Corporate Responsibility

• Define Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy

1. 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?

Marketing

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?
• 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?

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

PR & Comms

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. 

• 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?

• 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. 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. 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?

Product Development

• Design a New Product

1. 1. Become familiar with the company’s core competencies and current product offerings. How does the company categorize and organize their products? How do these products compare with competitors?
   2. Assess the company's product roadmap and goals for new product development. Who are the critical stakeholders (including internal and external)? Brainstorm and ideate product development ideas with the team. Identify the potential market opportunity and clearly define the problem. Propose 2-3 new product ideas given the company’s current product portfolio and desired goals.
   3. Select one product for further development. Is this a similar customer base to the company’s original product or is this product for a new market entirely? Collect user feedback on the idea and/or any prototypes/drawings.
   4. Develop official target audience personas for the new product. Explain why these personas are potential customers and why you feel these groups present a reasonable market opportunity. Write user stories to detail why users need the product to solve a problem or accomplish a goal.
   5. Create a product roadmap including assessment of time, budget, and resources required to get the product to market.
   6. Create a prototype of your design: the prototype could either be a drawing, digital asset, or physical mock-up.

•     Design New Packaging

• 1. How is the packaging currently designed? What are the basic materials that go into the packaging? How does the packaging impact the manufacturing and distribution process? What does the packaging cost as-is? How does the packaging compare with industry peers?
  2. How do the current customers feel about the packaging (or unpacking) experience? What did they like about the experience? What do they feel could be improved?
  3. How does the company’s packaging compare to industry peers? What best practices can be adopted from similar companies to improve the unpackaging experience?
  4. Suggest 1-2 specific packaging improvements for the company’s product. Analyze the impact these changes would have on required materials, vendor relationships, the manufacturing and distribution process, and overall cost.

• Design Product Extension

  1. Assess the company’s product portfolio over time.
  2. What products are ripe for new additions or complete reinventions?
  3. What product extensions can you think of with your group?
  4. Select one product for further assessment. Assess the potential cost, benefit, and impact of adding your proposed product extension.

Research & Development

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. 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. 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?

Software Development

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. 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

1. 1. What are the specifications for the software? 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. Begin developing the software. Establish ways to ensure the quality and accuracy of what you’re building. Ensure this matches the company core team’s process.
   4. Test the software out with stakeholders in order to ensure it runs as expected. Make tweaks that are required.
   5. Deploy new software including annotations to the code. Provide third-party training modules for the new software if needed.

• User Experience Review

1. 1. What software does the company currently use? How do their systems currently interact with one another? How well does it function?
   2. How well-designed is the user experience? What types of challenges are you encountering when trying to navigate through the software?
   3. Administer a user experience test with current and prospective customers. What key themes emerge?
   4. What recommendations would you suggest when it comes to improving the overall user experience?

• Software Testing and Maintenance

1. 1. What software does the company currently use? What are the key languages? How are the systems organized?
   2. How would you go about testing the company’s current technology? Is the company currently testing the software? If so, how well documented is that procedure? If not, how can you begin assembling a process plan for software testing?
   3. Are there any recommendations related to improving the software?