Do you expect that these products will meet customers’ demands? What are the product guidelines and regulatory specifications that need to be followed while developing the new product?
4. Can you project how well products will fair in the market? Does this align with management expectations? Why or why not?

• Business Innovation Assessment

1. How has your company improved over time?
2. What are key ways for the company to improve overall performance?
3. How might you be able to reduce expenses and/or increase revenues?
4. How will expanding affect current operations? Do you have a reliable operations (think HR, implementation, and operations)?
5. How would you compare your performance with competitors?
6. What KPIs is the company tracking? How does the growth plan address these KPIs?