Fox’s Enterprise Management Consulting is Recognized by the Financial Times
Starting as a pilot component to Temple University’s Fox School of Business MBA program in 1999, the Enterprise Management Consulting Practice
program (EMC) has expanded from one project to working with 135 clients to adjust their strategies and make key market-entry decisions.
Of those clients, EMC helped 40 firms consummate capital transactions worth $136.5 million. The Financial Times has highlighted the EMC program, mentioning that companies are increasingly interested in partnering with the Fox School and that those companies are giving students more high-priority projects.
In the past 10 years, more than 500 students have taken part in an EMC MBA consulting project, which allows student teams to assist firms in exploring and enhancing business opportunities.
Since the EMC started, Fox’s MBA students have received in excess of 100 jobs or job offers through the networks developed during their EMC projects. For example, after the spring 2009 projects were completed, one of the client firms offered two of the four students from the consulting team six-month consulting contracts, and another student who had worked on a project for the United Nations made it to the finalist interview stage for a competitive position with an international body.
“The EMC program is a wonderful way for MBA students to integrate all of the technical skills they have learned at Fox and develop business skills,” said T.L. Hill, Fox managing director of the EMC program and assistant professor of general and strategic management.
The EMC was devised to provide MBA students with hands-on consulting experience that also serves to tie together all aspects of their MBA curriculum. Students work in teams that provide strategic consulting services to client firms. Each team is closely supervised by a senior executive and utilizes Fox’s extensive business and faculty network to find the expert advice needed to craft a solution to a wide variety of strategic challenges.
"Not many business schools in the U.S. have such a real-life consulting exposure, and the EMC project is one of the prime reasons I decided to attend Fox’s MBA program,” said Jessy Joyce Nadar, a Fox MBA student.
Over the years, the EMC has developed three areas of expertise: global technology start-up ventures, strategic renewal of established firms and social enterprise. While customized for each client, the projects typically start with detailed, primary research into customer needs, market demand, the competitive situation, industry structure and the business environment. The projects then proceed through the development of strategic options, implementation plans and financial models. The final product is typically a document and presentation for investors, senior management or board-level decision makers.
For example, the EMC program aided MedStaff Carolinas, LLC, a traveling nurse staffing company, in exploring and assessing strategic options. “As a direct consequence of the students’ research and introductions, we reoriented our strategy to becoming trusted advisers rather than service providers, developed entirely new sales approaches, and added a tool to our Web site – all using variations on the scheduling model the students developed,” said Richard Davis, CEO of MedStaff Carolinas, LLC.
The “going green” trend enticed Fox’s MBA program to create a new course on the management of social enterprise taught by Professor Hill, and to hold an annual conference on Social Entrepreneurship managed by Fox Net Impact. Professor James Hutchin, Fox clinical professor of general and strategic management, leads the EMC’s Initiative for Sustainability Strategies, which seeks both local and global projects that offer a sustainability edge.
In 2006, five Fox MBA students worked with the Willistown Conservation Trust and helped develop a sustainable farming venture, which now feeds more than 85 families. On a larger scale, Fox MBA students are working with the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative to conduct global research for the development of “Principles for Sustainable Insurance.”
"The UNEP FI project was one of the most fascinating projects that I have worked on, and it opened me up to a completely new sector, sustainability, which is both interesting and challenging,” Nadar said. “Our EMC project team also had the opportunity to present our findings before the UN working groups in London and develop client management and leadership skills.”
These client management and leadership skills are valuable because, as Professor Hutchin describes, “Rather than analyzing a case study, students prospectively work through first the analysis, and then craft a solution structure for a real business problem. Much like the difference between being a spectator or a player at a competitive sporting event, instead of learning the case study, students, clients and project managers live it.”
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