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Exeecutive Certificatte in Agrribusineess Manaagement (ECAM


M)

Group
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H
Hassan Saarwar
Meshal Z
Zehra
Samia Aslam
Haroon N
Nasir
N
Nouman Am
meen

Program
A year-long Certificate Programmed in Agribusiness Management by LUMS was
initiated on January 18, 2014. This pioneering endeavor is led by LUMS Suleman Dawood
School of Business and is a first of its kind certificate program in the country. The program has
been made possible through collaboration with Nestle Pakistan as a part of its Creating Shared
Value (CSV) initiatives.
The Executive Certificate in Agribusiness Management (ECAM) is built around a series of short
duration modules covering key disciplines of management with contextual relevance for
agribusiness and the challenges currently facing the sector.

History of such projects


REDC has a history of being a centre of excellence that provides executive
education services to the corporate community of region. In collaboration with SDSB, it has
transformed itself into a leading service provider offering premium short
duration programs in all areas of management to the executives. The ECAM program is also
a major initiative in bringing executive training and up lifting and revolutionizing the
agribusiness management sector. During the interview with Mar. Abdul Rauf, he
highlighted that REDC has been involved with a variety of such training programs but
ECAM is the first one of its kind that is targeted at the agribusiness sector. Other than
ECAM, REDC offers various others such has Organization Focused Programs that are
specially designed and customized for a particular organization according to their needs and
specifications. Training programs are also offered to managers of various MNCs including
Unilever and Procter and Gamble. REDC also continues to offer open enrolment programs
that allow for personal development and gain important insights about financial, managerial
and operational management. He further expresses his views on the practical usefulness of
the project. It gives hands on experience and a diverse exposure to the participants of the
program via field projects and interaction with professionals. This, he believes, will be
crucial in revolutionizing the agribusiness sector of Pakistan and promises immense
potential for the growth of the agricultural sector of the country.

Necessity of the program


Our focus in ECAM has been to design a well-rounded program directed at developing
managerial expertise in the agriculture sector to enhance productivity of our lands, stated Dr. So
hail Navy, Vice Chancellor, LUMS.
The ECAM program underscores the importance of the agriculture sector to the health of
the economy. Agriculture contributes 21% of GDP and employs 44% of the workforce. The
sector is pivotal to robust economic growth, development and alleviation of poverty. Nestl and
LUMS both recognize the role of the agriculture sector in Pakistans economy and how trained
professionals will keep the country competitive with other leading agricultural economies around
the world.
The program curriculum is designed to provide participants with leading edge and
marginal know how and skills considered essential to operate successfully in a high stake
agribusiness environment where opportunities are expanding rapidly with growth population.
The primary focus of the program is on Food, Agriculture and agribusiness industry including
dairy farming, high value agriculture and fruit farming. Participant will gain understanding of
agribusiness economic environment, market dynamics and recognizing opportunities to create
value for their respective organization. The one-year Executive Certificate in Agribusiness
Management curriculum includes courses on agro-economics, entrepreneurship, value chain and
technology, finance and accounting among others, to equip participants with leading edge
managerial skills and expertise.
As gathered from the interview and the research, this program is targeted to agribusiness managers, producers, farm managers and others involved at the various stages of the
value chain, potential and current investors in high value agriculture and agricultural commodity
traders and exporters.

Objective of the Program


The certificate program is designed to help participant

Acquire management knowledge, tools and techniques useful in making sound business
decision.

Develop the ability to assess the agribusiness economic environment and value chain;
plan and formulate strategies to achieve enterprise targets.

Develop entrepreneurial abilities essential for recognizing and capitalizing on value


creation opportunities.

Develop and hone leadership competencies to motivate and effectively manage human
resource.

Appreciate the impact of market forces, technology and global trends on agricultural
enterprises and importance of managing risks.

KeyFeaturesoftheProgram
Key features of the program include:

The course material will be delivered using the practical viewpoint through the
case method approach-the hallmark of LUMS.

The course work component of the curriculum comprises 9 modules covering the
foundation of management knowledge with a primary focus o various aspects
agribusiness sector.

Modules included in Scope of program


Modulesthatareincludedintheprogramare

DataModelsanddecisionmaking

Entrepreneurship

AgribusinessEconomics

AccountingandcontrolforAgribusiness

Agribusinessvaluechainandtechnology

Financeforagriculture

MarketingandBranding

ManagingHumanResource

AgribusinessstrategyandGlobaltrends

KeyAdvantages
Keyadvantagesoftheprogramfortheparticipantsare

To have an opportunity to acquire management education specifically tailored to the


needs of agribusiness at a premier institution of the region.

To benefit from the weekend structure of the program offerings allowing participants to
hold their full time jobs.

Challenges
Following are the major challenges related to the program.
Stakeholders
The project was subject to a lot of phases of approvals. It started with the approval
from the stakeholders. This involved approval on the scope which involved the
determination of the extent to which the resources could be stretched to cover different areas
of knowledge involved in building a management program for agribusiness management.
Hence, over the course of the project fulfilling the expectations of the stakeholders became
a real challenge. This involved first convincing them of the relevance of the project to be
undertaken to improve the management processes in Pakistan and after that maintaining the
required quality of work needed.

Team coordination
Coordination among members from different cities was one other challenge. This
project involved a lot of communication among team members from different cities like
Faisalabad and Lahore. This proved to be challenge because of the difference in the work
environments and cultures of the two places
Weather Problems
As there was a lot of field study involved the team members had to face weather
problems and so necessary facilities had to be arranged for.

Constraints
Following are some constraints that the project team had to while design the program
Budget
Due to the amount of field work required and travelling the finances proved to be a
constrained that possibly hampered the quality of the overall project. The main reason for
such a constraint was the stakeholders approval for a very tight budget and also the
extensive research material that was needed from Harvard Business Review proved to take

up a lot of the finances of the project since it was an unforeseen kind of an expense which
kept on increasing as the time passed by as new needs for research kept springing up.
The project team members had to face payment delays during the course of the
project which proved to be a cause of disturbance in the harmony of the working
environment for the team members.
Special approvals
Approvals for big and necessary expenses had to be taken which used to delay the
project
Human Resource
There is a fixed number of Faculty numbers that the university employees which is
also involved in teaching tool and not just research. Another thing that further tightened this
constraint was that there are very few faculty members who are experts in the agriculture
management. This acted as constraint as there was very limited human power that was
available. There was too much pressure on the same amount of human resource which might
have reduced the quality of the project produced.

Risk
Some risks associated with the program are as follow
First time course offered
The fact that the end product of this project would fail and Stakeholders Expectations
not being fulfilled
Cost Risk
The Risk of cost going too high and risk related to the returns from the project in
terms of its success.
Quality Risk
The project not able to produce a good result due to the constraints it faced like
human Resource, budget etc.
Participants Turnover
The major risk related to program was that it not be able to attract the people to
participate in the program.
Focus Groups revealing some interest by the market but what if the market does not
respond in the desired manner

Interviewees Thoughts

According to the faculty member it was a challenging project as there were a lot of
things that couldnt be accounted for at the beginning due to expert knowledge on such a
kind of a project. But he considered this project as a necessity to promote agriculture in
Pakistan. He emphasized that budget constraint and approval from stakeholders are the main
challenges that such researches in Pakistan face.

Project ECAM on MS Project


Program Executive Certificate in Agribusiness Management (ECAM) has been built
around a series of short duration modules covering key disciplines of management with
contextual relevance for agribusiness and the challenges currently facing the sector.
The program has been designed on MS Project to assist the Program Director and Director
REDC in developing a plan, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing
activities, and analyzing workloads.
Work Breakdown Structure
The project has been developed with a clear breakdown structure. As it is a
customized project so it starts with the sponsors approach and terminates with the
comprehensive evaluation of the program. Project encompasses requirements identification,
Learning Need Assessment, Designing program, Program execution and Interim Evaluation.
Tree Structure of WBS is shown in Exhibit 1.
Milestones
Milestones are used to mark specific points along a project timeline. They signal
anchors such as a project start and end date, a need for external review and resources check
among others. They do not impact project duration, instead, they focus on major progress
points that must be reached to achieve success.
The milestones used in our project are as follows:

Requirements Identification

Learning Need Assessment

Designing Program

Program Execution

Evaluations

Duration
The project was officially started with the sponsors approach on 11th March 2013
and is estimated to terminate on 28th January 2015. The estimated duration of the project is
243 days. The duration for sub-activities is estimated from interviews with the member of
project team Abdul Rauf and from interviews with Director Dr. Fazal Jawad and other
SDSB Faculty.
Resources
Personnel who are responsible for the different deliverables of project are:
Dr. Arif Iqbal Rana (Director of the Program)
Dr. Fazal Jawad Seyyed (Co-Program Director)
Mr. Abdul Rauf
Dr. Tanveer Shehzad
Other faculty of SDSB
Limitation
Limitation of our project is that Mr. Abdul Rauf (our contact person) refused to share
budgeting and costing of the project with us because of confidentiality issues.

Requirements
Identificcation

LearningNeeed
Assessmentt

1.1
1

1.2

DesiigningProgram

ProgramExecution

Evaluatio
on

1.3

11.4

1.5

Spo
onsor's
App
proach

Visitsto
o
livestockks

Brainstorming
aboutContent
Development

Reggistration

1stInteerim
Evaluattion

Serriesof
meetingswith
spo
onsor

Meetingsw
with
TunnelFarm
mers

Module
Development

Sho
ortlisting
Parrticipants

2ndInteerim
Evaluattion

Requirements
log
l

Meetingsw
with
Agriculture
fields

Program
Outline
Development

Intterviews

3rdInteerim
Evaluattion

LNA
Submissio
on

Program
Content
Approval

Condducting1st
Seemester

4thInteerim
Evaluattion

LNARevieew

Conducting
2nddSemeste

Compreheensive
Evalauttion

LNAAppro
oval

Condducting3rd
Seemester

ConceptPaaper

Condducting4th
Seemester

ConceptPaaper
Review
w

ConceptPaaper
Approvaal

Deliverable Four
Issue
REDC management was confronted with the crucial decision regarding the content of the ECAM
curriculum. As decided in the initial stages, the REDC management had decided to purchase all
the course material from the HBR (Harvard Business Review) board. The decision to purchase
material and the case studies was taken by both the REDC and Nestle the management during the
designing and the brainstorming about content development phase (WBS 1.3). However, the
issue arose during the Module development stage when the budget fell short to purchase the
HBR materials. Some materials and case studies had already been purchased but the REDC
management did not have the resources and the budget to purchase the remaining course
materials. The inability to obtain the HBR course content materials left the management in a
dilemma, leading to conflicting and resenting opinions between the project and the management
team. Nestle, being an important stake holder and the sponsor of the program, insisted that HBR
materials be used for ECAM however due to budget constraints this could not be achieved within
the time, schedule and cost baselines. This left the management with three possible options to
deal with the issue:
Options available
Option 1: Ask the LUMS faculty to write teaching cases for ECAM
Option 2: Use the locally available cases
Option 3: Ask the LUMS faculty to edit and improve upon the locally available cases for ECAM
Conflict resolution
The management was divided over the issue. The Nestle management was against using the
locally available and printed cases for the ECAM curriculum since it wanted to preserve the
executive training element of the program. Hence, Option 2 could not be used and stirred a lot of
debate and conflict with the members of the project team and the project heads. Acute dismissal
of option 2 from the Nestle management, lead to the project management team to adopt Option 3
as the most viable one as it fell close to the cost timeline. Option 1 was expensive and time

consuming both as developing the teaching cases required additional cost and time and getting
the LUMS faculty to agree to allocate extra time for the ECAM program was unfeasible. Using
the integrated change control mechanism, the desired changes to the module and course
curriculum for ECAM were made.
Repercussions
The decision to opt option 3 had considerable repercussions for the project schedule baseline.
The delay in the Module development stage caused an overall delay in the project duration. This
delayed the Program Outline Development phase and consequently the Program content
Approval stage. Hence the program execution phase started later than the planned date. The
exact delay (in days) could not be obtained from the information provided by the REDC
management.

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