Three Ways to Engage with the Brierley Institute
Our students embrace the opportunity to take on real-world business challenges and propose solutions to drive loyalty and bottom-line results. Whether a project is incorporated into our existing MBA curriculum or proposed as an extracurricular, we co-design it with you. Students are hand-selected to work on each project and will work with your team throughout the duration of the partnership to provide updates as they approach final recommendations. Dr. Marci Armstrong, Brierley Institute director and Brierley Endowed Professor, guides and directs the students.
The Brierley Institute offers three types of projects, with opportunities to customize and combine aspects of each. The SMU Cox School of Business supports and encourages corporate engagement and opportunities for strategic partnership. Whether collaborating in the classroom or beyond, or, we invite you to connect and explore ways we can partner together.
Customer Engagement Program Project
Students either evaluate and redesign an existing customer engagement program or design and implement a new customer engagement program. These projects allow students to consider customer engagement opportunities from both the company’s and the customer’s perspective, articulate goals for desired customer behavior change, identify customer segments offering the greatest profit potential, evaluate the competitive landscape, develop a strawman customer engagement program design, conduct qualitative and quantitative research to measure customer receptivity, quantify the financial impact, and build a business case (including a communications plan featuring digital/social/traditional media) for implementing the proposed customer engagement program..
Big Data Project
Students analyze real-time customer data provided by a corporate sponsor using a variety of methods such as regression, descriptive analytics and data visualization. This may include calculating customer lifetime value (CLV) for individual customers, then segmenting customers based on CLVs or other variables. There are a wide range of corporate opportunities and challenges that can be tackled with this research. In a final group presentation to corporate sponsors, students draw customer insights from their analyses and propose strategic and tactical recommendations for profitable growth.
Primary Data Collection Project
Students design a research study and a survey, collect primary survey data, analyze the data, draw customer insights, then make recommendations to you in a final presentation. The research focus is customizable based on business projects, questions, areas of interest and the sponsoring organization’s industry. These projects also involve interviews with sponsor company executives, giving students an in-depth, hands-on opportunity to learn more about the businesses they’re studying.
