MBA Blogs @ Manchester Business School

Recently my IB team has been experiencing the process of applying visa. We applied to China and Australia. And we found that it is MUCH easier to get a Chinese visa than an Australian one. How does this tell you about doing business in the world?

For those of you who are from the Anglo-Saxon/EU countries, it would have been another way around. I am sure you will get the Australian visa within 2 hours/anytime/anywhere if you’ve got a computer/iphone/ipad. However, the Chinese visa will be a little bit more time consuming because you have to wait at least a day. However, people from non-of-the-above countries will find it extremely difficult to enter Australia but we can still get a chinese visa within a day as well. (I love that Chinese government is very fair, lolz) My team composed of Thai, Egyptian (Political Activist), and Russian (Bombshell). We applied together last Tuesday. Thai got the visa within 2 days while the rest have problems with their application. They needs to sent a lot more support documents that you couldn’t imagine to the embassy. The good things about the school is they will never let us walk alone. A lot of people have been helping us including our school professors, members in MBA offices, clients (Thank you!), and all contacts that they have known us for just a day. (I don’t know a lot of Aussie but people whom I have contacted are pretty friendly).

Also after contacting all the people I need to interview in Australia, I started to realized that it is very very difficult from the UK company to run a business in Australia without having any presence there. The time in Sydney is GMT+11. When you send the email to them from the UK during our day time. You do nothing but wait because it is night time over there. They will reply back when they go to work the next day and it means you will see their message in the morning after you waking up. Hence, you need to expect at least 24 hours for them to reply. What if you need something really really urgent? (Telephone does not work as well because you will wake them up in the middle of the night) Then what would you do? You can wait to call them in the morning but calling 9AM in Australian time meaning that you have to stay up working until 9PM. I think it is ok for just once in awhile but will it be ok for a regular meeting?

I know that this is just the small stuff that I shouldn’t sweat. But don’t forget that one of many reasons that the acquisition of Sendit (by Microsoft) fail is the geographical/Time Zone difference  (USA west coast and Sweden)

So after a long long while of waiting, all members in my team have received their visa and we are finally going to fly to Australia (on Monday)

Have fun traveling, all MBA Class of 2012!

P.S. Thank you Phil G., Nathan P.Michelle W., Lynne Mc., Janak, and Rajnish. Really appreciate your help and this trip can’t happen without you.

I don’t know about the others but I must admit that I kind of miss my MBS Classroom environment.

Currently all full-time students from class 2012 (like myself) are under our final mission, the International Business (IB) project. The IB Project is a consultancy project that a group of student will have to work with the client to guide them through their global ambition. We have to conduct a rigorous business research (will try our best, sir!), provide the best possible recommendation to clients and at the same time provide the best impact on MBS reputation. This project is called IB because it involves serving international clients or clients with global ambition. (The pre-requisite of this project is the international travel). This year we have 22 groups serving around 20 clients (and will travel to at least 10 countries around the world, depend on the project)

My client is a very successful company in the UK. They have recently expanded to the US. They are so successful that now they want to conquer the world with aggressive business expansion plan. They are not afraid of the competition. (It’s blue ocean business) My project is to identify the highest potential markets and provide them the market entry strategy. Sound fun but there were a lot of blood, sweat, and tears behind it. We identified 20 variables to be studied and used them to rank 60 countries. ( 20 X 60 = 1,200 data points to be collected in 2 weeks. Let alone identifying the weights of these factors). We had our top 10 finalist today and ready to be discussed with the client tomorrow! XD

Do You know that normally we cannot choose our own group to work with at MBS? Basically, the school will randomly assigned a group for us for every subject. (I think it is good for students because we have chance to work with many people. And finally, you know what kind of people you enjoy working with) However, there is only 1 course that we can choose our own team member, and it is the final one, the IB project. So my previous experience on working with many classmates came in handy. I have teamed up with all 3 of my friends from my marketing group (my first group at MBS), one from my UKCP group, and one new. We compose of a PHD Russian bombshell, an ex-IBM peruvian consultant who can speak Italian, an ex-P&G brand manager who was born in Myanmar, an Egyptian political activist who worked in finance, an incredible IT guy (McKinsey-to-be) who hope that his family will find him a wife, and myself, an accountant who won a marketing award that changed her life (Hopefully, my MBS will twist it again). lolz

My group works from Monday to Friday (and sometimes during the weekend) from 10am to 6pm or more. (Others might run on a different schedule. As far as I know, one group manages to work from 1pm to 9pm everyday ) I like my project but sometimes I can’t help missing studying in the classroom during my first year. Studying in the classroom requires less brain to function. You can just attend the class. You have options to note down the key points, or to just sit back and relax (not recommend!). You can express your opinions during class discussion, if you like. At the end of the course, you study for the exam. Easy right? But the real life is much more complicated. In the IB project, you work on the real business problems. There is no powerpoint presentation from the Professor but the expression from the client’s face that we have to identify the underlying needs. There are millions of possible solutions to be explored. Only the best one should be identified, and justified. Follow by some options as alternative plans. There is a result to be delivered every week and we are trying our best to deliver the best project. I must admit that it is much easier to study in the classroom than to work in the consulting project. However, as part of our MBA life, we need to be able to combine our past experience with what we have learned in MBS, and move higher. And the IB project is the perfect final step that will sharpen our skill more before going out to the real world (again).

Best of Luck for the interim presentation week!!!

P.S. Since I am on the mission, I can’t tell you the name of my client or the name of my agents (team members). Sorry for that XD

I kept telling myself that I have to blog about my exchange student life at SDA Bocconi. But I was always occupied with my studying, meeting, travelling, etc. So I haven’t done it until today, my last day in Milano.

Our MBS has connection with 36 universities worldwide and I earned my spot at SDA Bocconi. Therefore during autumn term, while my fellow MBS students are studying their 4 electives over 3 months in Manchester, I took 7 electives over 2 months in a new country, new language, new school, new classmates and new houses. Why am I doing this? Firstly I want to learn more about business management style in other European countries apart from the UK. Secondly, I want to learn more about business strategy and innovation.  Bocconi offers three concentration and two niche programmes. Three concentrations include Marketing, Finance, and Strategy while two niches are Real Estate and Innovation. So it fits with what I need. Lastly, I want to have experience studying abroad. I learn that the more I expose to the new environment, the more creativity I become because I see things differently.

SDA Bocconi & its MBA programme:

Bocconi is located in Milan and is the leading business school in Italy. The business school itself has more than 100 years of history, 37 years for MBA. Because of this, it has a strong link with business and industry. Every day I have many chances to attend a company’s presentation. (We have in Manchester as well but the difference is that Bocconi has Italian companies visited too)

The MBA building is with Master division, where the building is separated from the main business school. The teaching facilities are great and the class is small ~ 50 people in one section, same as MBS. Class participation is mandatory and is accounted for up to 25% of overall grade, depend on the subject. Students have to attend at least 80% of the class, otherwise school will fail them. (This actually happened and I know the student who failed because of not attending the class – very strict indeed). There is no student council so students contact the dean directly. I attended the town hall meeting with the dean couple times and it was very nice, informal yet effective ways of communication. However, at the end, the class will select the representative to be the class president. For MBA36, the class president is Hila Cohen. I studied with her in strategy and innovation. She is awesome!

Every course has a group assignment.(except for my strategic decision making class, which only had one final exam) School assigned the group for us and we worked in the group for the whole semester. In my case, I have two groups – one in strategy and another one in innovation. This is different from MBS where we had different group in every subject. I think at MBS, I have many opportunities to work with many different people. However, at Bocconi, I had more time learning from each other in my group because we have to work together in many projects. Another difference is the assignment itself, at MBS, it is all about the report but at Bocconi, we only prepared PowerPoint presentation, which we usually have 10-15 minutes to present. Elevator pitching applied! Two of the courses require reports but with the maximum of 10 pages. Personally, I think the workload at Bocconi is less but we had to be more focus and it does not mean that the quality is deteriorated.

The school focuses on the case discussion and the simulations where students have chances to learn through the interactive computer programmes. One of the simulations is the programme that we have to convince 22 people in the company to adopt the new ERP system. This is part of the change management course. We can use many ways to encourage change in the organisation such as email, internal memo, guest speaker, company newsletter, networking, one-to-one meeting, indirect lobbying, etc. However, we were limited by time. At the end, my team were able to convince 9 people to adopt the new system. Not successful but it was fun to learn this way.

I also learned about famous Italian companies such as Fiat, Ducati, Italtel, Amadori, Gucci, etc. Many Italian companies open up to new way of business management such as Kaizen at Fiat, but they have their own Italian culture, which they tried to emphasis the so called ‘Italian heritage’. The Professors usually invite company reps to the class for case discussion which I really like it because we are not just learning about the company but have chance to ask the question to the real source as well.

The exam for each subject is only 1.5 to 2 hours, which can be both close and open questions. One of the exam stated that student have to write answer in the maximum of 1 page. Awesome!!

Student Life:

My flat is 5 minutes walk from school. (Not Victoria Hall – it’s way much nicer). On the way to school, I usually either stopped by at the coffee shop near school or got myself a coffee from the coffee machine at school. Bocconi classes start so early. While at MBS, everything starts at 9am but at Bocconi, the classes start8:30 to 13:30 everyday. In the afternoon, I either attended a company presentation, finished the assignments, or planed the weekend trips. Exchange students have our own community too. There are around 40 of us. We went to the Italian class together (at least at the beginning), went to party together, or dinner together.  We have our own facebook page However, when school starts we received a very warm welcome from the current Bocconi MBA students. Thank you! I went to student exchange welcome party organised by Bocconi student (not just MBA), MBA Welcome party for Class 2012 (a.k.a MBA 37), Japan Tsunami fund raising party, Entrepreneur club events, and Diwali night. So I must say that I have a very good quality time meeting new people.

Travelling & Eating:

8 weeks in Italy apart from studying in Milano, during the weekend I have been to Verona, Pisa, Bologna, Alba & Asti for truffle and wine festival, Rome, Napoli, Cortina, and Padova. I must say that Italy is so packed of many great places that I could spend months exploring. I love the beautiful mountain in the north at  the Dolomiti where I never known I could take pictures of the mountains for the whole day. I love a romantic gondola ride in Venice. I enjoyed walking around the old city of Bologna and visited Juliette’s house at Verona. I could wander about Roma all day, visiting the entire ancient Roman’s ruins, piazza, and the fountains. I also love the food that it is not just pasta and pizza but parma ham, truffles, salami, seafood, beef, gelato and wines. Most of all, drinking coffee is one of the best things to do in Italy. I love café macchiato! By the way, if you order pepperoni pizza in Italy you will get pizza with pepper. If you want to have your ‘pepperoni’ pizza, you have to order salami

And that was it! I am packing my rich two months memory of studying in Italy back to Manchester. Leaving tomorrow.

Travelling in Italy, Best pizza, ravioli, and wines, Milan Fashion week, Ferrari Champaign, BVLGARI sparkling water, and MBA at SDA Bocconi, I am going to miss!

This post is 100% made in Italy.

See you in Manchester

It’s been an exciting day on the last Sunday, meeting Ffion, the head of MBA Marketing team and my fellow student, Gaurav Shah, and presenting about the MBA programme at MBS.

MBS came to Milan to meet 8-10 possible class-of-2014-students.Everyone had 30 mins 1-on-1 meeting with us. They can ask anything about MBS, the program, the application process, the requirement, the student accommodation, the scholarship, or the studying experience direct from the sources (myself and Gaurav).

Do you remember the time you have to write those MBA application essays about Why MBA, Why MBS, Why, Why, and Why? In this event you have the chance to ask us, why MBS is the right one for me, Why, Why, and Why? It is such a reverse situation. (haha) I think the event provided a very useful source of information for writing the application essay because what we tell you is exactly what we are looking for.

I was able to present about our project-based MBA programme and our ‘UN’ community that our class president always mentions. (Thank you) I love the fact that each candidate is so keen on asking about MBS and what we offer in our programme. However, I had few awkward moments. A nice gentleman asked me how the school can help him change his career from R&D Specialist to marketing. There was a silent moment but I somehow managed to say about the marketing courses, the chance to apply his experience in the projects, marketing club activities, networking events, etc. And we had some success examples of people changing career in our programme.

Another gentleman asked how he can get a job in the UK. I was not sure whether he thought that school was supposed to find him a job after MBA? I told him about CMS and What CMS does for us which includes career consultant, CV & Cover letter, interview, etc. I told him how CMS helped me getting the internship. The school helps us but we have to help ourselves as well.

A gentleman asked me whether he should go to China to study Chinese before studying MBA. I told him that it was up to him but he would have a lot of opportunities practicing his chinese with his MBA friends in the class.

I also talked to one of the gentlemen who is now doing a post-doctor degree. He does not have a real work experience but he has tons of educational degrees. He reminds me of you, Dr. Laura Mace, the smartest girl in our class He told me that his work involves scientific IT experiments so I asked him about the types of experiment. I really want to find out how can he help our MBA class without any work background experiences so I really tried to understand what he studied. I found out that he was an IT engineer who developed the search engine software and one of the experiment and scientific tools that he used is the ANOVA table. Hooray! I know that. Thank you Dr. Nathan Proudlove, for teaching me statistics!!! This gentleman seemed to be satisfied to see me knowing what ANOVA table and SPSS are though.

Sometimes they asked me some detail questions which I could not remember like my class size (aaaaaa) , a number of the nationalities in my class (hmmmm), the application fee (hmmmmm). I know I should have done my homework before going to this event. Oh well, now I know

Class of 2012: 128 students

Average age: 29

Average experience: 6.5

Application fee: No

Scholarship: Yes. Based on your GMAT, backgound experience, women leading the business, and for EU citizens! but not everyone gets it. For high chance, apply before Spring 2012!

And for those of you who have been featuring in the new brochure, I have been talking about you guys a lot. I think all the candidates that I talked with already known you by heart now. You are the stars. (haha)

Thank Jenny Gunn and Ffion for the opportunity to present the school. Thank Gaurav for the support when needed!

Now back to study!

The check list questions 

• Have you heard about the VCIC?
• Do you know how they do it?
• Do you know what the ‘Due diligence’ is?
• Do you have Finance background?
• Do you know DCF/ How to value the company?
• Do you know how to negotiate?

My answer is ‘No’ to all of the above when I entered the competition this time last year but I joined anyway. I learned that it is one of the challenges that pushed me through the limits. The knowledges I gained from it can be applied to at least more than half of the MBA courses I took so far. Although my team didn’t win the competition (we were no.2) but looking back, I love every moment of it.

From the picture: From the Left, Me, HaoLu, Sophy, Dan, and Sherjeel (The Domino’s members!)

VCIC training for newbies:

MBS encouraged everyone to join the competition. The school was very helpful by walking me  through the process I needed to complete in the VCIC such as how to evaluate the company, how to choose the company/entrepreneur, how to do the negotiation, and what is and how to do the due diligence. There is a 2-hours class dedicated to train the students every week. (Total 4-5 weeks). So, if you do not have any background experience (like me), no worries! Also, thanks to McGum (Winning team from class 2011), they gave us a lot of info and tips for this VCIC.

Apart from that, my team had regular meeting every week for an hour to go through the things that Professor taught in the training class/everything we need to know about VCIC. So basically, it was only 3-4 hours/week of meeting and maybe another certain amount of time (2 -3 hours) for your own reflection. Is it a time consuming project? Yes. But we are the MBA, we can do it.

You can attend the training although you don’t join the competition.

The Selection Process:

Every team was given the case. We had to submit the questions we wanted to ask the entrepreneur during the due diligence. Five best teams were selected to compete in the final round.

The Final Round:

The 5 teams were given the cases at 5pm. We had the whole night to decide what company/project we wanted to invest in. We came up with our top 3 and the list of questions we wanted to ask the entrepreneurs.

At 9am of the next day, we met the entrepreneurs. Each team had  a certain amount of time meeting with each entrepreneur. (I think 15 mins) We are scored based on how well we negotiate.

In the afternoon (same day), we picked the company we wanted to invest in. Submitted the due diligence. Negotiated our last round (another 15 mins, I think).

After that, the judges asked us some questions. And the best team won

Looking Back:

I think it was good to be one of the the best five teams. We had a lot of experiences: analysed many cases, gained the opportunities to look at the business from all the angles, and did the real negotiation. These VCIC cases involved the development of the new technology as well, so they gave us the insight about the IP management. It was sad that we didn’t win but some how, some part (not so) deep down in our body was screaming with happiness that we did not have to go through so many many many hours of training and team meeting and faced the tough night of only 3 hours of sleep and litres of coffee again.  Thank God and Cheers!

The picture of the Winning team:)

From the left, Laura, Adil, Alex, Tania, and Tamir.

P.S. I feel like I am writing the essay for this post.

Hello!

Wanna know a good place to grab some lunch/ have a quick dinner/ supper at an affordable price?

Here is the list of restaurants.

1. Italian Express

You may all know it and yes! it has a really good food! Daily made pasta and fresh from the oven pizza.

You can order online (Make sure you choose ‘city centre’ branch)

My favourite is Italian meat fest. For the meat lover!

10% student discount

Cost: £5-7

2. Little Fusion

It is on Cavendish Street. This place is one of my favourite place to go either for lunch or dinner.

The lunch set menu, you get 1 soup + 1 main course for £5-6

If you look for something that is not on the lunch set, my recommended dishes are tepanyaki egg tofu, fried shrimp with mayo, Fried egg with shrimp, Maggi Pork, Mapo Tofu!

For the dessert, Try Red bean Ice!

It closes at 9pm. You can call to order food. The staffs are very friendly!

10% student discount

Cash only

Cost: £10-12

3. Korean Restaurant.

I don’t remember the name but it is next to sugden sport centre. Open for lunch only (Mon-Friday)

Everyday, one dish from the menu will be on sales. Normally it is £3.XX but on the specific day, it will be £2.xx.

My favourite one is Tofu bim bim bub. Try have it with Rice drink (in a can).

Cost: £5

4. Umami

On Oxford Street.

Nice Asian food.

They have a lunch set menu as well (£5-6, exclude the drinks)

One of my friends love gyoza there.

5. Pizza Co

On Oxford Street. Opposite MMU.

I love Fried chicken here. My friend told me that their pizza and pasta are good as well.

Cost £2.5-3

I am not sure about its opening hour, for me it never closes: Lunch, Dinner, Supper, etc. It is always there for me

6. Lameizi

(Oxford Street. Same road with STA)

It is Sichuan Food (Chinese). The dish I like here is the fish soup (In the picture).

They also serve hotpot. I have never tried and it is a bit expensive (£19) so no comment.

Cost: £15

7. Tai Wu

Oxford Road (Opposite Tesco)

I love the food here especially roasted duck, fried green pea, mapo tofu and Fried Pork.

You can have ‘Jok’ (Rice Porridge) during your study nights! They closed at 3am.

10% Student discount

If you can speak Chinese, make sure you ask them for a free soup of the day and dessert. They are free. (But they do not have it everyday)

Cost: £10

Bon Appetit!!

Hi Guys!
Welcome to our MBA community at Manchester Business School.
Just want to share some tips I found useful as an MBA Student here.

1. Be Different: We all love diversity (and it does not limit to only nationality but for opinions as well) and you will learn more out of each other.

2. Be Curious: You might say that it’s non of my business but hey it might come in handy one day! I encourage you *wink

3. Open up: So that you will learn a lot of things. Have you ever heard ‘when one door closes, another door opens?’ This is it!

4. Make connection: I know you all love this but if you don’t. At least make connection to the people you will have to work with or want to work with in the future. Believe me, you will find this useful later.

5. Give suggestion to the problem: Complaining is easy but the person who gives solution is our hero

6. Have fun in whatever you do

Picture Source: Gettyimages

Hope you have a blast during your time here!!!!!!

I want to throw all my Bangkok life into the bag, take everything to the UK so that I can just land all my stuff in the room and do not need to buy anything at all. BUT as you know … the weight limit for the luggage is 30kg (+ hand carry 7kg). We need to do a bit of prioritisation. (I managed to buy a Korean bag that literally has no weight at all   Also I have a hand carry that have like 20kg weight but I manage to maintain a smily face pretending that it is not heavy at all and of course, no one can touch the bag. My friend from China (MBS) told the lady at the check-in counter that it is her first time travelling abroad and she is a student who really needs all the stuff to study. She also got away with that excuse as well. And as far as I know she brought 8 bags total weight almost 80kg -_-! She beats me in this!)

In the picture is the bags and I (in the cap from Machester airport, 15th Aug 2010)

Looking back, if I have to do everything again, what is a definitely must bring (or ding?)

1.Medicines.

Especially antibiotic and antihistamine. I always catch cold and the medicines I take are quite strong. I usually take 1000mg of amoxikav tablet (While the one they sold in Boots in the UK is only 250mg) for 3 times a day, Clarinase 24 hour, etc. In bangkok, the hospital is really good especially the private one. So you get everything sorted out for you very quickly from seeing a doctor to getting your medicine (with a very good service, of course!) but here, in the UK, it is quite different, the doctor will not give you medicine when you caught a cold. You will need to recover it by yourself or buy a cold medicine from a counter which is no where near the medicine I usually took. Basically, you need to wait for your virus to develop to a certain level that the doctor will give you more advance level of medicine. This process can take up to 2 weeks. So to be safe, Medicine is a must BRING!

(Later on, Laura told me that  in the UK doctors do control the prescription of antibiotics, it’s to reduce antibiotic resistance which increases when antibiotics are used too much. I know it’s not the same as in Thailand but it’s for a good reason…)

Now I understand that I am one of the people who have been spoiled to use these medicines!! Too late… I think.

2. Clothes

From my experience, no need to bring a lot because Manchester has everything you want You can wear jeans to class but if you have a client meeting, CMS networking events or a class presentation, a proper business dress is required.

For ladies, I think it is very hard to find the short heel shoes here. If you love them, then bring from home.

(Bedding, you can buy the everything from Asda, primark, Argos, etc. Except long pillow, they do not sell it here. My friend shipped it from Thailand)

3. Stationary

If you can’t study or read the textbook without colour pens, highlighters, etc. You might want to bring them from your home. Stationary is expensive here.

4. Important documents such as transcript, international driving license, credit cards, etc.

5. IT

Notebook –> Class 2012–> no need to bring but if you are a Mac user, you will miss it if you don’t bring it with you.

New Class, I heard that you guys will be provided an ipad right? It’s so cool. Congrats. So I reckon you should bring

1. Notebook

2. Lan cable (especially if you live in victoria hall, there is no wireless - they only have high-speed broadband) 

3. USB drive

4. Mouse

6. Contact lens –> bring

7. Instant food, cooking ingredients –> No need, Manchester has everything (This case apply to Thai, Chinese, Taiwanese, etc. I do not mean to discriminate. It’s just I never cook other kinds of international food)

8. Rice Cooker (Confirmed by my chinese friend). Actually, Tarun (Mr. President) knows how to cook the rice without using a rice cooker. If he could tell us, it would be great!!!

For everything else, there is Master card. (I use NatWest, BTW)