The International Business Projects reinforce the CEMS partnership between universities and companies in jointly shaping international management education. The course is designed as a real life learning experience for students. It provides students with a unique opportunity to gain insights into corporate practice. International student teams solve a real business, strategy and/or management problem as a one-term activity tutored by university faculty and the company.

Over the past years Hilti has developed a rich service offering, generating strong pull from customers driving loyalty towards Hilti. One example is Fleet Management allowing Hilti to embed all tools into a strong service offering that includes a flat rate that covers all repairs, wear & tear as well as all logistics costs as well as loan tools for peak demands or in case of repairs. This service offering is continuously expanded and developed. An additional recent initiative is ON!Track allowing customers to manage all assets via a cloud based solution.

For products with a high level of commoditization, however, Hilti has not been able to significantly grow their business. Especially on the consumables side they have only grown with half the speed as with tool sales. Customers demonstrate that the high level of loyalty on the tool side does not automatically lead to a higher loyalty in buying consumables.

Vitalizing the consumables business of Hilti Austria

Target of the project is to analyze the status quo of sales instruments used for ‘standard consumables’ (such as drill bits, cutting discs, anchors, and channels) at Hilti, direct competitors, and firms in other industries. On this basis, students develop innovative concepts for Hilti’s different sales channels (direct sales force & fleet management, flagship stores & customer service, online & social media) that will foster customer loyalty in the consumables business.

Group 1: Direct Sales Force & Fleet Management

Group 2: Flagship Stores & Customer Service

Group 3: Hilti Online & Social Media

The aims of the course are to:

• investigate and structure a complex strategic management challenge that a company faces in its international market environment,
• conduct an in-depth analysis of the current status,
• provide alternative strategic solutions that are viable under the given organizational and financial constraints,
• propose a decision for the most promising solution, and
• support this decision with key arguments based on theoretical considerations and empirical findings.

This business project uses a combination of discussions with company representatives, feedback sessions, presentations, group coaching and feedback, as well as individual/group work outside the classroom. Groups of students will be formed in the kick-off session.

In a first kick-off session with supervising faculty, the challenges and milestones of the real-life international strategy and/or management case are outlined. At the same time, students are familiarized with the guiding principles of project work, with the project plan and rules in handling supervising faculty/corporate partner interaction.

After familiarizing the students with the international strategy and/or management challenge, contact with the corporate partner is established. In a plenary session, the corporate partner outlines the business challenge from their perspective and provides useful input into the business, the market situation, and the specific challenge to be dealt with.

Subsequently, groups of students work on their assigned real-life international strategy and/or management case the firm is currently facing. Groups collect relevant data through secondary and primary (qualitative and/or quantitative) market research. Based on these analyses, recommendations for the specific international strategy and/or management challenges are prepared and substantiated through theory and market research results.

Throughout the process, various feedback loops (in coaching sessions with the individual faculty supervising group work, in plenary sessions with all groups/academic supervisors (tentative presentation), or in coaching and feedback sessions with the corporate partner) are installed to make sure that students are on the right track and get the input needed in each project phase.

Results are presented to the corporate partner at the end of this process. The verbal and printed presentations will be assessed. Students will have to actively participate in class, hold group presentations and summarize their findings in a final report.

It is the express policy of the class that no late assignments will be accepted under any circumstances. As this course format heavily relies on personal interaction between students, corporate partner, and faculty, presence in sessions is mandatory.

Assessment is based on the quality of the tentative presentation and final presentation, the participation during the classes, group members’ peer rating, and the final report. The minimum score to pass the course is half of the highest score for each of these elements.

Students will be assessed on their ability to

• understand and analyze international strategy and/or management challenges,
• use appropriate analytical techniques and deliver relevant market research information,
• present results in high quality.

This implies an ability to work in teams. Students failing to participate in their teams will lose the marks for that piece of work and thereby fail the entire course.

Students get the chance to present their work – research and recommendations – on the international strategy and/or management challenge to the corporate partner. They get feedback from the corporate partner on the outcome of their analysis and the viability of their recommendations.

Only CEMS MIM students are eligible to take this course. 10 students make a course viable at MSc level unless special circumstances prevail. If fewer than 10 students register, the course will not run.

All matriculated students automatically receive an e-mail account from the University. This is known as a student’s WU email account, and the email address is of the form: h1234567@wu.ac.at. Students can access their emails via a direct web interface, allowing access from most web browsers virtually anywhere on the internet.

The Institute and other University services such as the Library and CEMS office will use this email address (only) to contact you. You should therefore check this email account frequently and regularly. Should you wish to read your email on an account other than your WU email account, you should enable an email auto-forward from your WU account to this other address by following the advice on the IT Services (ZID) web pages: http://www.wu.ac.at/zid

The course website can be found on the Learn@WU system, which you can access through the WU Student portal (https://learn.wu.ac.at/). You will be able to find a copy of this course outline, course handouts, announcements, etc. It is important that you regularly check the Learn@WU system in order to keep up to date with the course. Course instructors and secretaries will use the system Learn@WU Mail function to send out important announcements to the whole class. It is vitally important that you check your WU mailbox regularly or set it up so that it forwards messages automatically to your regular e-mail account.