La Salle Experiential MBA Online

Peopleforest™ offers the La Salle Experiential MBA Online, which is focused in the development of the necessary skills and competences to be a manager, businessman or entrepreneur capable of directing and leading organizations within a global scope and a highly competitive environment.

This education methodology is unique for an Online MBA program due to the fact that the learning process is 100 % practical: you work and learn just the way it is done in real companies, all these with a flexible schedule that allows the student to combine his/her job, master program and personal life.

Objectives and key points

Develop your managing and personal competences
The program is based on a 100% online practical methodology centered in the development of professional skills.

Acquire professional experience
The MBAOL takes place in an environment that simulates the different functional areas of a company in which you will acquire abilities and experiences that will definitely add value to your professional career.

Learn to take business decisions
You will have specialized mentors that, apart from enhancing your critical thinking, will realize individual and group follow-up and will give you feedback.

Manage and take advantage of your time
The time that you will dedicate to each scenario will depend on your previous knowledge and experience. This master has an schedule flexibility which allows you to combine your job, master and personal life.

Work with people from different cultures and professions
A differential learning experience when working and being in contact with persons from different cultures and professions.

Course overview

This Online MBA is based on projects and activities from different companies and sectors that emulate real business situations. Unlike other online programs, this methodology converts passive listening, books and exams into critical thinking, group discussions, decision making and production of executive deliverables with the support and mentoring of experts. This is probably, the most practical and real Online MBA you will find to enhance your career as a manager, businessman or entrepreneur.

The Experiential MBA Online is focused on the development of the necessary skills and competences to be a manager, businessman or entrepreneur capable of directing and leading organizations within a global scope and a highly competitive environment.

This education methodology is unique for an Online MBA program due to the fact that the learning process is 100 % practical: Students work and learn just the way it is done in real companies, all this with a flexible schedule that allows the student to combine his/her job, master program and personal life.

The Experiential MBA Online is divided into six modules (five mandatory modules and one optional module). During the development of each module, the participant gets immersed in a business story in which he/she is the protagonist. This story takes place in real business scenarios in which even the most minimum detail is simulated; the student must assume a determinate role in the company and attend his/her boss’s and clients´ requests . Eventually, and with the help of step by step guides, different online resources, teammates as well as the mentor, the student must elaborate executive documents, present advances and defend the obtained results by following an established calendar.

Just as in real life, the Experiential MBA Online projects have objectives and assigned milestones (delivery terms). The scenarios have a duration (from 12 to 18 weeks) that emulates those of real projects and that are necessary to acquire, based in the practice and experimentation, the programmed skills in each module.

The weekly study hours will depend on the previous experience and knowledge of each participant in the field that he/she is studying. A person that has no experience at all in a concrete module must have a maximum dedication of 15 to 20 weekly hours, equivalent to the dedication that any face to face MBA program demands, where the student attends the classes and additionally dedicates some study time to prepare exercises or to meet with his/her teammates.

This weekly dedication also includes meetings with the entire class, as well as individual or group follow-up sessions with the mentors. These activities are all planned, they do not last more than three hours a week and the schedules are determined with the help of the tutor.

This is, without a doubt, a natural working methodology, easy to follow and where the support and direct relation with the mentors allow a constant contact to solve doubts and to be motivated during the program.

Methodology

The student learns by participating and executing real business projects, just as in a real work environment.

It is a learning process based in acquiring managing abilities and competences instead of acquiring contents. The student learns by doing, and skills such as critical thinking, discussion, preparation, presentation and defense of executive documents, are enhanced.

The MBA Online is a program where professors are mentors, and where, through relevant questions, they help the student discover the solutions, learn how to make business decisions and obtain the expected abilities in each work scenario.

A master with a flexible dedication since it takes in account that students come from different backgrounds with a varied professional experience.

Why is this Experiential MBA Online the best for me

A differential MBA programme amid the world of Online MBAs due to its 100% practical methodology, which provides all the skills that any director, businessman/woman or entrepreneur must have to do business in a global environment.

The student experiences almost real professional scenarios for several months in different business function areas of a company, and the skills acquired enable the participant to immediately provide added value to his/her company or job position, whilst at the same time boosting his/her professional career.

An individualized tracking of the student’s progress is carried out through the mentors, whose main mission is to empower the student’s critical thinking , develop their personal and management skills, and to help them discover solutions with the Socratic method.

The students manage their schedule in each scenario based on their knowledge and experience, which enables them to make best use of time.

A differential learning experience, since the student works and stays in contact with people from other cultures and job profiles.

Academic Program

Peopleforest™ is offering the La Salle Experiential MBA Online, which is formed by different modules or real business scenarios.

To obtain the degree it is necessary to complete a total of six modules. Five of them are mandatory and the sixth is of free choice.

Mandatory Modules:

• Finance: Cash Crisis – Analyze and solve SMEs problems. You will work as a financial consultant, helping a family that owns a bodega (winery) to solve a cash crisis that hinders them when seeking to renew a bank loan. You will start by making a financial analysis in order to identify the business problems; an analysis of the cause is made in order to determine the underlying reasons of the problems. You will develop an action plan, including finance projections for the next 5 years that will be presented to the bank as evidence of the sound financial health of the company.
• Marketing and Communication: Marketing – Launch of a new product. You will work as a member of a product launch team, whose main objective is to launch a new social network called iSing.com for amateur artists. First, you will choose a role in either product marketing or marketing communication. In each role you will be working in teams of two or four students. Together, you will prepare a launch plan for this product. You will design message architecture and preliminary market segmentation for the product. You will also identify the target market through demographic and psychographic market research. Your launch programme will include:
  • Features of the total product requirements
  • Identification of the barriers for adoption
  • Competitive Analysis
  • Market/Customer research
  • Selection of a Public Relations Agency
  • Market Leverage Tactics
  • Communication Plan
  • Selection of web tools
  • Branding                                                                                                                            Finally you will prepare a budget to support the activities you have planned. You will present and defend your plan and budget requirements before the company’s board of directors.
• Operations: Supply Chain Reaction – Reengineering of a supply chain. You will work as a consultant in a Supply Chain for the company RightByte Technologies. You will help with the design of a Supply Chain modification process regarding a new product line that the company plans to sell. You will receive a Director’s report of the RightByte’s Supply Chain, which describes the actual processes and its main problems. With this information, you will have to establish the cause of the problems and to recommend solutions, evaluating the industry’s best practices and the specifics needs of the company. You will also assess Supply Chain elements, such as: supply/demand planning, logistics, warehouse management and order management, amongst others. When evaluating potential solutions, you will have to consider the potential impact that each solution will have on customer service, on the potential cost decrease and the difficulty of implementation.
• Entrepreneurship: Investment Readiness – Investment and Business Plan. You will be hired as a consultant to enable the company Next.TV to go international. Next.TV has developed a software package to automise the editing department of a TV channel. You will need to perform a financial analysis and planning and to present your Project to potential venture capital partners. Many of the main domestic TV channels have already implemented the package, and now the company wants to expand internationally. You will start with an analysis of the company’s financial heath, assessing its financial status. Once completed, you will need to improve the financial proposition of the product and prepare an international sales plan for the next five years; you will also have to develop a marketing budget and determine the company’s financial needs and its revenue. Finally, you will create a business Plan and negotiate the details of investor offers.
• Corporate Governance: Ethics and Change Management – Business in the XXI Century. You will enact the story of a small international pharmaceutical company involved in a hostile takeover bid of a smaller but highly competitive competitor. You will navigate tricky negotiations; you will have to carry out a staff reduction amongst talented and devoted individuals, and also a challenging structural reorganisation, and generally manage the roles and responsibilities that this kind of change entails in a modern corporation. Moreover, you will have to deal with complicated (sometimes conflictual) relationships between social responsibility, legal responsibility and company profits. While you consider each episode, and criticise actions and reactions of the main characters, you will get advice on the steps to follow, and you will learn many lessons in the fields of negotiation, change management, corporate governance, legal and ethical issues, as well as dealing with different cultures. Since you will be working with a series of real representations of complicated business problems, you will test strategies that tackle those problems. In the future, you will be able to apply these same strategies when you find yourself in similar situations along your professional career path.

Optional Modules (to choose between):

• Sales and Project Management: Sale and Solution Implementation. Working as a project manager for World Class Events, a company specialised in events organisation, you will first have to identify business opportunities that better fit the company’s strategy and which may generate greater economic profits. Once the most appropriate solution has been chosen, you will have to prepare a highly persuasive presentation with a high-degree of added value for potential clients; then you will have to deal with the client and sell the Project. If you do so, your next challenge will be to start, plan, perform, execute and close the project.
• eBusiness: Going Online – Launch an Online Business. An investor will contact you to explain his/her interest in opening an online business to sell gift baskets, and to get some help to start this up. Once you have performed a basic analysis that will show that this kind of business is highly replicable, the investor will let you decide on the kind of specific business that must be designed, since the investor will be interested in assuring that the user interface has a very attractive and functional touch that will impress potential buyers. You will start to interview potential clients to understand how they buy this kind of products online, studying use patterns and identifying common problems of the process. After that, you will define functional and non- functional requirements of the website, and you will design information architectures, including content, sitemap, wireframes and, low-fi prototypes. Then, you will test the prototypes on potential users and, finally, you will select the company that will be in charge of the website construction.