Prepping for China

Welcome to our MBA consulting journey blog. We are team ‘Wēijī’ and this Chinese word means 'crisis' and is composed of two Chinese characters, one signifies 'danger' and the other 'opportunity.' The Global Consulting practicum course (MBA 5410) offered by Barowsky School of Business at Dominican University of California provides an invaluable opportunity for their MBA students to work in teams on an international consulting project.

Members of our team are Supriya Sharma (Team Leader), Rachel Drew (Assistant Team Leader) and Blake M. Rose, Yema Khalif and Christopher O’Brien. Our team had an opportunity to apply the business knowledge and tools learned throughout the program towards providing solutions to real business problems of a Chinese technology firm, Artisman Technology Corp. Ltd. The purpose of this project was to develop a U.S. market entry plan for Artisman. We initiated our project by developing an in-depth analysis of Artisman’s current business scenario, key factors that drives the business expansion decision into a foreign market, U.S. industry analysis (furniture, construction and machine manufacturing industry), a competitor analysis followed by recommendations and their possible translation into an implementable plan of action.

During our introductory session for the consulting practicum on June 18, 2016, we brainstormed our expectations, fears, resources, skills and capabilities and tested our readiness for initiation of the project. The case studies and other reading materials about Chinese culture, economy, history, doing business with China along with in-class engagements and group discussions provided by Dr. Jacob Massoud and Dr. Rajeev Sooreea and were extremely helpful. The cultural diversity of our MBA group proved to be an was an excellent resource in terms of developing a deeper understanding and a mindset for an international consultancy opportunity. In terms of skills and capabilities our team had competent set of skills and each one of us was quite proficient in multitasking, operational tasks, problem-solving, efficient

communication and networking which gave us a rock solid platform to develop confidence in our team’s strength especially in preparation for China where ‘guanxi’ is of outmost importance in the business settings.

Our hopes were to develop an excellent market entry plan for Artisman which could be implementable and have real business outcomes. We also were hoping to gain real-time consulting experience, bridging the gap between the perception and reality, understanding the methods of doing business in China and getting our hands dirty during the whole process from inception of the project to the closing. Parallel to hopes ran some fears as well. Since, for many of us traveling to China was the first time, the fear of ‘unknown’ was quite there but what concerned us more was our level of preparations for any medical condition and legal situations. This sense of urgency allowed us to develop a full-proof action plan to deal with any medical or legal issues that may arise in the foreign land. Food, cultural taboos, and other do's and don’ts were well researched too.