Sunday 13 August 2017

Projects can give a turning point to students

Sanju a B School Student has taken up a project to do an analysis about the consumer preference and opinion about a model of CAR. He has 3 other team mates in the project but not so keen on the project. the problem was to get the data of car buyers. Sanju used his contact and convinced a car showroom to part the email ids of about 1000 car buyers. He designed a google form and sent it to all email ids he has. The form was well designed to take the inputs of car users, It was having 10 questions with option to choose the desired answer and an opinion column. He got good response. Out of 1000 emails sent he got about 320 inputs in the first attempt. He made repeated efforts and successfully collected about 520 response. That was a good attempt. Later Sanju collected all the opinions and tabulated the information.
Summary of the information showed some stunning outcome:
  • Happiness index : 61% of the respondents told that they are very happy, another 24% they are happy(OK), Another 9% said they are not happy, 6% said, "cannot say".
  • Mileage (Cost Index) : 68% of the people marked Very Fuel Efficient, 21% said some what efficient, 11% said their vehicle is not fuel efficient. (about 58 car owners said they are not happy with the fuel efficiency)
  • Maintenance Index: Showed 37% are fully satisfied, another 23% said they are somewhat satisfied, whopping 40% ( 212 owners) said they are not happy. Reason: maintenance is too expensive.
  • An opinion section was given to respondents to express their opinion : It was having about 212 opinions. Since it is an open section Sanju came across various opinions. Divided into three sections: 1. Problem related 2. Suggestions & 3 Technical inputs
  • Out of which there are more than 140 opinions about one issue: that the car's ground clearance. The model is having a low ground clearance as a result it hits the road humps frequently. This is one of the major problems vehicle owners are facing.
Sanju prepared detailed analysis and report, submitted to the HOD. the project got the attention of HOD. He found it is interesting. He called Sanju and told him to submit a copy to a business analyst and obtain the review. As a result it came to me. I went through the project and how it is done. It was done very precisely. I checked most of the email response as i wanted to ascertain that Sanju has received response from 520 car owners. It was true that sanju got response. I was more interested in the analysis. It is also throwing light on various issues that are essentially required for a car maker. Then i contacted the GM of the car manufacturing company and sent a copy of the report and said i need to discuss. I got prompt response for an online call. I engaged in the call and analysed the report and it was an eye opener for the company, as their sales figures are going down in the same way as reflected in the report.
The car model was an initial hit. This created overconfidence in the team. As result company was focusing on sales instead of customer satisfaction. It was doing well for 6 months and later sales figures started sliding down. But team was giving some excuse and the management was blind. When they saw our analysis, it was in accordance with the customer feeling and slide in sales figures. This was an eye opener to the company and company started damage control exercise. Some times even MNCs will go blind listening and believing to team.
But the real part of the story is next: The company wanted to know who has done this R&D . I promptly spoke to company about the Sanju and told them you need to hire him to a senoir position as he deserves such encouragement and he was hires as a senior analyst for their sales division and he will be reporting directly to GM sales.
I hope you understood the importance of the project and how can your project give you better options to your career. Some points about your project:
  1. Project and Internship are very important steps that connect you to the industry.
  2. Choose your project carefully and involve 100% in that.
  3. While choosing project be clear about what your doing and why you are doing. Do it as per your interest and passion. Use your discretion power wisely while choosing a project.
  4. Involve in your project complete whether your team mates will support or not. If they don't support take it as an opportunity and do their role also. It gives you more exposure and confidence.
  5. Don't do the project just for the sake of exam and marks.
  6. Many more points we will discuss do contact on guru@gims.co Or Call on +9845429122
Dr. Guruprasad T N

No comments:

Post a Comment