Babson Graduate Office of Experiential Learning

Here you will find descriptions of the various Management Consulting Field Experience (MCFE) Project Companies.

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Carlsberg Group

  Company Description:  Carlsberg Group is one of the world's leading beer companies. More than 45,000 people work for the Carlsberg Group worldwide, and our products are sold in more than 150 markets. In 2008 we sold more than 120 million hectolitres of beer - which is about 100 million bottles of beer per day.

Export, License & Duty Free (ExLiD) is the company in Carlsberg Group responsible for export and license business in all markets where Carlsberg does not have a brewery. Together with local license and import partners, we manage approximately 10 mill. hl in 100 markets globally.

Project Description:  Latin America has traditionally not been a focus area for the Carlsberg Group and represents only a very small part of ExLiD's business today. However, the Latin America region still represents an interesting opportunity, and a huge potential, if the right approach and route to market / partners can be identified.

  Currently, Carlsberg is seeking to understand the potential within key Latin American markets (to be agreed with Carlsberg) based on investigation of the following:

  Market assessment criteria and evaluation by market

Distribution feasibility and implications         

Accessibility of key channels in on-trade/off-trade (i.e. exclusivity)

Penetration of modern trade (retail) and major international / local player (e.g. Walmart)

Other?

Production alternatives

Possible production partners (license or contract production)

Consumer opportunity

Key product categories in existence and potential "white spots"

Perceived market / consumer readiness for International Premium beer brands

Other?

 Mapping of route to market of selected other international brands (to be agreed with Carlsberg)

  Production set-up (import or local/regional production)

Distribution approach (local partner or own)

Marketing/sales set-up (local partner or own)

   Route to market recommendations for Carlsberg Group Brands

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Mars, Inc.

Industry: Snack food/Pet food

Description: Mars, Incorporated, through its subsidiaries, manufactures and distributes food products. The company offers chocolates, candy, chewing gums, rice, entrees, sauces, and beverages. Additionally, it provides pet care products including dog and cat food. The company markets its products under M&M'S, SNICKERS, DOVE, EXTRA, PEDIGREE, ROYAL CANIN, and WHISKAS brand names. Mars, Incorporated was founded in 1911 and is headquartered in McLean, Virginia.

Mars, Incorporated has grown into a company of global scope with six business segments including Chocolate, Petcare, Wrigley Gum and Confections, Food, Drinks and Symbioscience, generating annual revenues of more than $28 billion. As a family-owned company for nearly a century, Mars is guided by Five Principles: Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency and Freedom. They continually strive to put these Principles in Action in everything they do, making a difference to people and the planet through performance.           

Project Description: Be involved in an entrepreneurial strategy within the New Ventures division of Mars. The project will focus on a web/e-commerce go-to-market strategy across the Mars portfolio. Project will work with Professor Zacharakis.  

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Perfuzia Medical

Industry: Medical Devices

Description: Perfuzia Medical is an angel-backed clinical-stage medical-device company co-founded in early 2009 by Sagi Brink-Danan,  a Babson Fast-Track MBA student. 

Perfuzia is developing ActiveFlowTM – a non-invasive technology platform for the adjunctive treatment of various medical conditions that stand to benefit from increased local blood flow and tissue oxygenation.  The technology is patent-pending and owned by the company.  

The company is currently focused on its first target market – healing chronic wounds is a $20 billion problem, affecting over 7 million Americans. By increasing blood flow to the ulcer area ActiveFlow may accelerate healing, improve quality of life, and dramatically reduce healthcare costs.

The company is constantly evaluating potential markets in adjacent medical fields. Once attractive opportunities are identified they quickly introduce the ActiveFlow technology into such markets. The technology was recently licensed out to a sports medicine / orthopedics company.

Project Description: The US anti-cellulite segment is a $1 billion segment of the general beauty market. In addition to various creams and surgical interventions there are numerous cellulite-reducing devices on the market. These are typically massager-type machines for use at home or in day-spa / beauty salons / cosmetic clinics.

Perfuzia estimates that the ActiveFlow technology platform can be applied to cellulite reduction and compete effectively with existing treatments in this sector.

The aim of this project is to explore and shape the opportunity for Perfuzia and ActiveFlow in the anti-cellulite market. 

Deliverables: The expected deliverable is a “mini business plan” touching on the following areas:

Opportunity: Market size, growth, composition, segments and trends. Emphasize home use vs. spas/salon/clinic use.

Competitive Landscape (devices): who is offering what, price points, benefits, market share, etc.

Business Model: Recommend a product concept, price points and distribution channels for introducing ActiveFlow into this market. A sales/marketing strategy would be a nice bonus.

Strategic Partnership / Exit Opportunities: Identify potential licensees for the technology, or acquirers for the business unit. Identify recent distribution / M&A deals in this space, if any.

Suggested methodologies include library and web research, supplemented by in-person interviews with home end-users, as well as spa/salon/clinic owners, operators and customers.

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Pauler Communications, Inc. DBA Town Planner

Industry: Publishing

Description: We are in the business of publishing community calendars. Currently we serve 500+ communities in 26 states.  Home office is in Cleveland from which we support 70+ franchisees.   Pauler Communication, inc is a C corp owned by Larry Paulozzi and Ron Miller.

Project Description: We want to begin publishing our print and online calendars on college campuses nationwide.

The Team will need to first determine what aspects of our community calendars (both print and online) are relevant to college campuses. What new features may be added.  Identify the on campus enrollment of colleges nationwide. Determine the system for creating a local team on each campus. Is it a single individual, members of the yearbook staff or some other group that can pull it all together under our direction and systems. 

Deliverables: There will be a bi-weekly game plan created for the Team to research and determine strategy for.  As objectives are met we will determine if the team is solely going to be research and marketing based or if the Team has the drive to bring an actual publication to market.

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Staples, Inc.

Company Description:

Staples, the world’s largest office products company, is committed to making it easy for customers to buy a wide range of office products, including supplies, technology, furniture, and business services. With $23 billion of sales (2008) and 91,000 associates worldwide, Staples serves businesses of all sizes and consumers in 27 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. In July 2008, Staples acquired Corporate Express, one of the world’s leading suppliers of office products to businesses and institutions. Staples invented the office superstore concept in 1986 and is headquartered outside Boston.

Project Description & Deliverables  

As the world’s largest office company Staples is uniquely positioned to have a significant impact in corporate alternative energy and sustainability affairs. Currently Staples has a unique opportunity to explore with their key partners a number of projects that relate to sustainability. The Staples team will work with the Vice President of Environmental Affairs in the Framingham Office. Details of the project will be provided later this fall. 

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PUMA SE

Industry:  Performance and Athletic Apparel

Description of Company

PUMA SE designs and develops footwear, apparel, and accessories for men, women, and kids worldwide. The company offers sport performance and lifestyle labels, including footwear, apparel, bikes, and fragrances; and accessories, such as timepieces and eyewear for various categories, such as football, running, motorsports, golf, sailing, and body train under the PUMA brand name. It also manufactures and sells golf equipment under the Cobra Golf brand name; and leisure shoes, rubber boots, and tennis balls under the Tretorn brand name. In addition, the company provides sport fashion items in collaborations with designer labels, such as Alexander McQueen, Yasuhiro Mihara, and Sergio Rossi. PUMA SE sells its products through its own retail stores and Internet.

Project Description & Deliverables

PUMA North America is developing a innovation competency in a new strategy, Puma Performance. The team will explore new concepts and products.  Puma is exploring a wide range of interrelated interests that would make up the new market including understanding the customer experience, introducing new technologies, and finding new lines of sight about how to expand their customer base.  In this regard PUMA is looking for a Babson team to explore strategic issues related to the high performance market.  Two project opportunities could be explored if there is interest by students:

#1  User-Interface/Technology Study: PUMA would like to better understand the attitudes, behaviors, and general appreciation of consumers toward user-interface devices/platforms within the context of sport...ie, use of Facebook, MySpace, Tumblr, Interactive Gaming, Twitter, Nike+, etc.  What types of activities do consumers engage in...what types of content do they share....who do they follow...how relevant is on-line gaming....etc??  How might such unique devices/platforms be applied in PUMA's product-marketing portfolio?

#2  Nike Running Product-User-Perception Research: PUMA would like to better understand the differences (if any) between consumers who purchase Nike's "Lunar" line of products and Nike's "Air"-based products.  Are these consumers similar or different?  How?  How does this related to Nike's general product-marketing and distribution strategies?  What can PUMA learn from such segmentation practices and how might PUMA be able to apply such learnings to improve product/consumer orientation for its own general mix?

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FEED Resource Recovery

Website:  www.feedresource.com

Industry:  Clean Technology

Description of Company

Feed Resource Recovery (feed) powers food industry distribution centers with waste. Our distributed waste-to-energy model allows customers to turn food waste (packaged and unpackaged) into clean energy, organic fertilizer and significant savings. Traditional waste service providers (ie. waste haulers, local composters, etc.) and other biogas technology companies rely heavily on waste hauling and centralized infrastructure. Rather than compete with this collect-haul-landfill model, feed leverages existing customer assets with a proprietary system to efficiently convert large volumes of food waste into clean energy onsite. This innovative approach allows customers to maximize profits from their food waste. Construction has started on a feed commercial-scale facility for a Fortune 100 customer in California.

Project Description & Deliverables

Research, develop and formalize a creative project financing and ownership structure / plan for future systems that requires less (or zero) up-front capital from customers.  

The project centers on creating a new project financing / ownership plan for future customers and projects. The team will complete market research to understand the market and technology, the current competitors and solutions, other industry solutions (ie. the 3rd party solar model), the project cash flow projections/implications, the potential financial sources/partners (ie. PE, senior debt, municipal bonds, etc), the pricing expectations and the required contracts.

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Beaumont Financial Partners, LLC

Industry:  Investments

Description of Company

Beaumont Financial Partners, LLC (and its predecessor firms) is a fee-based registered investment advisory firm specializing in wealth management for high net worth individuals. For over 2 years BFP has delivered a range of wealth management services to affluent individuals and families, small businesses, and nonprofit organizations. The word “partnership” in our name reflects our business philosophy: we treat the people with whom we do business as partners, not simply as clients or customers. Many of our clients are intergenerational and have a working relationship overall decades. While the majority of our business is within greater Boston, we have established relationships all over the world. At Beaumont Financial Partners, we are organized for and strive to build and sustain long-term, multigenerational relationships by blending our investment management, tax, financial planning and coordination expertise — skills and disciplines that benefit our clients on an ongoing basis. We believe that individuals and families strongly desire, but rarely can identify, a single advisor who can provide objective, sophisticated, tailored, and ongoing wealth management counsel. Beaumont Financial Partners’ mission is to be that advisor.

Project Description & Deliverables

BFP is launching an incubator/test lab for more aggressive trading strategies in an attempt to take advantage of the volatility in the market.  Initially BFP will utilize a paper portfolio and then fund a small account that can be more actively traded by our research/trading team.  The Babson team will work with BFP traders to investigate a range of approaches and technical strategies.  Students will gain experience using  standard investment tools  to investigate and validate findings.  In addition to valuable project experience team members will gain a ” hands on” practical trading strategies/tools project.

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ArtsEditor

Industry:  Arts Journalism

Description of Company

Reaching an online readership with the Boston edition since 1999; with feature articles, news items, and opinion pieces on the visual, performing, literary, film, and musical arts. The company owner is S. Edward Burns; he is the founding editor and publisher of the ArtsEditor.com business, and he is also the ArtsEditor® trademark name owner.

Project Description & Deliverables

Identify businesses in Boston and the New England region for strategic marketing, advertising, and editorial collaborations; including the establishment of media kit data that outlines advantages of partnering in those three areas with the ArtsEditor® brand, and at the ArtsEditor.com site.

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Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX)

  Industry:  Non-Profit

Description of Company

Established in 1996, MITX is the leading nonprofit industry organization focused on the web and mobile, bringing together the digital marketing, media and technology community to engage in what's next and how it will impact the marketing and business worlds. Connecting more than 7,500 professionals in New England, MITX is a dynamic community of thought leaders and collaborators in search of insight, education and opportunity.

Project Description & Deliverables

A complete view of the digital industry landscape in Massachusetts – from the largest companies to the startups, the investors, acquirers and entrepreneurs   – how big is the industry, what is happening with it and based on this where should we focus the leaders of this industry in order to continue growing it. Something that would allow someone to easily get a comprehensive view of our digital ecosystem.

There are basically two pieces – one is research and strategy based. To create the categorization model and framework for defining the industry here, then research to size it in terms of dollars and jobs. The second piece is interviews with leading CEOs, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs about what they are doing, how they feel about the promise of the digital community here and what else we could be doing to increase momentum in the sector. From these interviews, develop a set of recommendations about ways MITX can engage it’s members to help drive growth whether through public (state agencies)-private partnership or private initiatives to create a stronger entrepreneurial ecosystem, for example.

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Level Medical Integration Systems, LLC

  Industry:  Healthcare IT

Description of Company

Level Medical Integration Systems, LLC was founded by physicians whose goal was to improve the inefficiencies surrounding the perioperative process.  Our first product, PreOpScreening.com, is a web-based application that organizes and securely stores a patient’s health information in order to share it with physicians, nurses, and facilities.  The product allows patients to complete their medical history on-line, providing cost-savings for facilities as well as a reduction in cancellations, medical errors and improving efficiency for all providers.  Additional add-on products for facilities include compliance documentation, a medicine reconciliation piece, as well as a patient satisfaction survey.  The ownership team also consists of an IT expert, along with an Administrator of an Ambulatory Surgery Center, providing experts, therefore, on all clinical, IT and target market aspects.  This expertise has also allowed us to rapidly react to the constantly changing healthcare world, and producing additional products such as a Venous Thromboembolism Survey and Fall Risk Assessment with relative ease.

Project Description & Deliverables

Level Medical Integration Systems, LLC would benefit from a Member of the Babson Team that is well-versed in marketing, perhaps with a Life Science focus, to allow us to expand our marketing prowess and secure our position in an industry that has relatively little penetration.

The team would work directly with the owners of the company, as well as our Sales Representative.  Once fundamental knowledge of the product was gained, the focus can then turn to the industry and efforts to market and develop the product thus far.  Direct recommendations can take place with the ownership team through direct interaction and strategy sessions.  The project may shift to a higher level depending on the outcomes of latter stages of integration testing with companies such as GE and McKesson and subsequent partnerships.  In addition, a focus on the best approach to deal with other potential partners in the industry including consultants and management companies would be determined.  Finally, analysis of day-to-day operations would be welcomed, including financial projections, models or alternative strategies for success.

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Quinn Foods DBA Quinn Popcorn

  Industry:  Grocery Item/ Food Product

Description of Company

Quinn Pop­corn is microwave pop­corn reinvented! You will actu­ally have a hand in cre­at­ing your batch of pop­corn with­out slav­ing over a hot stove or grab­bing ingre­di­ents from your neighbor’s garden.

Our pop­corn ker­nels are organic and non-gmo.  The other ingre­di­ents will be organic when we can, and when we can’t, rest assured, we will know exactly where they are com­ing from.  On top of that, we are ditch­ing the plas­tic and Teflon patched bags, hydro­genated oils, arti­fi­cial flavorings, and replac­ing them with recy­cled and com­postable paper, expeller pressed oils, and simple, mouth-watering ingredients.

Quinn Pop­corn is nat­ural and cul­ti­vated, our ingre­di­ents clean and pure, and the fla­vors dis­tinc­tively sweet, savory, and salty.

Plain and sim­ple, our mis­sion is to pro­vide you with the best bag of microwave pop­corn. A bag that you will feel good about shar­ing with your fam­ily and friends!

Project Description & Deliverables

Quinn Popcorn is a start-up.  It’s a ton of work, but it’s extremely rewarding! Currently, we are looking for a larger warehouse space, we are gearing up for our second production run, and we are demoing at Whole Foods all around the North East. We are shipping to Amazon, establishing long term relationships with our suppliers, vendors, stores, and customers.  We are also creating a huge online presence via Facebook, Twitter, and our blog.  We are receiving incredibly positive feedback, and gaining a ton of exposure.  This means we could use a team, a group of leaders to help us ride this wave!

We have some projects in mind, but looking forward to your thoughts and ideas!

We need help targeting national markets & stores.

Optimizing manufacturing.

Product improvement: Enlisting customer feedback to further refine the product and user experience.

Help us develop a core financial underpinnings of a food company.

How do we manage our inventory & distribution effectively?

You will gain exposure to every facet of a start-up.

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Clean Journey

Industry:  Clean Technology and Career Branding

Description of Company  Clean Journey wants to help drive people into careers in clean energy. Their business revolves around propelling people down a path toward a new Clean Energy future.  The company focuses on identifying not only jobs that promote clean technologies, but also focuses on great companies to work for.  This project invites students to make this new future a reality in the Clean Tech Career Investment Project.

Project Description & Deliverables

Project Description: In this project we will need team members to use their knowledge of business to select Clean Tech companies that are the best places to work and invest your career.  Once the companies are picked and scored (this could be handled programmatically), a statistical analysis and rating of the findings will be needed and writers will craft a report of the findings.  Member’s journalism capabilities will be tasked to craft a compelling story about the report findings that will catch the attention of the media and industry.  Once a story is written, PR and Social Media Marketing skills will be needed to grab the attention of the marketplace and expand the audience for the program.

Deliverables: In eight regions throughout the U.S., select, evaluate and score up to 400 Clean Energy Technology companies for Career Investment potential.

Your objective is to create the parameters needed for an ongoing barometer of the employment health of the Clean Energy Technology industry, and to provide a roadmap for the public who are considering a Clean Energy Technology career as to the companies in their region that should be considered part of a Career Investment Portfolio.  In addition, it is hoped that the report will impact the Clean Tech companies themselves who will react to a lower score by improving the way they portray themselves to the marketplace.

The scope of the project is for a team to create the company Career Investment criteria, devise a scoring system to rank companies, determine company selection criteria, select the companies, score, rank the companies by region and write a comprehensive report analyzing the results and create a Public relations plan to grab media attention and exposure for the report.  There intent is to also write a report analyzing each region and crafting a Public Relations plan to get local media attention to support the national report.

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Circle + Bloom LLC

Industry: Health and Wellness

Description: Circle + Bloom offers doctor recommended mind+body audio programs for women’s health and wellness.  They offer specific programs for fertility, pregnancy, PCOS, Energy and Sleep and general health.  The programs are based on scientific research that has proven there is a link between the mind and body and you can use visualization exercises to have your brain direct your body that will result in physical changes.

Project Description: Increase sale conversion on traffic to our website.

We have grown sales each month since we started the company, but growth has been slow.  We have outstanding customer satisfaction and support from the medical industry.  We have had a hard time to pin point exactly what the issue is.  It could possibly be price, or a lack of understanding of what the product actually is.  This project will be essential to our future – understanding how our target market thinks about our programs and price.

Deliverables: The project would consist of market research around price and messaging.   Specifically, we want to understand the leverage and business model impact on changes to price.  If we lower the price by X% it will lead to x% higher sales.  We also want to have the team test various messages and website content to see if different content will help drive conversion.

Initially milestones will be established for the market research phase.  We would like the team to recommend the best approach to gain the market research, (i.e. focus groups) and then execute the collection of the market research.  From there we would like the team to help implement recommendations from the research.  We will work with the team to set base line measures on key success metrics and then measure those metrics over a period of time after the recommendations have been implemented.  We will keep the team up to date on improvements even after the end of the project in order for them to use this as a case study on resumes. 

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CA Technologies, Inc.

Industry: Information Technology

Description: CA Technologies is an IT management software and solutions company with expertise across all IT environments—from mainframe and physical to virtual and cloud. CA Technologies manages and secures IT environments, enabling our customers to deliver more flexible IT services. Our solutions help our customers gain a level of deep insight into, and exceptional control over, complex mixed IT environments. It’s that level of insight and control that enables IT organizations to power business agility.

Project Description: We would like to identify ways to analyze the way networks are created within our online communities through visualization, so that we can identify the major influencers and contributors.  We believe it would be beneficial to visualize how their webs of influence are set up, how they grow and also hypothesize what happens if they are removed.  Based on various attributes of these connections, different pictures can emerge about the strengths and weaknesses of these networks and the ad hoc webs that are created between users. With what we learn from this analysis, we can begin to identify and incent secondary influencers to become stronger so that the overall network is more stable in the event that the main influencers and contributors leave.  This will help make the communities stronger and more self-reliant.

Deliverables: The primary deliverable would be an analysis of the visualization data generated via a relevant and capable tool (as identified in the second deliverable).  This analysis would be delivered as a written report (with executive summary) and presented in person at the conclusion of the study. A second deliverable would be a recommendation on the best model/tool we could apply to a data export from our community environment on a regular basis to continue to build data for future analysis.

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Newton Schools Foundation

Industry: Education

Description: The Newton Schools Foundation is an educational nonprofit organization devoted to raising funds to support the Newton Public Schools.  The Foundation is comprised of a Board of Trustees, including an executive committee, an Executive Director, part-time development consultant and part-time office manager.  The mission of the Foundation is to generate support for the Newton Public Schools by reaching out to the Newton community, developing effective fund-raising events, elevating the profile of the organization, and creating meaningful partnerships with leaders within Newton.

Project Description: The Foundation is interested in developing a network amongst Newton North and Newton South alumni through social media.  As opposed to creating a database, this network would provide a more flexible means of alerting alumni of our activities including events, gatherings, school activities, and updates on our efforts.  We are seeking help from Babson students to take this initiative to the next level, since we are starting to establish a presence for the Foundation on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.  We believe that this social media project could become the blueprint for how schools work with alumni in the future.

Deliverables: The expectations for this project are for Babson students to help us more clearly define our goals, establish a network of alumni for Newton North and South on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and create links to other Newton North and South resources through this social media network.

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Monomoy Community Sevices

Website: http://www.monomoy.org

Industry: Social Services

Description: Monomoy Community Services, Inc. is a private, non-profit agency dedicated to promoting a healthy social environment for Chatham, MA residents of all ages. Services are preventative and therapeutic. Goals of prevention include maintaining the integrity of family relationships, enhancing the mental and social development of individuals, easing the transition of youth and adolescents into the adult world, and helping parents, children, and other cope with the stresses of society and the environment.

What has come to be known as the Monomoy Youth and Family Center began in the late 60s. First simply a “hot line” in a local church, it has expanded to become a vital community non-profit resource, dedicated to providing quality recreational, informational, and counseling services for Chatham families.

Project Description: Create a plan that lays out specific steps to securing approximately $50,000 additional income in addition to building a $3,000,000 endowment fund over next several years.

Deliverables: Create a viable action plan for securing additional funding and funding sources in order to maintain and grow current funding.