REFERENTIEL
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PROFESSIONAL PROJECT GUIDE
BACHELOR IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS STUDIES with MARKETING
Diploma registered at the National Register of Vocational Certifications (RNCP) under the name
«Responsable du développement commercial », Level II (code NSF 310n), EQF Level 6.
CONTENTS :
1. PURPOSE
2. THEME OF STUDY
3. WRITING PROCESS
4. STRUCTURE AND CONTENTS OF THE WRITTEN REPORT
5. STRUCTURE AND CONTENTS OF THE ORAL PRESENTATION
6. APPENDICES
7. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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I. PURPOSE
Students must demonstrate their ability to:
- Define
- Plan
- Develop
- Implement
- Analyse
- and Present
a feasible business development project, including the key aspects of sales, marketing, management,
finance, and law. Students must demonstrate their ability to link the IBSM programme course contents with
the practical knowledge acquired during their experience as interns in a company.
Students must find a theme of study specific to their company’s situation and present it in both written and
oral form. The project must follow the guidelines detailed in this guide. It must be usable by the company as
a decision-making tool.
2. THEME OF STUDY
2.1. A multidisciplinary project
The goal is to use a real company’s work environment to develop a realistic project. The project is a practical
application of all the skills and knowledge required to validate the diploma.
PROFESSIONAL PROJECT
Multidisciplinary (covers all Study Units)
Management skills
Identify a plan of action that can be implemented
Elaborate the different stages of the project
Identify the resources needed and their cost
Know how to communicate – oral and written
Marketing & Sales skills
Market analysis
Implement the plan of action
- Strategy
- Communication & marketing
- Sales (client search, customer
elations, digital tools…)
Legal and financial skills
Respect any legal restrictions
Make a business plan
- Financing plan
- Forecast results
Cost effectiveness analysis
- Monitoring indicators
The project must be ready to implement by the date of the oral presentation.
The different skills are clustered around the different study units.
Management: students must be able to analyse the human and management related factors in their project
and propose a plan of action (i.e., justify increasing the salesforce and organizing a recruitment session)
Marketing & Sales: students must propose a complete marketing and sales plan of action
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Financial Management and Law Study: students must propose a financial business plan, analyse the legal
environment of their project and adapt to any legal constraints.
Professional Applications: students must demonstrate good use of Word and Excel, database creation skills,
and a good command of English.
Both the written report and the oral presentation must be done in English.
2.2 Professional project and case studies: similarities and differences
Both the professional project and the case studies (June exam session) require the students to apply the
course contents to professional situations, in order to reach a goal or to resolve an issue.
In the professional project, the goal to reach or the issue to resolve is to be defined by the students
themselves, based on their analysis of their company’s situation.
Working on the professional project helps the students prepare for the case studies. Both assignments are
multidisciplinary and evaluate the student’s capacity to link together the key aspects of a company
(co
esponding to each Study Units: sales, marketing, law, finance, management).
(See appendix 8).
The evaluation grids for the professional project and the case studies are identical (see appendices 6 and 7).
3. WRITING PROCESS – ADVICE FOR THE STUDENTS
Writing the professional project must include three different processes:
Research – collect information from various sources and choose a relevant method to sort and organize it.
Analysis – analyse the information, draw conclusions and identify relevant problem-solving solutions.
Expression – clearly express your understanding of the situation and your ideas and solutions. You must be
convincing.
3.1. Choice of a theme of study
What is a good theme of study?
You must find a relevant question to ask / a specific issue to address, and formulate it clearly.
A good starting point is often to start from a question or an issue that comes up regularly in the company, a
project that you are responsible for, or a problem the company is dealing with.
If the company’s situation offers no interesting issues or projects, you will focus on an analysis of daily tasks:
Company’s activity: what is the purpose of each task? What are the goals? What kind of problems have come
up? How could things be done differently? What ideas or solutions could be suggested?
Company’s environment: what analysis can you make from the SWOT diagnosis? What important questions
does it
ing to light?
(See appendix 2)
How to start working on the chosen theme?
Once a theme of study has been found, you must think of how to explore it – you can start working on a
table of contents to start structuring your ideas.
Take a step back from your experience as an intern and put your academic knowledge in relation with the
professional context you’ve experienced.
Collecting information
1. Define your subject – the more you’ve thought about and defined your theme of study, the more
information gathering will be precise and efficient
2. Define key words
3. Define which sources of information you are going to use (books, articles, internet, …)
4. Select the documents that will be most useful to your project
5. In these documents, select the most relevant extracts.
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Handling the information
Ideally, process the information as it comes, take the time to understand it and to make it usable for your
theme.
Advice for information processing:
Read the documents with a critical eye. Take notes – what are the study theme related thoughts and
questions that come up to your mind while reading?
Note the precise references of your sources for your bibliography.
Sort the information according to your project’s table of contents
Keep and update a record of where you are in the writing process, what your next steps are and what is left
to do.
3.2. Work methodology / project writing
How to organize your work
Do your best to organize your work according to the time you have and to the specificities of the different
stages (for instance, research must be done before the writing process begins).
Think ahead of how you are going to get organized in order to be efficient. Time will pass by very fast.
Work on your project regularly to keep track of what you are doing and keep your theme well in mind. It will
help you identify important information for your project throughout your internship.
Your project tutor at school will set follow-up meetings. Students will be asked to:
• hand in their theme at a specific date for validation,
• hand in their work timeline
Main stages for writing the project:
1. Collect and sort information on the company and its environment. Keep a record of the sources for
your bibliography / webography.
2. Analyse the information by establishing a diagnosis of the company and its environment / situation
(SWOT and/or PESTEL). This diagnosis will shed light on problem solving possibilities, opportunities,
or what the company’s next move should be.
3. As a logical consequence to the SWOT and/or PESTEL diagnosis, you will clearly state the question
that co
esponds to your theme of study.
4. Determine the plan of action that has to be implemented in order to answer the question / resolve
the issue. The plan of action co
esponds to your table of contents. Your plan must be realistic,
detailed and precise, with numbers to justify that it is financially sound. The use of dashboards is
ecommended to synthetize information, see and measure the results of your actions, and help you
manage your activities, short and mid-term.
As it unfolds, your plan of action must include: sales, marketing, management, finance and law.
5. Start writing – do it regularly throughout the duration of your internship.
6. Results analysis and/or results estimates
7. Recommendations
8. Write up the manager’s summary
Preparing for the oral presentation
1. Prepare the document that will support your oral presentation (PowerPoint, Prezi,…). Mind the
layout and the contents.
2. Prepare for the oral presentation in real-life conditions: train in front of people, train to speak clearly
and convincingly, train with your PowerPoint presentation, get the timing right.
3.3. Student follow-up
The project tutor at school meets and advises the students about:
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-the theme of study,
-efficient work methods,
-how to structure their work.
The tutor does not help write or co
ect the students’ work.
Only the final jury will evaluate the professional projects, written and oral.
Students must respect deadlines and hand in documents to the tutor (see appendices).
For more details about evaluation and grading, please refer to the study guide.
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DIFFERENT STAGES OF WRITTEN REPORT / ORAL PRESENTATION
Collect, sort and analyse information
(About the company, its products/services, the market, the competition, the clients…)
Presentation of the company and its environment
Diagnosis of the company (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)
Analysis (identify key issues and challenges / opportunities / actions to take)
Use the SWOT diagnosis to produce an analysis of the situation
Define a theme a study with a marketing / sales aspect
From previous analysis: choose a theme of study (a question, an issue to resolve, a project to manage).
It must be validated by the project tutor at school.
Define the plan of action
Goals, planning, budget, tasks (use the « 5W »: « Who? What? Where? When? Why? »)
Elaborate a relevant plan of action.
It must be validated by the project tutor at school.
Implement the plan of action
It must include marketing / sales / management / finance / law
Use previously collected information, knowledge acquired in class, and workplace situations.
Start writing the report.
Results analysis and/or results estimates / Recommendations
(How have the goals been reached? What should the company do in the future?)
Finish writing the report. Write the manager’s summary
Write the written document that will support the oral presentation. Train for the oral
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4. STRUCTURE OF THE WRITTEN REPORT
4.1. The structure must be as follows:
1. Front page
2. Table of contents (with page numbers)
3. Manager’s summary (no more than 10% of the total number of pages) – present the situation, the key
issue, and your recommendations as to how to resolve it.
4. Introduction – present the goal and relevance of the chosen theme of study
5. Company Presentation – present the company and its environment, in relation with the theme of
study
6. Diagnosis of the situation
7. Theme of study – clearly state the key issue / problem / project
8. Plan of action that includes all Study Units – Implementation
9. Conclusion – results analysis, recommendations
10. Appendices
11. Bibliography
(See appendix 3)
4.2. Other requirements
- 20 pages with a +/- 10% tolerance (not counting the front page, table of contents, appendices,
ibliography)
- A4 (21 x 29.7 cm), portrait (graphs and spreadsheets can be presented in landscape format).
- Font: Times New Roman size 12, size 10 for footnotes / or Arial