Laura @ Molson Coors

Laura discusses her placement at the brewing company Molson Coors.

The Carling Park office

A warm welcome

In my first week I was immediately welcomed into the team, being introduced around the whole office to ensure I knew who everyone was. I was also given a tour of the offices and a brief overview of the history of the company which was incredibly interesting due to its vast history. Within the first week I met with each member of the team to understand what their roles were and what projects they were working on within this company. This was then to formulate projects I could do within the placement to ensure I was enjoying it.

Within the first week I was given a project brief on knowledge management which involved looking at the platform they currently have and seeing whether this needed to be updated or whether a new platform was needed. When I was first given the project, I was very nervous as I had no idea what knowledge management was. But I was immediately sat down and had each element of the study explained to me.


The team worked to find me projects I could do to ensure I was getting the most out of the placement"

Laura

Molson Coors intern


I planned to conduct interviews to find out how the site was used and evaluate its usage. This was nerve-racking as I was having to speak to people I hadn’t met, some of which were significantly high in the management chain such as regional sales directors. Everyone was so helpful checking my interview schedule and for the first interview coming with me so they could introduce me so I didn’t feel awkward.

While my supervisor was away the project became slower, so the team worked to find me projects I could do alongside to ensure I was getting the most out of the placement. During a meeting with one of the team members, I had mentioned a certain brand. They then took this interest and created a project brief for me looking at consumer perceptions of the brand which was exciting.

Getting the knowledge of knowledge management

As the projects progressed they became more interesting. Within the knowledge management project, I needed to interview people from a variety of teams such as brand, sales and the futures team I was working in. This was to establish how the original platform was used and to see what the positives and negatives were so the site could be improved. Through these interviews, I found that the main issue with the platform was that it was hard to navigate which meant people didn’t use it and would resort to simply emailing each other which defeats the point of the site.

As no one was particularly proficient with SharePoint, I had to get in contact with someone within engineering who understood how SharePoint worked. Throughout the project I worked closely with him to understand how to develop the platform. After speaking with him we decided to move the platform from SharePoint Teams to SharePoint Communication which meant creating a new site. However, while creating it I found it was a lot easier than formatting the original platform. The next step for this project is editing the pages for the different work areas and organising the launch to the organisation.

For the Consumer perceptions project, I created a survey within SurveyMonkey to send out to get quantitative data so we could analyse people’s general perceptions. To then get the more in-depth information we used a mixed-method approach. Firstly, I conducted phone interviews with 10 participants which lasted around half an hour. We also asked participants to film short videos discussing one of the consumer habits topics to gain a greater understanding of how people purchased products and what considerations they took.

The final project I was working on was looking at the demographic split across the population to look at how age demographics changes year to year. This involved contacting the Office of National Statistics to obtain the breakdown data to know the age of each person in the population per year. I then had to convert that into a percentage of the total population and illustrate on a graph, before presenting back to my project manager.

The final chapter

Within the last couple of weeks lots of projects came to an end. I finished the knowledge management project and began the test launch of the platform, which involved interviewing key stakeholders to ensure the platform met their needs. As these interviews progressed, I made tweaks to the site to ensure it reached its full potential. I created handover material and conducted training sessions to ensure that the team knew how to edit and work the site so they weren’t at a loss when I left.


Seeing a project through from start to finish meant I saw all elements and allowed me to understand how projects such as these are used within the company"

Laura

Molson Coors intern


In terms of the consumer closeness project, I analysed the data from the survey and interviews and prepared to present the results. This involved pulling out key quotes and preparing a presentation to deliver to the project organisers. Ensuring the slides had enough content so they had enough visual information but weren’t overwhelming was quite hard and involved a lot of editing, as information, quotes and graphs were all involved. Seeing a project through from start to finish was a true experience as it meant I saw all elements and allowed me to understand how projects such as these are used within the company. The presentation itself was quite nerve-racking as the information I presented back would be used within the company, however, I thought it went well, graphics and text flowed well together and presenting back in this way was a good learning curve that can be applied in later jobs.

During my final week, I was lucky enough that the CEO came into the business to give a talk on the business' progress. It was fascinating hearing how someone who had an obvious passion for the business had worked their way up to such a high level. Finishing the placement is sad as I’ve learnt so much and have really enjoyed my time here. This is a brilliant experience for anyone who wants to work in customer insights.

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