NUS MBA BMA5901
Summary
NUS MBA BMA5901 Management Practicum was a core module for the NUS MBA programme, now it has been re-named into BMA5901 Consulting Project, the main objective was to provide opportunities for MBA students to apply the knowledge learned in class into real business situation. NUS business school will cooperate with external companies to start short period projects to solve real issues from the company. The Management Practicum maybe related to marketing, finance, consulting etc.
Our project was to work with a Singapore local medical Start-Up company to develop a market entry strategy. Our client developed a new medical device, and was planning to first human trial in Singapore hospitals, and looking to commercialize its product in the next 2 years. We have done the market research on three different countries identified by our client, the market research included the regulatory, potential market size, then recommended one country as the next market to enter, finally a deep dive research was prepared which consists of an analysis on the potential market segments, regulatory requirements, existing competition, recommendations on pricing, sales channel, key marketing activities and potential sales revenue projections for the next 3 years.
Workload
It was a group project, as I didn’t form a team before the selection of the BMA5901, I was allocated with another three team members to do this project, two of the team member were NUS S3 Asia MBA students, another one was from a student who enrolled the MBA program a few years back, still not graduate.
The workload can be heavy, it depends on how much effort you would like to put into the project, or if you take it less seriously, the workload can be less. The work includes company visits, market research, by reading google search, or research paper, report writing, presentation preparation, most of the researches are secondary research. The output was a management report, and a final presentation to the company.
The project lasted the whole semester, around 3 months, we had 3 or 4 times meeting with our client, I heard other teams had more often meetings with their client, like every week, or every other week. We did quite a lot of readings, market research, it took us quite a effort as we were not in medical device industry. There was a mid-term presentation after the project started 1.5 months, and we did the final presentation on 15th November, submit the final management report on 23th Nov. 2019.
Personal comment
As I am part-time MBA student, and already working in a company, so I feel it was unnecessary for part-time student to do this module, but since BMA5901 Management Practicum is a core module, I had no choice.
Through the BMA5901 project, I did learned a lot and got much take away, like marketing research, competitor analysis, sales channel study, regulatory study on medical device, etc.
Professor
Professor Noah Lim was our guidance teacher, he is very knowledgeable, an expert in pricing strategy and marketing area, he always talked direct to the point, and gave us very useful, detail guidance during the project.