CMBA 607 | Strategic Marketing

I put in my time for my CMBA 607 class, so why am I still harping on it by writing a blog?  Well, I want to make sure the up-and-coming CBU MBA students are prepared for the insanely intense (yet ironically fun) Markstrat Simulation game.

I won’t go into the details of the simulation (read the instruction manual), instead I will list my Baker’s dozen (13) pointers that students should take note of if they wish to succeed in the game.  They may not make sense now, but get through one round and your team should quickly be able to relate.

1)  Hey, Guess what? Markstrat doesn’t run on Mac so if you are in Apple’s court, use a teammate’s PC or get a virtual machine.

2)  Be sure to use your noggin! Have a reason or strategy behind each decision your team makes.  Don’t pull numbers out of your head.  “120,000 units sound like a good number of units to order.”  NO!  We don’t use phrases like “it sounds good” or ” I think” with Markstat.  You are an MBA in training.  Think like it!

3)  On the other hand, try to avoid analysis paralysis. Markstrat gives your more information than you can handle.  Determine as quickly as possible what data your team needs to focus on.  If your team starts developing a bunch of products, assign product managers to monitor individual results, changing trends, and be the decision maker behind any R&D modifications.

4)  Don’t cheap out on Advertising. Give generously in both in media and market research budgets to insure your product’s success.  We always gave 7-15% of our media budget to market research.  Advertising is a real key to the game, your brand awareness, and ultimately, your sales.

5)  Decide in the first round if you want to go into Vodite. If you want to go Vodite, start saving money.  Just a little tip: It will take around $8,000 to create a Vodite project.  That is alot in the Markstrat world.  Our team’s average budget for a given period was about the same amount.

6)  Go into Vodite. My team researched other games outside our own.  There is a lot of money to be made in Vodite.  The winner in our game and in other games usually had at least one Vodite in the market.

7)  Speaking of R&D, think about it and plan two/three periods in advance.  It takes one period just to develop or modify a product, two periods if you want to develop it at the lowest cost.

8)  When doing R&D, Always, Always, Always check the box to develop your product at minimum base cost.  One of our teams forgot to check it.  The base cost for their product was $1000, everyone else’s was $300.  Let’s just say their margins were in the negative.

9)  Sales Force is tricky, costly, and offers little return. Sales Force is most needed in new markets, not as much in established ones.  Give real thought if you start hiring people because it costs twice as much to fire them.  Use that money instead on R&D or Advertising.

10)  Production and Inventory is a real balancing act. Over producing leads to very high holding costs and under producing leads to missed sales.  Our team learned that it was better to over produce by a certain amount than run out of inventory completely.  We missed around 200,000 unit sales in one period because we didn’t order enough.  Bad for us, good for the other team who happily filled the orders.

11)  Pay attention to your holding costs, not to mention all your accounting figures.  Just because they don’t have pretty colors and graphs doesn’t mean they are not EXTREMELY informative.

12)  Target each product for one market segment.  If your product fits the needs of what Professionals want, then target that group 100%.  Splitting target segment percentages goes against you.

13)  Don’t create the most basic product possible. Let’s just say our team had a plan to create the most basic Vodite and utilize a skimming strategy (charge a very high price and drop it slowly to gain more market shares).  No one will buy scrap medal, Period!  Even if you are one of the first to the Vodite market, it’s not a good idea to spend $8,000 to develop a tin can.  Best to stay in the middle when putting together your R&D specs.

Our team’s overall performance versus the teams was second place in net contribution.  We held our own, but also made some big mistakes.  I hope these pointers help your team avoid some of the same mistakes our team did.  If you have already participated in a Markstrat simulation, share some of your own pointers in the comments section below.

Erin M. Wiles
Self-Employed Marketing Professional
MBA Concentration: Project Management
Graduating: May 2010

Why Would a Doctor Would Go Back to School?

“I‘m done with school forever!” I made that exuberant statement during the convocation ceremony as I was receiving my Ph.D. degree in Pharmacology and Toxicology from the University of Arizona in 2006.  About 5 minutes later I decided to pursue a master’s degree in business administration; I would have made the decision a little sooner except I was in the process of walking up the stage to receive my diploma.  Considering I had received my Ph.D. in the biological sciences, an MBA was quite a departure from my scientifically-based curriculum.  Why would I want to pursue an additional degree in a completely different field?

The pursuit of multiple degrees does require a desire for a diverse knowledge base; I have been in the scientific field for over 10 years and was also incredibly interested in becoming more versed in the business discipline.  Obtaining an MBA would not only help me in my professional career but would be beneficial in my personal life by providing insight into the current financial crisis and also managing my own budget.  However, I needed more reasons to dedicate two more years to school.

Over the past several years, there has been a convergence of business and scientific research and, therefore, the two are no longer exclusive.  Scientific research is no longer composed of only conducting and analyzing experiments.  In fact, many major universities are now offering dual degree programs where a student can enroll in a Ph.D. or M.D. program and an MBA program.  In my own occupation as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, I oversee four different research projects and, in addition, have to manage and properly use my research budget.  Obtaining an MBA would provide additional skills with regard to budget and project management.  Interestingly, most business concepts have been derived from other disciplines and, therefore, can be easily reapplied to the scientific field.  For example, the utility of a SWOT analysis is to determine competitive advantage of a company but can be also applied to a scientific project to determine the liability of the project including the possibility of competing research groups working on a similar project.

Obtaining two degrees from different disciplines can complement each other and be incredibly beneficial in the long run.  For me, I outlined what I wanted to obtain from an additional degree and how I could apply that degree to my career.  As mentioned above, the benefit of an MBA is that the principles of business can be applied to not only various disciplines but also your personal life, making this degree certainly worth the two years of additional formal education.

Seriously, though, no more school after this!

Alan Pourpak. Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Research Associate at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
MBA Concentration: General Management
Graduating: December 2010

That which doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger. This is my mantra since September 2008 when my husband and I were (surprisingly) blessed with a little girl smack dap in the middle of my career building and MBA program. You see, I am an MBA Mommy. I am a professional juggler of work, school, family, and a wee bit of “me” time on the side.

When you start an evening MBA program, your free time is lessened. But when you add kids into the mix? Your free time is NADA. But, that is the life more and more women professionals are experiencing these days. The trend with women now, especially with Gen X and millenials, is that we want it all: family and career.

At CBU, I imagined I was alone in this thought until two of my other cohort members both got pregnant and had babies all without skipping a beat to complete their classes. And these ideas are not just at CBU. BusinessWeek wrote an article a couple years back about the increase of Mommy MBAs. Some women even planned on getting pregnant during their 2-year MBA program so they could raise their infants on a flexible schedule before they went head-first back into the work force or careers.

This past November, I came across a white paper published by Advertising Age describing The Rise of the Real Mom. I completely related to everything in this paper. One line in the white paper states “Real moms look to subvert the so-called ‘mommy trap,’ where a mother has to choose whether to forfeit a career to care for the kids or plow ahead at work and hand over the stroller reins to the nanny.” This line stood out to me because we are living in a time where women can choose both. BUT, we have to realize that there is an opportunity cost involved. There is a reason why June Cleaver didn’t get her MBA. I mean, who could manage all the cooking and cleaning and primping and child rearing while managing research and preparing for a Business Accounting final?

I have come to grips with these opportunity costs, from both an Mom and MBA’s perspective and I have learned that:

• Though I have been lucky and not had to sacrifice my family time for school, I have pretty much done away with personal time (no more workouts or extracurriculars), but I am making it so I will be able to better provide financial security for my family in the long run.

• While I was not able to take that University organized trip abroad to Spain and sip on fine Rioja, I was able to plan an awesome first birthday party for my daughter.

• It was/is a real bummer not to be able to go out after finals (or after every class depending on the spunk of your cohort) for a drink, but I am able to get some of my best work done between the hours of 10pm and 12am.

• Week days? Week ends? There is no difference in work days when it comes to projects and homework.  They have to get done, PERIOD. But, I don’t mind it because I love it and love going to class.  It gets me out of the “mom” zone and into my “me” zone.

So now I am two classes away from graduation. Yes, I am tired. Yes, I am worn. Yes, I still have two more loads of laundry to do, but as other MBA moms will probably agree, it is all worth it. I have not only had to opportunity to see what I was truly capable of accomplishing, but I have also been able to set an example for my daughter on just how far she can go.

Plus, if she ever whines to me about how her classes are just so hard and I wouldn’t understand, I can finally pull the old parent card, “When I was in school, I was juggling a job, school, and kids!”

Ok, maybe not.

To all MBA mommies or daddies out there.  What lessons have you learned?  Please share in the comments section below.

Erin M. Wiles
Self-Employed Marketing Professional
MBA Concentration: Project Management
Graduating: May 2010

Conquering the Business Strategy Game Part 1:  Don’t Spend Years In The Dark

I confess to be amongst the world’s most notorious instructions avoiders.  I often back into the instructions as a last resort only after my ignorant poking and prodding have had undesirable outcomes.  However for the Business Strategy Game (BSG), trying to learn on-the-fly will likely have disastrous results, especially when each turn represents an entire year in this is a highly competitive, complex game.

I would have to advise anyone starting out on this game to take the first and most basic step: Read the Player’s Guide!

The BSG Player’s guide, located in the Corporate Lobby, is not the normal guide that has become prevalent in our litigious society. You know those Crazy Straw guides?  Where it takes 100-pages of instructions and 3-languages to avoid lawsuits from maniacs who might bust a lip trying to suck from the middle of the straw rather than from one of the ends.

Instead, the BSG Player’s Guide is  a good mix of game-screen instructions, strategy suggestions, and even refreshers on business concepts such as financing, economics, accounting, marketing, social responsibility (all topics that should sound familiar to MBA students).  The guide starts by defining the shoe-hocking BSG world that your corporation lives in, then drills further into each decision screen you will see while playing to provide more insight.  It even offers some recommendations on how to operate a successful company, all the while sharing various environmental factors that your company may face.

The read is well worth it.  There are only so many shoe-purchasing dollars available in the BSG world, so some companies have to fail.  Don’t let it be yours and don’t let your ignorance put you even one year behind.  Chances are, you’ll never catch up.  Read the BSG Player’s Guide before you start.  Heck, read it twice!

Mike Tucker has ranked in the top 100 in the Business Strategy Game.  With his leadership, his team ranked 6th world-wide with a 43.3% Return on Average Equity performance and a stock price of $143.68 per share.

Coming soon
Conquering the BSG Part 2:  Choosing (and Sticking With) a Strategy.

Michael Tucker
Employment: Database Administrator at Merck
MBA Concentration: General Management
Graduating: December 2010

As the fall term comes to an end, I reflect on the true meaning of the word cohort.

The Wiki definition of cohort is group of people who share a common characteristic or experience within a defined period. The comparison group may be the general population from which the cohort is drawn.

Christian Brothers University MBA program is a cohort model, which allows the students to govern themselves; each cohort has a leader who has the ear of the MBA director if problems or questions arise that may impact the entire group. So, I would say a cohort is a community of individuals, who respect each other’s talents and opinions. The CBU cohort is then broken in to teams, each team consists of four or five individuals of various talents, and this becomes the group you work with during the entire program (you do have the option to change nights or groups).

In order for this team approach to work communication is a must, let’s not forget each individual has a life outside of the program with family and work responsibilities. There will be times when each team member’s job or family responsibilities interfere with class work or projects; it’s up to the other members of the team to step up and say ok, “we’ve got it; don’t worry.”   The old expression there is not an “I” in team, is really true.

The cohort model creates a small learning community which allows you to work with individuals of various talents and backgrounds. Does it work?  Yes, what you can learn from a diverse group of people who are focused on a common goal cannot be accomplished outside of a cohort model program.

Sure there are other MBA programs around town or online, but the CBU program allows you to network within the class and personally get to know each other.

What I know about my cohort:

• There is a scientist who works to find the cure/treatment for cancer.
• Two people have gotten engaged (one married in June)
• There are two school teachers who are guardians of the future.
• There are three new first-time mothers.
• Three people have lost their jobs due to downsizing, and two have found employment
• Every one in the cohort has decided on a concentration to focus. (Marketing, finance, etc…)

By working in the cohort model, we are gaining a deeper understanding of our course material through in depth, real world discussions among classmates of diverse backgrounds.  Each cohort member brings a unique perspective, and that is most valuable to achieving a complete MBA education.

Rick Maupin
Employment: Director of Corporate & Government Programs at CBU
MBA Concentration: Leadership
Graduating: May 2010

It should be noted that Rick Maupin is an employee for Christian Brothers University, but is also a current student in the MBA program.  The opinions expressed in this post are that of a student at CBU, not an employee.  Don’t we all wish we could have the same passion and love for our employers?!