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.

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?

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.

Industry Customer Service Benchmarking Assessment

1. Call the customer service line or inquire via email. Document your experience. How does this compare with competitors?
2. What does the company do that makes their customer service more effective than competitors? What could be improved?
3. How important is good customer service in this vertical or industry? How does it affect the lifetime value of the customer?
4. How does the business model affect the level of service required? Is there any automation that can be incorporated into the process to increase efficiencies?

Customer Service Diagnosis Challenge

1. How does the customer service team troubleshoot issues? How effective are their current processes?
2. What is the most time-consuming part of the troubleshooting process? Is there anyway this can be automated?
3. What process improvements would you recommend? Pay close attention to communication tools, knowledge base resources, and follow-up procedures.

Customer Service Process Improvements

1. How long does it take for the issues and cases to navigate through the internal organization before arriving at a resolution?
2. How can the process be optimized? Is information being circulated effectively internally?
3. Should the company consider circulating certain materials externally as well? If so, how? Can we reduce redundancy by leveraging existing resources and cases?

Customer Feedback Driven Process Improvement Recommendations

1. How does the company collect feedback from customers?
2. Can you identify consistent feedback from customers related to the company’s product or service?
3. What is the customer feedback process? How do the customers feel about the feedback process?
4. Does the company use technology or social media to collect customer feedback?
5. How can we better incorporate and address customer concerns before it escalates?

Customer Service Process & Technology Assessment

1. What technology is the company leveraging to administer the customer service process?
2. How does the company feel about the customer service process? Interview key team members inside and outside that part of the organization.
3. What other technologies could possibly improve the process? What is the cost of implementing new tools?
4. Would you recommend implementing new tools and procedures?

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.

Company Data Collection Inventory and Mapping

1. What is the product and business model?
2. How is the business organized from an organizational perspective?
3. What main systems does the company use to organize and execute?
4. What data is produced by the system as a result?
5. What strategic goals does the data help address?
6. What would flow chart of all the systems look like? What are the key data inputs and outputs within each system? How do they all connect to one another?

Create New Metrics (and KPIs) Using Company Data

1. How can data from multiple sources be analyzed, organized, or visualized to provide more insight to internal and/or external users?
2. Are there other potential use cases for the company’s data?
3. What other data points would be useful to capture in order improve the quality and/or relevance of insights?
4. What metrics would be best to use in order to showcase potential benefits and use cases?

Build a Sample Dashboard

1. What company data is available? How reliable is that data?
2. How can data from multiple sources be analyzed, organized, or visualized to provide more insight to internal and/or external users?
3. Can you organize these key pieces of data into a preliminary dashboard?
4. What procedure is required to keep the dashboard up-to-date? Are there any tools that could help with this process?

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.

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.

• 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.

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?

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.

• Software Design

1. Who are the key stakeholders and what are the business requirements? Map this out as user stories or flow charts.
2. Design a wire frame that showcases the flow from screen to screen.
3. What are the technical requirements? How long would this take to build? What key types of engineers would be required to build out the whole product?
4. How would this software be integrated into the company’s current product or operations? How would you train stakeholders on how to use the software?

• Software Development

• User Experience Review

• Software Testing and Maintenance