What Can Business Education Teach Us about Managing PMBA

							                     Guide to In-Sourcing:
                     A Faculty Perspective
                      Rachel Croson, UT Dallas




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                                  My Background
 • Employment History and Research
 • Dilettante
       Economics (many)
       Marketing (Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research)
       Management, both OB and Strategy (Organizational Behavior and Human
           Decision Processes, Strategic Management Journal)


       Operations (Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Production and
           Operations Management)


       Finance (Review of Financial Studies)
 • Given me useful understanding of fields
       and how they might help you
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                     Current Environment
 • Economic downturn
       Fewer resources
       Yet increased demand
             GMAC 2009 Report showed net 7% increase in
               applications to PMBA programs (high variance)
             Education is countercyclical, but resources are not
 • Bad news: You need to do more with less
 • Good news: exist internal resources you can
   leverage to help (faculty and students)
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                                  How?
 • Encourage you to think of your faculty and
   students as “internal consultants”
       Unlike Masters programs in Arts or even Sciences, your
         faculty and students have useful expertise
       Some of you may have tried insourcing already
             Love to hear success/failure examples
             Some breakout sessions discuss this as well
 • Today, help you achieve insourcing success
       Discuss types of questions internal consultants can (and
         can’t) help with
       Provide guidance on who to ask what, what information
         to provide them
       Discuss how to incentivize them to work for you
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              Disclaimers and Objectives
 •   Short talk, not complete or definitive
 •   Brain-stretching
 •   More questions than answers
 •   Not every idea will be right for everyone

 • 10-3-1 (Rule of Sales)
       Introduce (at least) 10 ideas (questions+people to ask)
       Try three of them
       One might succeed
             Better to try and fail than not try at all
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        Organized Around PMBA “Life Cycle”
•   Stage 1: Is a PMBA for me (product awareness)
•   Stage 2: Is your PMBA for me (brand awareness)
•   Stage 3: Application/Admission/Payment (purchase point)
•   Stage 4: Care and Feeding (relationship maintenance)
•   Stage 5: Post-Graduation and Development (brand loyalty)




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               Stage 1: Is a PMBA for me?
• How to convince your target market that they
  should get a PMBA?

• Marketing faculty: product awareness
    Who is your (current) target market (individuals, firms,
     industries, …)?
    How is product awareness among those targets?
    What can be done to improve it?
    How can you boost product awareness among other target
     markets you might want to expand to?
          For example, Obama’s “Moms return to school”?
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                        For example
 • Should we be considering cooperative
   advertising?
       Got milk? has >90% awareness in the US
       Exists an EMBA Council with a website, executive director
          whose job it is to promote EMBA programs (Michael
          Desiderio)
       Why not PMBA?




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                     Stage 1 Summary
 1. Marketing faculty can advise about product
    awareness
      Consider alliances with other PMBA programs in the
         region, nationally and internationally
      Consider new targets for your existing programs




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         Stage 2: Is your PMBA for me?
 • How to convince your target market that they should
   get a PMBA from you?

 • Strategy/Management faculty: competitive advantage
       Who is our competition?
       How do we compete with them?
             For example, horizontal (red/blue) versus vertical (BMW/Kia)
       Can (should) we move from vertical to horizontal
         competition, and if so, how?
           For example, our competition uses a cohort PMBA, we can use flexible
       How is our product differentiated from theirs? What is our
         strategic advantage? How can we sustain it? How can we
         market to it (see next slide)?
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Already Using Targeted Marketing (GMAC 2009)




 • Are these the right targets (given your competitive
   advantage)?
 • Consider targeting groups your competitors do not (laid-
   off employees?)
 • Consider bundling products to appeal to your target
   market (e.g. PMBA/MPP,…), cross-selling programs (step-
   up)
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                     For example
 • UTD used students in strategic marketing class
   to analyze our (UTD) relative advantage
   compared with our competitors
       Designed marketing campaign to fit with our relative
        advantage




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                     For example
 • UCLA used marketing faculty to create a
   marketing plan for their PMBA
       Who to target?
       How to reach them?
       How to evaluate effectiveness?




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         Stage 2: Is your PMBA for me?
 • How do we reach our targeted market?

 • Information Systems (MIS, IT, …)
       How can we use the web and other technologies to
         market (twitter, …)?
       Track potential customers
             webmetrics, clicks, links, …
 • Cheap, but informative



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                     For example
 • UT Dallas asked MIS faculty and students to
   develop a database to manage (full-time) MBA
   prospect information
       Final assignment in class
       Each student group developed a different variation
         of the database
       Presentations to the MBA director, who evaluated
         (for grades) and chose one to continue developing


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                     Stage 2 Summary
 Strategy, Marketing and MIS faculty can help
   with building brand awareness
 2. Strategy faculty can help you identify your
    strategic advantage; what do you do better
    than anyone else?
 3. Marketing faculty can help construct
    campaigns to leverage and target this
    advantage
 4. MIS faculty can help reach and track
    potential clients, and effectiveness of
    marketing campaigns
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Stage 3: Application/Admissions/Payment
  • Who should I admit? Should I give scholarships?

  • Human Resource Management / Organizational
    Behavior
        Tradeoffs between quality/quantity/diversity of
          workgroups in organizations
        Currently average 63% Male, 72% Caucasian
        3pm panel on partnering with HBCs and HBUs

        Fairness and equity perceptions within organizations

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                     For example
 • (Many years ago) SMU was concerned about
   the quality of their EMBA students; difficulties
   recruiting and retaining
       Faculty developed questions to use in interview
         process to determine fit with school




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Stage 3: Application/Admissions/Payment
  • How much should we charge? Who should pay for the
    program?

  • Finance
        Calculate return from the education, help to set tuition rates
        Consider creative payment plans

  • For example
        Nearly all full-time MBA (97%) and specialized Master’s (91%)
          programs offered tuition assistance (GMAC 2009) Why not
          PMBA?
        For companies, volume discounts, timing of payments, …
        Table 6: Diminished corporate support

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                     Stage 3 Summary
 5. OB/HRM faculty can help with analyzing
    costs/benefits of diversity, and how to reach
    potential students
 6. Finance faculty can help with designing
    payment and scholarship programs for all
    students




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              Stage 4: Care and Feeding
 • How do I create a positive and engaged
   culture among our PMBA students?
       9:30 panel tomorrow


 • Organizational Behavior
       How to successfully create a (positive) corporate
         culture
       How to increase identification with organization
       Table 9: integral to business school
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                      For example
 • Acknowledge other constraints PMBAs face,
   and get buy-in from those stakeholders
       family-friendly events to extend care and feeding to
         families
       work-related events where PMBA students bring
         their supervisor/mentor




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              Stage 4: Care and Feeding
 • How do I fit everyone in?

 • Operations Management
       Leveraging slack resources
       Efficiently allocating limited resources
             E.g. assigning classrooms to courses, …
             Table 5: do we need to limit electives?




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                       For example
 • University of Chicago’s OR faculty wrote and
   designed program assigning students to classes
      Students enter preferred class schedule, program maximizes
         number of students with first-choice classes


 • Wharton’s OM and Economics faculty designed class
   auction system to allow students to bid on (and sell)
   class seats
      Students have “points” which they can use to bid on seats in
         classes
      Can sell seats as well (some speculation)
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                     Stage 4 Summary
 7. OB faculty can help create a positive PMBA
    culture, advise on how to integrate PMBAs
    with full-time MBAs, EMBAs, …
 8. OM faculty can help allocate scarce resources
    more efficiently, including classrooms to
    courses, courses to individuals,…




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Stage 5: Post-Graduation and Development
  • How do I keep graduates involved after they
    graduate?

  • Nonprofit management
        Fundraising and other contributions; work with
          development office




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                     Stage 5 Summary
 9. Nonprofit management faculty can help with
    sustaining identity and involvement,
    designing “asks” that are likely to be
    effective.
 10. Beyond faculty, alumni office and university-
    level staff can help as well




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                     Overall Summary
 • Ten ways your faculty (and students and staff) can
   serve as internal consultants
 • Other ideas as well
       Expand target market (e.g. Obama’s Moms, laid off)
       PMBA Council / cooperative advertising
       Horizontal not vertical competition
       Bundling products (e.g. PMBA/MPP)
       Tuition assistance / discounts for companies
       Buy-in from other stakeholders to increase identification
         (family, mentor/boss)
       Class assignment systems
       …
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                     Incentives
 • Avoid junior faculty!

 • Combine with class project
 • One-off projects (replace committee service)
 • “Advisory board” (course release)




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                     Some Other Thoughts
 • Beyond the Business School
       What does your institution do well? How can you
         leverage that?
       Coordinate with parallel programs in other schools?
 • Beyond the University
       Joint ventures with competitors?
             For example, 3pm today panel on partnerships for
               international study trips
       Cooperative advertising?

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                     Take Time for R&D
 • What do others do?
       Benchmarking/best practices of other PMBA
         programs (this conference)
       More broadly
             Other types of MBA programs
             Other postgraduate education
             Other industries
       How might you adapt those practices (e.g. financial
        support, …)


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                         Next Steps
 • Make a list of questions you want answers to
       these might be useful examples, or not…
 • Identify the faculty who would be best able to
   help
 • Approach them with your question, see what
   they would be willing to do
       and what they need in exchange
 • Pitch the project to your Dean
       aligned with Dean’s priorities

 • Next week: visit one faculty member
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                     Summary/Takeaways
 • Idea: Leverage your resources (faculty and
   students) to help build your program
 • Identify expertise
       Ask concrete questions (examples here)
       Make it easy to say yes (incentives)
 • Start small (contained project)
       Demonstrate short-term success
 • Do more with less

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                          Thanks!
                         Rachel Croson
                     crosonr@utdallas.edu




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