Business Reality
Students study businesses they have never been inside
Case studies are written after the fact, tidied and concluded. This session shows the working version: the systems people actually use, the floor where the work happens, the meeting where the week is planned, and the mess that never appears in a case.
Explore this page5 sections
A case study is a business with the confusion removed.
That is what makes cases teachable, and it is also what makes them misleading. Real businesses run on partial information, half-followed processes, a CRM somebody has not updated and a supplier who is late again.
Seeing one from the inside — a startup, a factory, a service company — gives students a reference point that every case afterwards is measured against.
What students see inside
23 topics across 4 areas. Four kinds of business, and the systems that run them.
Inside a StartupFew people, many hats, decisions made fast.5 topics
- How a small team divides work
- What gets decided in a day
- How priorities change
- What breaks as it grows
- How founders spend their time
Inside a FactoryWhere the physical work happens.6 topics
- How production is planned
- How inventory is managed
- Quality control on the floor
- How supply chains work
- How vendors are managed
- Where cost accumulates
Inside a Service BusinessCapacity is people, and people are the cost.5 topics
- How work is scoped and priced
- How teams are scheduled
- How utilisation is managed
- How customer complaints are handled
- How quality is judged without a product
The Systems UnderneathWhat businesses actually run on.7 topics
- How businesses use CRM
- How businesses use ERP
- What smaller businesses run on before a CRM or ERP: spreadsheets, accounting software and messaging groups
- How SOPs work in practice
- How management reviews performance
- Business reporting and dashboards
- What happens when the system is not updated
Questions students get to ask
- What does a normal week look like?
- What goes wrong most often?
- Which system do you rely on most?
- What would you fix if you could?
- How much of this is planned and how much is reacting?
- What would surprise a management student?
How the session runs
Where a visit is possible, students go and see it. Where it is not, a practitioner brings the business to the room — the actual screens, the actual reports, the actual weekly review — and talks through a normal week rather than a highlight. Questions run throughout rather than at the end.
What your students leave with
- A reference point from a real working business
- How startups, factories and service companies differ
- What CRM, ERP and SOPs actually do day to day
- How a management team reviews its week
- A sharper instinct for what is missing from a case study
Scheduled sessions
Nothing scheduled yet
Sessions are arranged with a college once a date is agreed. Ask us and we will find the right person for it.
A student rather than a college? See what is coming up, or ask your placement team to host this.
Start a conversation
Ask for this session
Tell us who you are and what you have in mind. A person reads it and writes back, usually within two working days.
- Tell us what you need
A topic or a question is enough to start.
- A person replies
Usually within two working days.
- Agree the next step
We work out the details together.
A case study is a business with the confusion removed. This is the other version.
Tell us who your students are and what stage they are at. Sessions are free for participants.