An Inside Scoop on a Phoenix Summer Project
Shehbaz Virk describes his experience working on a summer project with Phoenix Consulting and adapting to a virtual environment
What did you do in Phoenix this summer?
The COVID-19 pandemic has created new challenges for businesses and organizations, especially within the healthcare and life sciences industry. During this time, we wanted to lighten the load that some of these companies face and help in whatever way we could. Thus, as a member of the healthcare space, Phoenix decided to offer free consulting services through our first-ever summer project program. Specifically, my team and I worked with a medical device startup looking to enter the surgical devices space. This unique project allowed me to learn how a startup develops and all the hard work they have to put in to take their product to market.
What was your project experience like?
In the first half of our project, we determined key market needs and developed a quantitative competitor ranking system. After conducting secondary research and analyzing the market, a major portion of our project focused on interviewing medical professionals with the goal of better understanding our target customer group and identifying unmet market needs. As an analyst, I enjoyed this process because it allowed me to pick the brains of physicians and hospital personnel through one-on-one conversations. I welcomed the challenge to keep up with surgeons who had years of experience; I made sure to have a solid understanding of relevant surgical procedures and technological features so I could keep up with the conversation and proactively ask follow-up questions. These interviews informed us about specific surgeon preferences and different operational needs that our client could appeal to.
Through our interviews, we also recognized the importance of broadening our interactions to include hospital staff like nurses, PAs, technicians, administrators, and other personnel. Keeping this in mind, we also interviewed hospital administrators to better understand the purchasing pathway for medical devices. This knowledge enabled my team and me to create a strategy recommendation for our client to break into the market.
In the second half, we created a personalized marketing strategy that played to our client’s strengths and took advantage of market gaps. I particularly enjoyed synthesizing these interview findings with our secondary research to recommend a unique strategy for our client. Finding information is one thing, but analyzing and breaking it down into a meaningfully decked presentation is where the real reward lies. After all of our hard work, it was very gratifying to hear the CEO say, “We are blown away by your work.” It’s always amazing to see the client implement our recommendations and see that Phoenix projects have a real impact.
What challenges did you face in the virtual environment?
Although COVID-19 forced us to adapt to a fully online work environment, it did not substantively impact our capabilities and work. This is not to say that we did not face any difficulties during the project. Different time zones made it difficult to schedule meeting times and internet connectivity issues were annoying at times. Fortunately, everyone’s flexibility and patience allowed us to overcome these problems.
Anything else you would like to add?
In addition to all the hard work our team did, we made sure to enjoy our time together through virtual socials. We played online games like Skribble.io, which allowed us to get to know each other better and grow as a team. Even though I don’t have the best artistic abilities, I helped create some funny moments and had a lot of fun hanging out with the team. Overall, I had a great time and am very proud of our work!
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Phoenix Consulting Group is a registered nonprofit organization through the Associated Students of the University of California. Our focus is on solving problems in the healthcare and life sciences spaces.
