originally published in the Fall 2015 issue of Intersections magazine
In LIS 590IC: Information Consulting, students learn the art and science of working in the business information world by providing consulting services to real clients. The capstone course prepares students to work in a range of business settings.
Information Consulting (IC) is taught by Yoo-Seong Song, a GSLIS adjunct associate professor with impressive experience in the business world: he previously worked as senior associate at Ernst & Young’s Center for Business Knowledge, senior analyst for Knowledge Management at Accenture, and market intelligence analyst at Tellabs. He currently is an associate professor with the University of Illinois Library and serves as the economics, labor, and employment relations librarian.
Song’s experience has taught him that business clients today have high expectations for information professionals. “I quickly found out that just finding information was not enough. We needed to know what to do with it, and this was really what our users expected from us. . . . It’s not just about how to provide information, but how to help our clients gain relevant insight given the complex business environment,” said Song.
Song reconceptualized IC several years ago as a capstone course for students who anticipate working in the business world. Within the course, Song created the Business Information Group (BIG), a research group that simulates an information consultancy. Students work as research analysts and coordinators for actual companies and organizations who seek out assistance with real-world information problems. Through BIG, students experience the full consulting process, from defining problems and negotiating project timelines to analyzing data, preparing reports, and presenting findings to clients.
Last spring marked the first semester of collaboration between BIG and two other student-led consultancy groups on campus: Illinois Business Consulting and the Innovation Immersion Program. Illinois Business Consulting (IBC) is housed within the College of Business at Illinois and is the largest organization of its kind in the United States, with more than two hundred and fifty student consultants. Throughout the semester, each BIG student worked with up to four IBC teams, providing research services for clients from a variety of industries within the financial sector, healthcare, technology, and manufacturing.
“At IBC, we pride ourselves on trying to be as close to the real world as possible. . . . Large consulting firms are structured in this way, where consultants in the field receive guidance or direction from internal consultants who are doing research on the inside,” said IBC Director Andrew Allen. “[The partnership with GSLIS] gave our teams a leg up on their research and helped them get more robust research behind some of the recommendations that they make. At the end of the day, our credibility is based on our data and our research, and so that’s one reason it was really valuable for us.”
A handful of GSLIS students also served clients via the Innovation Immersion Program (IIP), a global consultancy founded at Illinois that supports international technology companies. IIP draws on expertise of business students from the University of Illinois as well as from universities in Sweden, Israel, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea.
IIP was impressed with the work of their GSLIS team members and invited the students to join them in Stockholm, Sweden, to present analysis and recommendations to a client. Among the travelers were Jan Emery (MS ’15) and Stephanie Pierson (MS ’15).
Pierson found the IC course to be educational even though she already had some professional business research experience under her belt. In particular, exposure to new research topics such as marketing and engineering provided her with valuable skills. Pierson has worked as an intellectual property researcher at John Deere since November 2014.
“I learned a lot about bargaining with the different groups, like being able to explain what I could do and to meet their requests in the time that they wanted,” she said. “It was also neat knowing that the research I was doing would be shown to real people and be used in real situations. . . . You’re working for a purpose.”
Students like Pierson and Emery leave the class prepared to apply what they’ve learned to work in a professional realm that intersects many industries. “Businesses move at a fast pace, and they need to have the most recent information,” said Meg Edwards, GSLIS advising coordinator. “Students who take [IC] gain the experience of what it’s like to work in a real consulting firm doing competitive intelligence, research, and analysis, and formulating this work in a way that is deliverable.”
Song plans to offer IC again in Spring 2016 and is working to make contact with new clients. He intends to maintain the collaborative, real-world interactions that proved successful in 2015.
“The Information Consulting course, including working with IBC and IIP, was experiential learning at its finest. Professor Song crafted assignments that allowed students to explore resources broadly and dig deeply within their expanding tool set. I learned through doing—even better, doing in a real-world situation. And I had a great time, too,” said Emery.