Week 16: Business Decision Models, Operations Management, Marketing Fundamental, Finance Fundamentals (Module 5)

Week 16 has ended and I feel like I just updated this blog yesterday. This week we started Module 5 which is comprised of MBA861 Business Decision Models, MBA841 Operations Management, MBA831 Marketing Fundamental, and MBA821 Finance Fundamentals. We have had classes in all but Finance Fundamentals this week.

MBA861 Business Decision Models is taught by Yuir Levin and will cover optimizations models, simulation models, decision analysis and revenue management&dynamic pricing. So far this course has been comprised of symbolic logic with basic math that we then turn into models in excel and use "solver" to complete. Yuir is quite interesting and has a very strong understanding of the material.

MBA841 Operations Management is taught by Paul Roman and will cover decision making, process design, service processes, plant evaluation, change management, supply chain, knowledge management, inventory/consulting, synchronous manufacturing and operations strategy. This course relies heavily on cases with textbook reading which are used in team and individual assignments. This material is then used by the professor to facilitate discussion and teach in class. In addition each team is responsible to organize a field trip to a manufacturing facility and complete an analysis of the plant. Paul is an awesome down to earth professor who knows the theory, but insists on relating things to "real life" and how solutions would be implemented.

MBA831 Marketing Fundamentals is taught by Rob Woyzbun and will cover marketing function, marketing analysis & objectives, core marketing strategy, brand strategy, marketing "mix", product strategy, pricing strategy and trends. This course has quite a bit of reading, but is mainly focused on the discussion and learning that occur in the class room. Rob is an entertaining and fun professor with a strong grasp of the subject material. Moreover Rob is a Porsche enthusiast.

MBA821 Finance Fundamentals is taught by Naceur Essaddam and will cover time value of money, interest rate and bond valuation, stock valuation, NPV and other investment criteria, capital and investment decisions, risk analysis, real options, capital budgeting, return/risk&CAPM, return/risk&capital budgeting. We won't have our first session in this course till next week, but it look like it will be fairly technical with a lot of number crunching. (Note: After the first class we discovered a financial calculator is a requirement for this course. The professor recommends the Texas Instruments BA II Plus since it is the one he is familar with and can assist the students with using it, but any financial calculator will do.)

Already this week has seen more than a few late nights as the course load has come on full blast. I skipped the "point four" social gathering last night to figure out why my excel model was telling me that it wasn't "linear" even though it clearly was "linear".

This weekend some of us are headed out to go white water rafting near Ottawa and the MBA games sports teams are having their first practices tonight. I plan to participate in both of these activities and still get all my require work done.

In other news, the consulting club had an alumni from a previous MBA class who is with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) come in and give a presentation on what it takes to get hired with BCG. There was also a presentation by "MBAs without boarders" earlier in the week.

Next week I have my "mock interview" with the Business Career Center. These are just pretend behaviour interviews designed to help students get in top form for On Campus Recruiting.

I have also been presented with the opportunity to apply for a potential position back in Calgary thanks the help of one of my colleagues here in the program. Of course I have reciprocated by putting him in touch with people I know in the asset management field. Guess networking really does work sometimes.

(Note: The rafting turned out to be absolutely awesome. We went to River Run Rafting and the operations and facilities were top notch. I would definitely recommend this to others.)