3 MBA's Tell All About Their Internships

By Andrew Wolk

This summer I worked at the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation.

The organization is a non-profit that works in low-income housing, childcare, and small business technical assistance. I worked for the small business technical assistance program.

I had three principle areas of responsibility over the summer. The first was offering consulting to small business owners who either wanted to start a business or grow their existing business. Generally, the people were also looking for a loan. I would help them prepare a package that included a business plan and financial statements to show either banks or other sources of money. I also designed and taught a one-night workshop on customer service for local businesses. The focus of the workshop was on "Who is your most profitable customer?" The third area of responsibility was performing a brief review of past economic studies of the Hyde/Jackson Square area of Jamaica Plain to see if I could pinpoint any excellent opportunities for new businesses.

My primary focus throughout the summer was with technical assistance to small businesses. I worked with 10 different companies including a person who wanted to start a subway guide for the ‘T’ here in Boston, a clothing designer that wanted to open a retail store, a wholesale clay supplier, a liquor store purchase, a pillow and bedding designer, and more.

One of the most rewarding parts of my summer came with the assistance I provided the pillow and bedding designer. The owner had been in business for over three years, and while she was beginning to make progress by landing some high profile accounts, her books were in shambles. I have been, and still am, working with her to restructure her company in all areas: finance, human resources, operations… you know the Enterprise Model.

Right before I left, I had packaged a loan that was just approved for the clothing designer. The company is called Randall Scott, and they just opened a retail store in Newton Center…so, if you get a chance, check them out.

By Didier Mena

Just imagine, you walk into class tomorrow and your professor informs your team that this semester your assignment is to create an annual $20 million cost reduction plan for the largest bank in Mexico. You’re right, this would never happen at SMG … but it did, not at BU, but at Bancomer.

My summer internship was in Bancomer, the largest bank in Mexico in loans and deposits, and the strongest retail franchise among Mexican financial groups with more than 1,350 branches. My team was asked to recommend ways to reduce costs in the branch network without adversely affecting service quality. We found that salary expense accounted for 60% of total cost (there were close to 13,000 branch employees: tellers, CSR, and branch managers).

Our next step was to understand the criterion used to determine the number of tellers. The criterion considered total customers serviced per month per branch, an average service time per customer (the same for all branches), and the number of hours worked per teller. The problem with this criterion is that it assumes a constant rate of arrival per customer, that is, a constant demand every hour, every day, without taking into account the variability of customers’ arrivals. We selected a sample of 10 branches and applied Operations Management (OM) tools to quantify the mismatch between capacity and demand. We discovered idle capacity during some hours and excess demand during others. We recommended reducing the number of full-time tellers (to reduce idle capacity) and increasing the number of part-timers (to match demand in peak hours).

Our final step was to determine the number of full-time and part-time tellers for all branches. I e-mailed Professor Janelle Heineke and she sent me material that enabled us to do a queuing analysis. With our recommendation we helped

Bancomer not only by reducing cost substantially, but also by improving service quality!