Words of Wisdom-Final Advice

My blog post is a little late this week but for good reason. Today, Scott and I presented our final presentation to our client, The HealthCare Connection. I wanted to wait and post after the presentation in order to give the best advice I possibly could because the final presentation is a major component of the last three month's work. 

The presentation went great. Everyone seemed really receptive to what we had to say and eager to start incorporating some of our ideas into their current marketing promotions. The research component of our project seemed to resonate with the group and help them to understand what helps to drive their patient traffic. By tailoring their marketing communications to these findings, I have no doubt that they will achieve their goal of increasing total patient traffic by over five percent. Some of the staff members from the organization that we have been working closely with since the beginning of the project seemed grateful of our hard work and I really believe that it helped them convince the rest of the company how important marketing is to their organization and how it can drive their business. Our company contact in particular felt that it added credibility to the direction she would like to see the company take in their future marketing promotions. Before our presentation, some of the healthcare staff was unreceptive to the idea of marketing being a joint effort throughout the company. It was hard for our contact to collect information from staff and for them to see the relevance of the information. Now, everyone seems to be on board to do their part to help incorporate our ideas into different aspects of the business. 

My advice to future capstone students:

1. Expect the unexpected and be ready to face the challenge head on. Things will not always go as you planned, but that's the reality of the business world and life in general. Be flexible and willing to overcome roadblocks that might not even be your fault. For example, for our final presentation, we thought we would be presenting to a handful of people that we had met before. Five minutes before our presentation we learned we would be presenting to a room full, talk about nerves!
2. Thank your partner! What would you do without them? I would personally like to thank Scott for all of the hard work and effort that he put into our project. I could not have handpicked a better partner for this even if that was an option. Scott's keen understanding of the research portion of our project helped to transform it into something better than I even expected. 
3. Don't procrastinate until the last minute. Use your free time to look for secondary research that helps add credibility to your insights and recommendations. The months go by really fast, write the paper as you go! You can always go back and edit it later. Trust me, you will thank yourself for doing this later.
4. Don't be afraid to ask for help. There's a wealth of information and resources available to us as students. Use your connections from your job or even from the university. People are very willing to help out, you just have to ask them. Help can come in any form, whether it's from Drew, fellow classmates, other professors, or co-workers. Scott was able to utilize help from a graphic designer at his work to help turn our ideas into very professional looking promotional materials. 
5. Most importantly have fun and give your best effort! 

Good luck to everyone on final presentations and for those of you graduating at the end of the month, congratulations!