20 | November | 2014 | The NANYANG MBA Blog

Submitted by Raymond Rueda, Student Exco VP Career Development

Myanmar, compared to its Asian counterparts, has been lagging behind for decades in terms of socio-economic and political stability but thanks to U Thein Sein’s rise to presidency in 2011, it has now opened its doors to the global market, bringing in investors from various industries. Multinational companies see its huge potential—it is strategically located between Asian countries with huge populations—India and China—and is next to some developing Southeast Asian nations as well such as Thailand.

Because of these factors, the Nanyang Business School has chosen Myanmar for the second time as a destination for its students’ Business Study Mission (BSM), which was scheduled last October 25 to November 1. Now on its second year, the redesigned MBA program requires participants to go on a BSM either in Singapore or overseas. This year, 11 full-time students, 3 part-time students, and 1 EMBA participant joined the Myanmar group, which visited both local and multinational companies with offices in Yangon.

A trip abroad, however, would not be complete without sight-seeing so the BSM also had its fun side. During the first two days, we visited popular tourist spots in Yangon such as the Inle Lake, Botataung Pagoda, the Rangoon War Cemetery, the Shwedagon Pagoda, and Bogyoke Market. We also tried out local Burmese dishes in popular restaurants in the city and found them uniquely delicious.

After a weekend of touring the city came the more serious part of the trip—the company visits. Companies that the group got the chance to interact with include Chevrolet, Consumer Goods Myanmar Limited, Tokyo Stock Exchange, Samsung, Coca-Cola Pinya Beverages, Ooredoo, Kia Motors, Schneider Electric, CNQC, and Petronas. Aside from the private sector, officials from the government and non-profit institutions also gave insightful presentations about the current challenges, opportunities, and programs being promoted in Myanmar.

Seeing Myanmar suffering from poverty and corruption is quite saddening especially when one learns that it used to be the the second wealthiest in the region during the British occupation. Nevertheless, it is slowly making progress especially as it gains support from more powerful countries such as the US and Japan. All of us saw how promising Myanmar could be and we hope that one day, we will see it as competitive as or even more developed than its neighboring countries in the region.

To Prof. Ravi Agarwal, Prof. Chung Lai Hong, Ms. Lindsay Tan of the MBA Office, and everyone else who made the Myanmar BSM possible, chezu tinbade!

For more information about Nanyang Business School click here.

Submitted by I Putu Mahendra Wijaya, Co-Chair of the Management Consulting Club

Hitachi Global Solution Corporate Talk by Mr. Michael Travis, Chairman Emeritus

On Friday, 14 November 2014, the Nanyang Business School has been fortunate to receive a visit from Mr. Michael Travis, chairman emeritus from Hitachi Solutions Ltd. The Management Consulting Club, together with the Wine Appreciation Club, has been honored for being given the trust to host him throughout his visit in Nanyang Business School.

The event started at 15h30 with a presentation by Mr Travis titled “Consulting & Professional Services Perspectives”. Within the presentation, Mr Travis shared with the attendants of his experience heading Hitachi Global Solution, as well as some the recent important trends in the professional service industry.

Some of the interesting insights that he shared is the scale and revenue partition of Hitachi as a conglomerate company. Founded in 1910 by an engineer Namihei Odaira, Hitachi has grown from its initial business in electric induction motors into large conglomerate in Japanese industry. As of 2014, Hitachi businesses encompass areas from Digital Media all the way to Construction Machinery. No doubt that Hitachi has been recognized in the world as one of consistently top performing companies, as evidenced by its annual subscription to be listed in Fortune 500 global companies. As of Financial year 2013, Hitachi reported top line revenue of $93.4 billion from all of its business units, one of which is Hitachi Global Solutions, which Mr Travis had the experience to lead & grow the business.

Furthermore, Mr. Travis also shared his insight about the future of consulting industry. One of the important trends, he pointed out, happens in the sphere of IT development. In particular, he argued that the development of the “internet of things: manufacturing 2.0” – where machine can have “social network” between them – would unleash a tremendous potential in the manufacturing in the new world.

Important around the idea of internet of things is the capability of machine to collect data, thanks to proliferation of sensor, and processes them in real-time to be presented either to another machine – which would help crunch those data – or to a human user – who will make the final critical decision in real-time if any intervention is needed. Such real-time data gathering & information processing will bring efficiency to a level never before attained in the past, simply because the availability of data which were not present.

As such, the development of internet of things becomes not only the latest fad in the technology world, but could have a tremendous impact in the sphere of strategic planning and decision making in the business world, particularly in the sector of manufacturing and public transportation. Indeed, one of the key takeaways from the presentation is the implication of the internet of things to the consulting industry: we can expect that the internet of things would create a middle-field battle ground between companies that traditionally offers services in strategic consulting, and those that customarily offers services in IT consulting.

After an interesting presentation, the attendants were then entertained with a fine selection of wines, cherry-picked by our wine connoisseur, Ms Stephanie Zhao – c0-chair of Wine Appreciation Club; accompanied with excellent light snack matched against the wine, finely selected by our caterer Fusion Spoon. All in all, the atmosphere of the entire session was very collegiate, and we were very fortunate to have the opportunity to talk in person with someone as important as Mr Travis.

Indeed, the Management Consulting Club and Wine Appreciation Club hope that the event could mark as the beginning of long-term relationship between the Nanyang MBA program & Hitachi Global Solutions. Bonne Continuation!