Business Consulting Practicum (BCP) 2021
Through the experiential learning course, Business Consulting Practicum (BCP), students have an opportunity to work in teams to provide consulting services, and leverage business knowledge to solve specific real-life business problems for their assigned clients, under the professional guidance of teachers and mentors.
The six-week course provides students with 3 days of intensive training on consulting related skills. It allows the students to practice critical thinking, analytical skills and problem-solving skills and become more effective in working with clients, teammates and others. It also provides a free service to the organisations, mainly local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
This year, 33 students were teamed up to provide consulting services for 8 different companies. The course ended with a presentation held on July 17, 2021. In response to the impact brought by the pandemic, students were asked to provide solutions mainly on e-marketing and client acquisition. Clients and the mentors are impressed by the students’ creativity and the practicalness of the suggested solutions.
Sharing from the students:
So Ho Tin, Jacky
BCP 2021 provides me with an invaluable opportunity to be a business consultant and tackle business difficulties for my client. I can utilise the knowledge I have learned in lectures in a real-life business setting. Other than that, I developed soft skills like interpersonal skills and problem-solving skills during the 6 weeks program. Not to mention that my mentor was more than willing to provide my group with helpful advice.
Leung Shun Yan, Jamie
The most valuable thing that BCP offers is the client-facing opportunity. We face a real-life business scenario in which we need to consider the client’s budget and the marketing goals when making recommendations. We also need to keep adjusting the strategies to keep ourselves in line with the client’s expectations. During this process, we learn to communicate, negotiate and understand the difficulties of the client. This is a unique experience that we cannot have in the academic courses.