Participate company

Participate with your company!
Your company can provide an essential learning experience to business students, enabling them to practice their skills in a real life situation. Each year students are looking for over 250 companies to craft a business plan. Participation requires a relatively limited investment in time and may prove to be a great and fruitful experience. Read more about the set-up of the course and about experiences of managers elsewhere on this website.

Read more below:

• Why participate?
• What to expect?
• Suitable companies
• References and previous participants
  

Why participate?
The final result is a comprehensive document with analyses of your organization, the business environment, and the strategic options for your firm. See how the strategic business plan is structured in this PowerPoint presentation.

What to expect?
The entrepreneur’s contribution is limited to several interviews, a tour around the company and providing the necessary information. In order to get the necessary information students talk to employees, customers and other parties about the company and their market. Many entrepreneurs claim that after the project is finished the students have exceeded their expectations tremendously.

Suitable companies
In order to provide students with the most optimal learning experience are companies of the following criteria most suitable for the business plan course.

• At least 30 employees or 20 FTE’s. The company has to be of a certain size in order to conduct the several analyses. Organizations of 1500 employees or more are often too complex.
• Founded at least three years ago. In order to recognize a pattern in strategic decisions some history is necessary i.e. analyzing a company’s culture.  
• Strategic autonomous. In order to a relevant application of the different strategic analyses it is necessary that management is able to make decisions concerning the strategy of the company. Besides that, a fully functional organization is preferred: for a national sales company is a strategic marketing plan would be more suitable.
• Unfit are retail companies or bars, restaurants and hotels with less than five locations.
• Non-profit organizations are often accepted as well. Governmental organizations on the other hand are often not accepted.
  

Please contact the coordinator of the strategic business plan course if you have any questions concerning the suitability of your company.

References and previous participants
The following references are from the managers of participating firms with outstanding business plans.

Mr. Ralf Lehr, Directeur Uhr Kraft (2007):
"We decide to join this project because we were in position which we need a point of view from outside. The people inside have every time an inside view, we would like to have an outside perspective. We had the impression of trustful and competent students at our first meeting. We could only win!"  

"During our last month’s cooperation we felt more and more comfortable with the decision to be part of this business plan award. The students are very well prepared every meeting and they find out a lot of points which we can improve. They were very realistic and detailed on this project. We have the feeling they meet our needs very well. I think we got a business plan which could be not better even a professional consulting has done this job. The presentation and the performance of each member of this team on the ceremony yesterday was high end professional."   

Directeur Kipp&Zonen (2006):  
"Het is een prima project geweest met een prima stel studenten met een prima begeleiding. Voor iedere betrokkene was het zeer leerzaam. Nu aan ons om er mee verder te gaan."   

Mr. Fokke de Jong, founder and CEO of Suit Supply (2006):
(www.suitsupply.com)
From: Interface, tijdschrift voor Bedrijfskunde
In 1999, Mr. Fokke de Jong founded Suit Supply, an innovative retail concept for men’s suits. A team of students wrote a Strategic Business Plan for his company this year. He enjoyed this experience: 

“Normally, I never read extensive reports like these, but this Business Plan was very interesting. I’m impressed. It isn’t a standard report. It is theoretically very sound and the students demonstrate a lot of entrepreneurial spirit in the plan. They’ve really thought through all that’s been written down in the report. And what’s more, the meetings they had with our management team were very pleasant. They acted like real professionals.”

Directeur Foto Klein (2005):   
"Wij zijn zeer tevreden over het businessplan dat de studenten van de RSM Erasmus Universiteit voor onze organisatie hebben geschreven."    

"We blijven graag in contact, zodat we wellicht in de toekomst wederom een team van studenten kunnen begeleiden tijdens dit vak."

Mr. Maarten de Vries, directeur Stichting Wilde Ganzen (2004):
Weblog van 3 juni 2004 (www.wildeganzen.nl):
"Vandaag hebben de vier studenten van de Erasmus Universiteit hun werkstuk ingeleverd: Het ondernemingsplan van Wilde Ganzen. Het ziet er goed uit. Ze hebben er dan ook hard aan gewerkt in de afgelopen maanden. Leuk dat zij ons hebben gekozen maar vooral dat Wilde Ganzen de eerste fondsenwervende organisatie is waarvan studenten van de Vakgroep Internationale Business Administration een business plan hebben geschreven. Een nieuwe wereld ging voor hen open. Natuurlijk zullen zij geen carrière ambiëren in deze charitatieve wereld. Hopelijk hebben zij een beter inzicht in onze wereld gekregen waardoor zij later goede vertegenwoordigers worden van het maatschappelijk verantwoorde ondernemen. Wij zijn bij een beschrijving gebaat omdat wij geen tijd hebben al onze verworven kennis en ervaring zo uitvoerig neer te leggen."   

The following list provides examples of well known participating firms and the finalists for the Strategic Business Plan Awards:

2008-2009

• Feyenoord N.V.
• Brunotti
• Bavaria
• Studentenwerk
• Dura Vermeer

2007-2008

• Eindhoven Airport N.V.
• TomTom International BV
• Oxfam Novib
• DSB Bank N.V.
• RNN7 Televisie

2006-2007

• CheapTickets.nl
• Madurodam BV
• De Telefoongids BV
• Sunweb (HUSK)
• Bjorn Borg NL

Finalists 2007-2008

• Xpert Training Group
• Uhr-Kraft Group GmbH
• Van Hessen BV
• Architekten K2 GmbH
• Metz-Group BV Bloemexport

Finalists 2006-2007

• Tiefenbach Control Systems
• Vezet BV
• Helios Mppd BV
• Falck Nutec BV
• Orga BV