Before writing the assignment I felt that this topic is irrelevant for my company. I thought globalisation would only be of concern for multinational companies. It came as a revelation when I started working on this assignment that it is most relevant for us as well. As a matter of fact, I have a practical road map now that will help me to welcome globalisation.

Olga Rogachevskaya, Business Development Manager at SoftTechnics, Ukraine

The course on cross-cultural management has created more value than I thought to myself. While studying this course I tried to think of incidences during my time with SAP and the South African EOH Group where I have dealt with people whom I thought were just not willing to cooperate but now I understand they were issues to do with culture.

Taurai Chitsiga, SAP MM/PM Consultant, EOH Group, South Africa

I am puzzled by the appropriateness and timeliness of this assignment. Having completed my work our Board of Directors discussed the subject matter only a week later in London. My recommendations have been a departure point for negotiations of our Directors with legal advisors.

Natalii Pershyna, Financial Manager at Kline (Ukraine) LLC, Ukraine

This has been an immense eye opener as it forced me to think about my current situation and of those around me. It forced me to think that maybe the way I have been living in a “glass house” have made me lose touch with reality. This assignment or Professor Malik analysis on effective management is borderline genius and resonates a lot with my current reality.

Erna Kaura, Manager Liabilities, Standard Bank of Namibia, Namibia

Apart from value created in terms of improved understanding of effective management tasks for my workplace, the biggest value created is on a personal level. I realised that having a long bucket-list is fine; HOWEVER the concentration on a few things at a time is crucial and will produce better results and ensure a more enjoyable journey!

Bernadette Bock, Specialist Communities & Social Performance at Rio Tinto, Namibia

This assignment had a tremendous impact on the whole organisation, as there was no commonly accepted competitive advantage before. The identified advantage can align corporate activities and turn SABMiller Ukraine from the unit, which makes losses to the unit, which earns profits. Furthermore, there was a significant value created for me personally. I am going to discuss the outcomes of this assignment with members of Operational Board, which will significantly increase my professional value inside the organisation. And the last key learning point was to understand the importance of being purposeful: constantly look for the source of success and never give up.

Igor Luzhanskiy, PMO and Head of Delivery, Neadavis, Ukraine

The assignment was an interesting one. Going into the accounts in more detail than normal has revealed that we need to act now in order to prevent issues arising down the line. I am looking forward to the management accounting modules where even more detail will be squeezed out of the accounting data.

RYAN KELLY, Managing Director at Nashua, Zimbabwe

The course was extremely important for me as for non-financial person. I didn’t know before that simple invoice analysis could be so useful for financial planning. Having completed the course and absolutely excellent residential period I see our business from a completely different perspective. Everything that we studied and applied in this course of Financial Planning 1 was applicable. Many thank you so much, Dr Illessy.

Daniel Klyuchnikov, General Manager, Adobe Systems Russia & CIS, Russia

The financial statement analysis (ratio analysis) and the planning process enabled me to appreciate the complementary nature of financial and management accounts. The planning process, the invoice analysis and TARI gave a simple and practical but very powerful approach to financial planning which can the fortunes most business regardless of the size or nature of business. It uses already available information, transforms it into a flexible index which can be easily implemented and tracked at any desired frequency.

Stanley Gwara, Manager Banking Operations, BancABC, Zimbabwe

I’d like to thank IBR for giving me an excellent experience of writing this marketing assignment. Writing these management reports keep my private and professional life interesting. It was stunning for us to analyse our marketing planning processes and the plan itself. I guess there is no better evidence for value creation than the fundamental changes that we already implemented as a result of my studies. Thank you IBR!

Vitaliy Chayka, General Manager at ASP Crew Management Services, Singapore

Doing this market research proposal has been a great learning curve for me, as it gave insight into understanding where to start when one wants to revive or turn around the business. What stood out in the marketing research proposal is the fact that one needs first to understand what the problem is before embarking on the research. I therefore feel greatly humbled to be part of the IBR Global MBA, whereby every day is another learning experience.

Moses Shitaleni Iinane, ER Manager at Skorpion Zinc, Namibia

With this course we created evidence that marketing is underestimated and not given the importance it should have at work. Furthermore, the assignment demonstrated how to improve the situation. Personally, I am convinced that marketing will get a higher importance in my personal work. Up to now it was more or less „a helpful tool“ to reach my goals in sales. This has changed with this assignment and the module as a whole.

Patrick Brauckmann, CEO bpsd UG, Germany

Working under the research project has brought me to a very structured understanding of HR planning process and filled in many gaps in understanding of its elements. Of particular interest were recommendations on interviewing candidates, because in past I possessed really poor knowledge in this area. Without any doubt, this assignment helped me and our firm having a clearer understanding of HR planning.

Serhii Moliboh, Senior Manager at PwC, Switzerland

When I started working on this course I was quite close to the thought that nothing can be improved in our primary training course. We had reviewed and improved it so many times it seemed to me there was no potential for optimisation any more. However, while working through the course materials and the assignment I made several useful conclusions, with most important out of them being the confirmation that “The sky is the limit”.

Anna Kryklyva, Customer Service Manager, DHL Express Ukraine, Czech Republic

This course has opened my eyes to understand the differences between performance appraisal and performance management. Only after having applied key concepts of this course at work I started appreciating the status quo of appraisal and performance management at my organisation. As a result, I had an opportunity to improve the existing system, even though I am not working for HR, but for IT.

Sanu Mathew, Infra Engineer, Dimension Data Cloud Solutions India (P) Ltd, India

The assignment has been more than powerful to understand theoretically and practically what project management is about! Having assessed my practical experience, I feel that I am equipped to become an effective player in project teams in whatever projects there may be in future. After all, really you can’t imagine how I’m so thankful and glad for you: IBR!

Anan Bushnaq, Cargo Forwarding Manager, Partner at e-Freight International Co., Palestinian Territory

This was very useful to me as a person working in the transformation system and looking at growing beyond my current role in the near future. Lobel’s Bread will benefit from my better understanding of supply chain management as I am in the strategy leadership team and have the ability to directly influence the strategic direction of the business with regards to supply chain management. The recommendations raised will be presented at the organisation’s half-year review and I believe some of them will be adopted for implementation.

Nyasha L Maringazuva-Mhiza, Production Manager, Lobel’s Bread, Zimbabwe

When I started working on this assignment I thought that it’ll be quite simple for me because my company has a clear vision, a mission, core values and a long list of KPIs and objectives. However, during my studies it struck me that our long list of KPIs and objectives had no connection with our vision, mission, core values and strategic objectives. I had no other option than to develop a strategic direction for our company from scratch. After having completed my assignment, we have got new performance objectives and targets that we implement at the moment. This assignment has been of greatest value for me personally and our company.

Sergiy Bulavin, Senior Vice President Ukraine at AgroGeneration, Ukraine

My organisation is going to benefit a lot from the knowledge gained from this course. I am now more aware of the opportunities and threats being presented by the web revolution. These affect bargaining power of my organisation both as a supplier and customers, nature of competition and the threats presented by new entrants. So being aware of this I am going to have a deliberate program of action to allow my organisation to take advantages presented by the web revolution and also to minimise threats presented by the same.

Mike Mashiri, Financial Accountant, Net One Cellular Pvt Ltd, Zimbabwe

I took the proposal of this assignment to the management of our company. In this proposal I requested them to integrate recommended knowledge management and CRM applications in order to save funds and increase the efficiency of our internal information flow. This assignment created tremendous value since they immediately realised now we can increase our performance in the Ukrainian market and correspond to the voice of our customers.

Andrew Myagkov, South Regional Manager, Raben Group, Ukraine

Working on this course was a fantastic experience and created tremendous value for my employer and me. Even though I am working for a company that should be at the cutting edge of IT technology, it came like a revelation that we are not even aware of the seriousness of IT challenges that lay ahead of us. After having completed my assignment, I was able to bring to the point that our current IT actions and plans are not at all aligned with the overall company strategic direction. I had already a discussion with my managers and they agreed to let me participate in internal workshops where I am able to consult our own IT colleagues.

Alexander Tkhorenko, Senior Account Manager at Visa, Ukraine

This has been a masterpiece, for the very first time in my life I have come to know what research work is all about. Professor Watkins made what is ordinarily difficult very easy. He installed believe and courage to take research to another level. True to his word, Professor touched my life and I will never be the same again.

Benedict Jirah, Planning Engineer at Essar, Mozamibique