The Economist Intelligence Unit has ranked the Melbourne Business School full-time MBA at #1 in Asia and Australasia and #32 globally in its 2011 full-time MBA rankings.

MBS is already ranked #1 in Australia by AFR BOSS and #46 globally by Times Higher Education.

Drilling down to the detailed profile for MBS, you get some interesting results.

Missed Networking Opportunities

For example, the school ranks well for networking:

• Potential to network: #5
• Breadth of alumni network (i.e. ratio of registered alumni to current students): #2

But ranks poorly in the use and perception of its alumni network:

• Alumni effectiveness (i.e. student assessment of alumni network): #89

I’m not sure why this might be the case. I can make a few guesses, though. For example, international students might find that, while there are tonnes of MBS alumni that they can network with in Asia and Australasia, there aren’t enough of them around the rest of the world. There might also be some missed opportunities in the students’ use of the alumni network. Or of recent alumni themselves not networking much with each other.

Career Services is Improving

MBS also ranks really well for its careers service:

• Jobs found through the careers service (i.e. percentage of graduates finding jobs through careers service): #2

But students and alumni don’t seem to give it enough credit:

• Student assessment of careers service (i.e. did the careers service meet expectations and needs?): #98

This suggests that, while the MBS Career Centre is doing a good job, it suffers from some perception problems. This might be because perception change among alumni who no longer need or use the careers service lags the reality of the careers service having improved in recent years. I do know that the MBS Career Centre in 2008-09 had a challenging time placing graduates from my full-time MBA batch because we were the first group to come out of the new September intake. This meant the Career Centre had to find jobs for twice as many students (many of whom were international) right at the beginning of the GFC. And, since the EUI’s ranking has memory – i.e. it’s a weighted average of results from 2011 (50%), 2010 (30%), and 2009 (20%) – this alumni perception would still have an impact on perception scores.

Overall

Overall, though, this is a good result and I’m glad that MBS continues to improve its quality, reputation, and ranking.

The Australian Financial Review’s (AFR) BOSS magazine has, once again, ranked the Melbourne Business School MBA at number one in Australia.

• ‘Australia’s top MBA programs’ by Rose-Anne Manns [AFR]
• ‘Financial Review BOSS 2011 MBA Rankings’ [AFR BOSS]
• ‘AFR BOSS: No.1 MBA Again’ [MBS]

According to these rankings, the top five MBAs in Australia are from these business schools:

1. Melbourne Business School
2. University of Queensland – Business School
3. Monash University – Department of Management
4. QUT Graduate School of Business (Queensland University of Technology)
5. Australian School of Business – AGSM

BOSS conducts this research every other year and its results are based on two components: an alumni survey (weighted 55%) and data supplied by schools (weighted 45%). 21 business schools participated this time and 19 of these made it into the rankings (two didn’t, due to insufficient alumni responses). 1,600 b-school alumni from the graduating classes of 2008-2010 (inclusive) took part in the survey.

Digging Deeper

Looking more closely at the results:

• The AGSM and MBS MBAs have the highest tuition fee ($64,800 and $64,000, respectively) followed by Monash and Macquarie ($57,260 and $56,000, respectively). The rest of the MBAs have tuition fees under $50k.
• 96% of MBS alumni reported that their MBA provided them value for money.
• MBS, AGSM, and Macquarie MBAs have the greatest number of class contact hours over the entire degree (720, 686, and 640 hours, respectively). As it happens, these are also three of the four most expensive degrees. The others all have fewer than 600 class contact hours. 
• MBS was ranked 3rd for satisfaction, 5th for value for money, and 1st for research.
• When survey respondents were asked which school they would attend if money and location were not an issue, MBS came out on top again.

International Rankings

The two most notable international rankings of business schools come from the Financial Times and the Economist. In their latest rankings:

• The Financial Times ranks AGSM at #35 and MBS at #53
• The Economist ranks MBS at #44, Monash at #58, MGSM at #64, Curtin at #76, UoQ at #81

FT will be kicking off research for its 2012 b-school rankings later this month.

Matt Symonds recently wrote a good article on the importance of diversity in MBA programs:

…business schools seek to encourage not only more women and ethnic minorities to do an MBA, but also those with more diverse backgrounds including media, military, not-for-profits and entrepreneurship

…

But is it important for business schools to also strive for professional diversity? Many academics, administrators and students would say so. In fact, it’s been argued that restricting the MBA course participants to a limited range of experience means that traditionally accepted patterns of thought go unchallenged. They argue that a wide-ranging group of students helps to put business decision-making into a wider perspective, and thereby reduce the risk of a herd mentality that leads to ill-informed decisions. Perhaps Wall Street should take note?

Diversity in the student body – particularly a good mix of international students – is one of the main reasons I applied to Melbourne Business School for my MBA; and I was certainly not disappointed. In my intake (the full-time MBA intake of  September 2006) we had about 65  students, only seven of which were from Australia (the rest were from about 35 countries) and a quarter of which were women (for MBA programs, this is better than most).

MBS also goes out of its way to acquire diversity through its various scholarship programs. In my case, I was awarded (what is now called) the Dean’s International Management Scholarship. Every year, that adds about three financially-limited international students to a mix of people who are fortunate enough to have other means to paying for their studies. I, for one, will be forever grateful to MBS for giving me that opportunity.

Every two years the Australian Financial Review ranks Australia’s “top MBA programs” based on a survey of recent business school alumni and data from a questionnaire that’s filled out by the schools themselves.

They publish this ranking in BOSS Magazine and, in 2009, Melbourne Business School was ranked #1.

This year’s alumni survey is now open for input from business school graduates who completed their degrees within the last three years (i.e. 2008, 2009, and 2010 grads only). If you fit that category, please fill out the survey so that this year’s results reflect the most accurate opinions of recent Australian b-school grads.

The 2011 survey results will be published in the September issue of BOSS. Of course, I’ll blog about them when they come out, as well.

FYI: If you’re an MBS alumni and have any questions about the survey, get in touch with David Mitchell who is the alumni and community relations manager at MBS.

I’ve been really busy at work these last few months which is why I haven’t blogged here much. Unfortunately, it’ll probably stay that way till early next year.

What’s prompted me to write today, however, is Penny McLeod who wrote in The Australian an article called ‘A Degree You Can Bank On: MBA’ – that says:

Australian companies are knocking down the doors of leading business schools to secure the best master of business administration graduates.

The article goes on to explain how demand for MBAs has increased in Australia this year. Further, this demand isn’t coming just from the financial sector but from other sectors as well (including, for example, utilities and not-for-profit organizations).

That’s great news because, in my opinion, the MBA is undervalued in Australia and I’m glad to see that perception change.

Melbourne Business School (MBS) have produced a video called ‘MBS By Numbers’ as a thank you to the alumni of MBS:

More on the Experience Melbourne blog.

Matt Symonds recently wrote an article in Forbes called ‘How Creative MBA Programs are Overcoming Bad Times’ and, in it, he talks about Melbourne Business School (MBS):

If there is one thing the less well-known schools where M.B.A. applications are holding up have in common, it is an ability to offer something different.

…

Melbourne Business School, one of the leading institutions in the Asia-Pacific region, has also seen its latest M.B.A. class grow. Dean Jenny George seems to share Antal-Mokos’ view that the secret may not be location, ranking or history but a unique underlying structural model. "We have the luxury of being what I’d term ‘quasi-independent,’" she says. "We have a strong link to our local university, but at the same time as a corporate body we have free rein to do what we think is best. That means we have the credibility to attract really good faculty but can hire people who don’t always fit the traditional, conventional picture of an academic. And that in turn means we can put together a learning experience that pulls in the very best students."

It’s a good article and I recommend you read it.

More about Symonds:

• SymondsGSB blog
• Matt Symonds on Wikipedia
• Matt Symonds on LinkedIn

I took a number of marketing courses in my MBA at Melbourne Business School (MBS) and it was during my Consumer Behaviour course with Brian Gibbs that we got the best, single-page overview of the marketing process.

Framework for Marketing Management

Gibbs called this the ‘Framework for Marketing Management’ and it’s an excellent summary of how marketing is done:

[Note: The diagram above is one that I made based on my notes from the course.]

It works like this:

• The marketing concept says you begin by looking at your customers, company, and competition – these are the three Cs. Let’s say your company makes pens:
  • Ask yourself what it is that your customers need. How can you satisfy that need? In real life a lot of research would go into answering questions like these. Then consider what your customers do to satisfy those needs. What factors contribute to their decision making process? Again, more research would be done.
  • Also look at your company. Can you make the pens your customers want? Do those types of pens fit with your company’s corporate objectives? For example, if you’re Montblanc, you won’t be making cheap plastic pens anytime soon even if some your customers say that’s what they want in a writing instrument.
  • Don’t forget to analyze your competition as well. How will your competitors respond to your product (say, when you introduce a new version)? Also ask yourself who else satisfies the needs of your customers. For example, should you be looking at companies that make markers and pencils as competition?
• Once you’ve done that, you segment your customers according to primary bases, such as their identified needs. For example, Group A wants cheap plastic ballpoint pens, Group B wants fancy liquid ink pens, and so on. You also segment by secondary bases, which are often things like demographics. You keep slicing and dicing using a combination of bases till you get useful segments; i.e. those you can target properly. For example, you could further segment Group B by age bracket and annual income.
• Next, you decide which specific segments you’re going to target (and why). For example, Montblanc may be targeting only, say, richer and older people from Group B. They know they can communicate well with these people, they can defend this segment from the competition, and ultimately that’s the area of the market they want their company to operate in.
• That sets you up with the positioning of your product. Getting your positioning right is incredibly important because it’s the key to your entire plan. So, for example, Montblanc may position themselves in the luxury space as a company that sells excellent writing instruments that have the highest level of craftsmanship. In effect, their pens are high-end gifts, much like hand-crafted jewellery. They would then position themselves appropriately in the luxury gift jewellery markets, but not in the broader writing instruments market.
• Once you’ve got your positioning done, you figure out how you’re going to to create, capture, communicate, and deliver value to your customer. This value is created by the existence of your product, captured by its price, communicated through your promotion, and delivered by where you place (or how you distribute) your product – these are the four Ps.
• Finally, as the market grows and develops, you will need to tweak these four Ps to maintain your positioning. Then, at regular intervals, you will need to re-do your three Cs because the market will change and you will need to change with it. Repeat ad infinitum…well, at least as long as your company continues to exist.

It All Comes Down to Positioning

As you may have gathered, a good way of remembering the entire marketing process is to think of the just the three Cs and four Ps. However, if you want to distil it further, you can bring it all down to positioning.

Positioning is a summary of the first part (analysis & strategy: the three Cs) and a guide for the second part (planning & implementation: the four Ps).

From the consumer behaviour point of view, it is also the psychological epicentre of the marketing process. That’s because positioning – with the help of the four Ps – is what translates the ‘actual product’ into the ‘perceived product’ within the consumer’s mind (they are often not the same).

So while a Montblanc pen is in essence just a writing instrument, in the mind of the consumer, it is much more than just that. And it is the pen’s positioning that will determine what qualities above its ability to put ink on paper set it apart from its competitors.

Thanks for Sharing, But What Was the Point?

This one-page overview of the marketing process is useful in many ways:

• It provides a great sanity check for what you’re doing in your job. For example, the Web & New Media Strategy that Melbourne Water developed over the last year followed pretty much this process. That strategy now forms the basis of my day-to-day work. So, if we hadn’t done the three Cs right, for example, I would have had a hard time getting the four Ps done properly.
• It’s a great way to analyze the marketing, branding, and product positioning that’s going on around you all the time.
• It brings good overall project management and business strategy rigour to whatever it is that you’re doing.

Oh, and if you’re a job seeker, it’s particularly useful because it provides a good framework for when you get asked questions about the company’s products or services.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks at Melbourne Business School. Fortunately, the more recent recent news has been all good.

The latest of this is the excellent news that Acting Dean Professor Jennifer George has now been appointed Dean of MBS. Congratulations to her and I look forward to seeing what direction she steers MBS towards; particularly now that there’s no merger to think about. We should have exciting times ahead.

Melbourne Business School’s (MBS) MBA has been ranked #1 in Asia by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Not only that, the MBA has been ranked #17 in the world (up from #26 last year) and this puts it ahead of INSEAD in Asia and even Columbia and MIT Sloan in the US!

Good job, MBS!