Postgraduate Consultancy Projects

Real-life experiential consultancy projects have played an integral part of Nottingham Business School’s postgraduate programmes for many years; students have successfully acted as free consultants within a wide range of different types and sizes of organisation. For all our project students, the consultancy project concept is an important and innovative part of our programmes, as it provides an opportunity to link the strategic knowledge and understanding acquired over the previous modules of the programme with managerial and organisational reality. In addition, the students are provided with a useful opportunity to develop team-working skills in a live situation and practice specific consultancy and project management skills.

The aim of these consultancy projects is to allow our students a chance to apply their research skills and subject know-how and come up with fresh ideas about a real-life strategic business issue. Organisations that have limited time, want a fresh perspective, or would like access to expertise not available to them in-house can gain objective, unbiased research insights that can be of genuine value. These projects offer organisations a chance to work with the University and its students in an innovative way and support our students’ career goals and personal aspirations.

We’re actively seeking challenges for a wide range of MSc and MBA students and we’re ready to tackle a diverse range of challenges. Popular project topics in the past have included:

• Business competitor analysis
• Review of business marketing strategy
• Research to inform updates in HR policy and practice, including staff recruitment, training, or equality diversity and inclusion policies
• Research of market potential overseas
• Cost benefit analysis
• Financial viability of new venture / product
• Change management.

We ask that you have at least two meetings with the students during the project period, to answer questions and ensure they are on track. We also ask you attend their final presentation and offer your comments and feedback to them. If you’re available to meet the students more often we’d welcome this, but it is not a requirement. When you’re agreeing the exact project brief the support team can let you know more about what to expect.

At the conclusion of the project you will receive a verbal report delivered by the students in your project team, and will have the chance to ask them questions and involve them in a Q&A session. Our MSc students also prepare for their client a written report of between 3,000 – 4,000 words. Our student projects have real impact: 88% of our past clients have told us that they will take forward business development ideas the students have suggested.

Not at all! We’ve worked very happily and successfully with a wide range of organisations both large and small. We often find that smaller companies and not-for-profits offer us very interesting challenges.

We’re actively seeking challenges for our MSc Consultancy projects that begin in May or October. These projects last approximately six to seven weeks until early July or December. Our MBA student projects take place at different times each year.  We encourage you to get in touch at any time to discuss a challenge idea.

Get in touch for a conversation. We’ll help by listening and can even suggest project ideas for you if you’re not quite sure what to offer. Please contact the Experiential Learning team by email on NBSStudentProjects@ntu.ac.uk. You can also complete our enquiry form.