Andrea McCullough

LI819
Real Client Project Narrative
December 1, 2010

I am pleasantly surprised with my final product, even though I did not find many
straight-forward answers and I struggled with choosing a format.

The business school ranking (or lack thereof) was frustrating. My work-around was
to compile some other information about the area business schools so that the client can do
a side-by-side comparison. Some information was not found or was requested by the
schools but not received in time for the report.

I was conscious of trying to provide objective information, which was a little difficult
because a lot of the information I found was from business schools themselves, and those
that rate them. These entities have an obvious bias so when I found a few research studies
on the return on investment of MBAs, I felt more confident providing the information from
the aforementioned biased sources. I was also, then, able to point out that although there
are opposing views on ROI issues, there is data that shows this positively.

The last issue my client was asking about, current trends, was surprisingly difficult
to relay. What I ended up deciding, since the question was so broad, was to present a few
findings and then suggest periodicals that exist to report on current trends and happenings
in the local, regional and national business. If the client chooses to, he can access these
periodicals through his public library and eventually through his chosen university.

The Microsoft Power Point presentation format was chosen for its design attributes
(I like how information gets “chunked” naturally in PP) and its relative permanence (it isn’t
an email that will be overlooked or accidentally deleted). I was also able to put hyperlinks
to the different subsections for quick access and external links within the document and
references. I admit that I broke the maximum word on a slide rule discussed in Taylor, but I
did not design the presentation for traditional purposes and hope the client will not be
turned off by the amount of text. I tried to pull out bullets as much as possible for quick
scanning.

Not finding finite answers led me to do more in-depth research and a lot of
interpretation, which in the end drove the flow of the finished product. I was able to
provide information that will help my client make the decision he needs to make.