Blog #7

Internship site: Cleanology

Department: Service?

Project Title: 2010 Market/Budget Plan

General Description: The project is basically a marketing plan for 2010. I will be observing all the information from 2009 and write/design a new marketing plan for this year based on statistics, budgeting, etc. This will include a lot of information about people, possible clients, what advertisements make money, what competitors charge, etc. I'm just copying and pasting this.

Learning Objectives: I want to learn a few things. One thing is budgeting in a business. I think budgeting is an important aspect when you're working in business because you want to know how much money you have for what. You also want to see what money you're wasting and how you can save money and make more profit. Another thing I want to learn is how companies project ideas for the future. I want to know how to effectively use charts and predict or set a probable and possible goal for the future.

Organization/Company Objectives & Benefits: This is a packet they will follow when it comes to marketing. They want to make sure to stick to an advertising plan because we observed what worked. What didn't work actually costed them quite a bit of money so it's sort of like looking to see where mistakes could be improved. I think this could possibly save them a lot of money and organize their plans for 2010.

Schedule: Basically, there are 9 days left of internship and in those 9 days, there will mostly be data collecting and financial decisions. For the first few days, we will be listing competitive businesses and collecting their information by calling them. There will be lots to do on the side so this may take round 1-3 days. Then there is the matter of looking at last years budget and pulling out all the paper work for last year. This may take a while because there are a lot of aspects of the budget that range from buying equipment to buying advertisement. There is also the matter of gas and other expenses like supplies. This is what I know for now, we didn't have time to go over the whole thing. I'm actually doing this right now. I'm looking at all of the budget usage over the past few years. I pick up the trends that work and make profit and then the trends that don't work so well and makes no profit at all. I finished writing the statistics on the population and how much the company could make as a whole on Friday.

Academic Skills: This helps me learn about how keeping track of paperwork can help people in the long run. This also helps me understand how the world is changing. For example, one of the things on the advertising list for the past years was post cards and those worked really well. Over time, post cards made less and less money. The reason for that is because a lot of people are switching to internet and they don't really need post cards through the mail. I think trends like these can just show me the history of advertising and how it has evolved the past few years.

Technical Skills: This tests my skills on organization and calculation. There are a lot of numbers I have to work with, some being statistics from years or maybe just from a few months. This helps me practice the skill of putting together information and researching. And not just that, I have to design something that can project my research easily and efficiently.

Collaboration—Skills and Opportunities: I've actually talked to my mentor a lot already. Nobody knows the advertising budget as well as she does. On Friday, she sat down with me and talked about the different statistics I was looking at. She pointed out possible trends and told me things I should consider when looking at how to advertise. As for collaboration, I think Christine is going to teach me a lot about to read numbers and patterns and tell me about what could be an investment.

Exhibition Plans: I can probably just have the packet up on the screen. If I have time, I can possibly make a slide show displaying the different aspects of the packet I looked up. Maybe some paperwork I had to compare?

Schedule & Timelines: Wasn't this already a question? Urm.. I think this may take all of next week. I'm not sure if I'm going to be working anymore then that. I do take a while when I do research though, because I like being thorough. I'm overestimating the time I will be using so I don't run out when the end of internship is nearing. Most of the work is just busy work and with 6 hours a day, I'm sure I can accomplish it in no time.

Summary of my week: Oh, I should have written this on Friday since experienced were fresh at hand. There was a lot of paperwork. I would have assumed that everything was structured out on a single piece of paper and it was all this information in 10 point font. In reality, it was a huge mass of papers with different years, some even depicting months. What was surprising was how difficult it was to understand the budget. It wasn't just, "This month is this month" because months cut into each other, some advertisers wanted pre-payment, other advertises still worked even though they were years old (Like post cards, people still looked at post cards from years ago). I would describe my first week as... quick. I actually didn't even know the week passed, it sort of flew by. You just immerse yourself in work and next thing you know, your work week is already done. One of the good qualities Christine said I had was that I was able to stay focus even when I had a lot of things to do. I think this is something I am actually good at because my mind is confused easily. I always need things in part and if I start two things at once, I can't estimate how much time it may take or if I can even finish both tasks. I think doing things one by one is something I'm good at and I realized this at my first week of internship.