Student Consulting Projects 2022

Student Consulting Projects 2022

Student Consulting Projects are an important element of studying at HHL. Students run these “field projects” independently while receiving coaching from a respective Chair. Many well-known large cooperations, medium-sized companies and start-ups have already benefitted from the results of HHL’s student consulting projects. This cooperation format is offered to companies that look for fresh ideas, profound research and sound solutions to current management challenges.

01 Consulting Partner Pferd 

25,000,000 EUR for the city of Leipzig—students assess the impact of Partner Pferd

Chair of Accounting and Auditing—Prof. Dr. Henning Zülch

Student consulting at its best – with local impact: Under the lead of the Chair of Accounting and Auditing, and together with the project partner En Garde Marketing, four highly motivated HHL students got the opportunity to participate in a unique sports management field project: the assessment of the economic contribution and the unique selling proposition (USP) of the Partner Pferd fair in Leipzig.

For all who do not know: The Partner Pferd fair is one of the largest equestrian sports fairs worldwide and is conducted annually in Leipzig. This year, the fair even framed the World Cup final of equestrian sports in our hometown – and HHL was part of it!

The field project offered the opportunity to have a substantial impact on Leipzig’s sports event scene while also digging deeper into a sport with which the students and the chair had only minor connections before. It is safe to say: Equestrian sports will be a sport to follow after the students have successfully finalized the project.

Why? The students’ research shows that equestrian sports have a USP that clearly differentiates it from others:

• Diverse: Equestrian sport is the only Olympic sport discipline in which men and women compete in the same competition, providing a stage for both genders equally.
• Approachable: Equestrian sport represents a sport out of the middle of society, both in the amateur and professional sectors.
• Unparalleled: Equestrian sport provides a unique emotional and sporting connection between human and animal that no other sport is able to deliver.
• Traditional: Equestrian sport is bridging generations, and once started, the sport accompanies you throughout life. However, these are not the only reasons to like horses in professional sports. There is also an economic contribution to our city: The sporting event and the five-day fair contributed roughly 25,000,000 EUR to the city of Leipzig and the state of Saxony. A good reason to see many more Partner Pferd fairs in the years to come.

02 Consulting the German Bundesliga 

Supporting the German Bundesliga club in evaluating future trends in professional football

Chair of Accounting and Auditing—Prof. Dr. Henning Zülch

In the summer term of 2022, four HHL students were able to shape the future of a Bundesliga club and get a glimpse into professional sports: as part of a student consulting project at the Chair of Accounting and Auditing of Prof. Dr. Henning Zülch, the students not only assessed the main drivers in professional football within a three months assignment but also jointly collaborated with the club’s management to develop dedicated measures on how the club can respond to these trends accordingly.

The key objective of the project was to design a trend radar to support professional football clubs in shaping their growth strategy. In addition to conducting a holistic market analysis and identifying commercial best practices in the industry, the students developed an evaluation logic of how the trends can be pragmatically evaluated in terms of their commercial potential and the resources required to implement each measure.

Compared to other leading football competitions, the Bundesliga has always been considered relatively solid in terms of financial success until the impact of COVID-19 revealed the economic fragility of the entire industry. A sound understanding of the changing market environment and value drivers enables club management to tap into new revenue streams while maintaining their authenticity and considering the values and interests of their supporters. Current examples in practice show: Not every commercial measure is supported by the fans but can, as in the case of the engagement of Qatar Airways at the German champion FC Bayern Munich, deepen the rifts between club management and its other stakeholders. In this potential field of trade-off, the student team developed practical measures that not only accelerate the commercial success of their partner club but are also tailored to the individual club culture that considers other stakeholder interests.

Conclusion of the student team:

• Management teams of Bundesliga clubs benefit from a compass for evaluating the subtrends in global football to align their own club in a future-oriented, crisis-resistant manner and to exploit growth fields efficiently.
• The opportunities in digitalization, communication via social media channels and the increasing public pressure to meet sustainability criteria play a critical role that no club manager can permanently ignore.

03 Consulting the Bundesdruckerei Gruppe GmbH

Transforming payment transactions between public authorities and citizens

Chair of Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer—Prof. Dr. Vivek Velamuri

Four MSc22 students worked on a consulting project for Bundesdruckerei Gruppe GmbH supervised by the Chair of Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer. The project developed insights into and projections for the government payment market. After benchmarking eGovernments in various countries, the students outlined trajectories for creating a more robust digital government in Germany. Emphasis was put on central bank digital currency (CBDC), a digital currency issued by a central bank and linked to the value of a country’s fiat currency. The students worked closely with Anna-Kristin Georgii-Klatt, Strategy Expert at Bundesdruckerei and HHL MBA alumni. The project is an excellent example of the manifold cooperation HHL has with industry partners and will conclude in a field trip to the production site of Bundesdruckerei in Berlin.

04 Consulting the Porsche AG Stuttgart

Student consulting project “Sustainability meets Digital Business”

Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG Chair of Strategic Management and Digital Entrepreneurship—Prof. Dr. Stephan Stubner

This year eight students from HHL joined forces to participate in the “Sustainability meets Digital Business” student consulting project with Porsche, with Prof. Dr. Stephan Stubner and Nino Tomini from the Porsche AG Chair of Strategic Management and Digital Entrepreneurship as supervising chair. With the increasing importance of sustainability for Porsche across the value chain, the students were supposed to analyze different decarbonization programs in Europe and the United States in order to derive strategic implications and potential use cases for Porsche. Therefore, the students conducted an in-depth market analysis of decarbonization best practices as well as implications for the automotive industry. The students held their final presentation in June 2022 at the Porsche plant in Leipzig. All in all, the diverse and intercultural team applied different methodological approaches to manage and coordinate a complex project at the intersection of strategy, business model innovation and sustainability.

Over the project course, the collaboration between Porsche and the students was constructive and fruitful, showing how this consulting project is just one example that underlines the intensive and longstanding strategic partnership between Porsche AG and the HHL Graduate School of Management.

05 Consulting Evagor GmbH

Research on economic and ecological studies on the green hydrogen project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Chair of Economics and Information Systems—Prof. Dr. Pierfrancesco La Mura

After a successful project in 2021, Leipzig-based Evagor GmbH decided to work with HHL full-time MBA students again to continue the research on economic and ecological studies on the green hydrogen project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This time the student consulting team was focussing on the consideration of the trading and sale of CO2 certificates where the development of a suitable business model structure played a major role. Applicable legal and regulatory framework conditions and quantification of all social, economic and societal effects for the population of the DRC had to be considered to achieve a sustainable project evaluation.

06 Consulting the DCI – Digital Career Institute gGmbH

Creating a Blended Learning strategy for course offers

Chair of Economics and Information Systems—Prof. Dr. Pierfrancesco La Mura

A second project on the topic of “Blended Learning” was completed for the DCI – Digital Career Institute gGmbH by another group of full-time MBA students. There the task was to develop a product and market entry strategy for the courses offered by DCI. After analyzing different models of blended learning as well as customer demographics and user personas, parameters for suitable models were identified and recommended. Strategic implications for DCI and their USPs were derived and presented. DCI is providing high-quality education to successfully start a career in the digital sector. Founded by HHL alumnus Dr. Steffen Zoller (K15), DCI is headquartered in Berlin with campuses located in all major German cities.