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Rachel Finley
574 TNRB
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
(801) 422-3598
prspecialist@byu.edu

Students Consult for Targus

Two Marriott School professors are finding new ways to expand their students’ business experiences in and out of the classroom.

Scott Hobson, associate professor of accounting, and John Richards, managing director of the Rollins Center for eBusiness, jointly teach the information systems managing and consulting projects class (I SYS 552). The objective of the class is to connect students with local and national business and provide professional consulting opportunities.

“We want our students to first identify the field of management consulting and the role of management consulting,” Hobson says. That, along with learning consulting tools and techniques, and obtaining experience in management and consulting, opens the door to real-world experience.

This year, four business school graduate students in the class were selected to test their researching and consulting skills working with Targus, an international company that sells carrying cases for notebook PCs and other portable computer accessory products.

Applying the core objectives to the Targus consulting project was especially unique. It was the first time Targus had associated with BYU consulting, and Targus was also the only company outside of Utah the class worked with. And the distance added an extra dimension to the process.

“Communication with Targus was complicated because until the day we did our final presentation, we had no face-to-face contact with anyone we were working with,” says Kent Broadbent, a first-year MISM student who participated in the consulting project.

Initially, the students and their faculty advisor, Conan Albrecht, maintained contact via phone conferences. However, as the project drew to a close and scheduling grew more complicated, the team communicated with Targus executives using Google Talk, which allowed the students to send messages to Targus at any time.

Overcoming the obstacles of a semester-long research and consulting project, the students were able to address Targus’s unique business consulting concerns. When the students’ project was completed, the company flew the team and Albrecht to meet with Targus executives, including the CEO, CIO and general manager, at its headquarters in Anaheim, California.

“I was terrified up until we started presenting,” Broadbent says. “But after we started, it was exhilarating. We had worked all semester leading up to that moment. We all knew it mattered.”

During the presentation, the Targus executives and employees actively participated, discussing points and questions the students raised. After the meeting, the CEO congratulated the students for their work, saying it was comparable to a professional firm’s.

“This class gave me experience working on a real-world project I wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere else at BYU,” Broadbent says. “The project was a very rewarding experience that taught me a lot and boosted my confidence. It was the kind of real experience we don’t get enough of.”