7 Months. Real Clients. Real Problems. Real Impact.
The Analytics Consulting Project (ACP) is the capstone integrative course of the Master of Business Analytics (MBAN) program. It is an intensive, two-term consulting engagement in which small teams of top graduate analytics students partner with organizations to tackle real, high-value business problems using data and analytics.
Under the guidance of experienced faculty advisors, ACP teams work as analytics consultants moving from problem framing and data understanding through analysis, insight generation, and executive-level recommendations.
From modelling to predictions, dashboarding to intelligence, students from Canada’s top business school can provide organizations access to fresh, independent analytics perspectives, with decision-ready insights that support meaningful business results.
This is not a theoretical exercise. It is a structured, outcomes-driven analytics engagement designed to support real decisions.
The project runs seven months September - March
The Schulich School of Business is rated #1 in Canada by TheEconomist
There is no fee charged for participating organizations
ACP Timeline
Month Phase
September
October
November
December / January
Phase 1 Problem Framing & Discovery
Phase 2 Data Understanding
Phase 3 Analytics Design
Phase 4 Analysis & Modelling
February
March
Phase 5 Validation, Insight & Storytelling
Phase 6 Delivery & Reflection
Key Activities
Students work with client stakeholders to define the business problem, understand the organizational context, assess data readiness, and clarify success metrics. This is where ambiguity meets structure.
Students explore, validate, and contextualize data to assess its quality, limitations, and relevance to the business problem. This ensures analyses are built on reliable, relevant data and aligned with the business question.
Teams translate business questions into analytical approaches selecting KPIs, defining methodologies, and designing how insights will support real decisions.
Hands-on execution: data preparation, modelling, dashboard development, and iterative testing. Students experience the realities of imperfect data, tradeoffs, and changing assumptions.
Teams focus on insight generation, recommendations, and storytelling answering the critical “so what?” behind the numbers. Students ensure insights are realistic, actionable, and aligned with organizational constraints.
Final executive presentations, professional reports, and individual reflections bring the engagement full circle reinforcing technical skills, consulting professionalism, and ethical decision-making.
The course provides students with real skills:
• Translating organizational challenges into clearly defined, analytics-driven project scopes.
• Working with real-world data to prepare, organize, and analyze complex datasets.
• Applying appropriate data science methods, tools, and analytical techniques.
• Extracting actionable insights and measurable business value through analytics and data science practices.
• Managing projects effectively across timelines, deliverables, and stakeholders.
• Communicating findings through professional written reports and executive-level presentations.
The course mirrors how analytics actually works in the real world:
• Ambiguous problems
• Imperfect data
• Stakeholder management
• Clear, decision-driven storytelling
Graduates don’t just leave with technical skills they leave with confidence, consulting experience, and the ability to turn data into decisions.
Why partner with the Schulich MBAN ACP?
Get a Fresh, Independent Analytics Perspective
ACP teams bring a data-driven lens to your organization’s challenges often identifying patterns, risks, and opportunities. You gain access to emerging analytics talent applying the latest tools, methods, and thinking.
Turn Data into Decision-Ready Insights
Projects focus on actionable outcomes, not just academic theory. Deliverables are designed to support real business conversations, trade-offs, and decisions.
Low-Risk, High-Value Collaboration
The ACP is an academic partnership allowing organizations to explore meaningful analytics questions with minimal financial commitment while contributing to talent development.
Help Shape the Next Generation of Analytics Leaders
Organizations play an active role in mentoring and developing future analytics professionals, while building relationships with top graduate talent.
A Partnership Built on Collaboration
“I couldn’t be more grateful to Schulich for integrating real-world projects with different companies into our academic curriculum.
Being paired with CI Financial for a 7-month consulting project has been incredibly rewarding.
Working within their data and analytics division, regularly engaging with industry leaders, and presenting our findings to the executive team has been an invaluable experience.”
Rahul Baid (MBAN ’24)
Business Systems Analyst, TD
Successful ACP projects are partnerships. Clients provide business context, data access, and feedback; students bring analytical expertise, curiosity, and structured problem-solving; faculty ensure rigor, scope alignment, and learning outcomes. Students and faculty are legally bound by confidentiality agreements.
What we ask of our ACP partners
Bring a meaningful business question where data and analytics can help inform decisions, improve performance, or generate new insight.
Identify a project champion to provide organizational context, coordinate input, and support the team on the engagement.
Enable access to datasets and supporting information, in line with privacy, security, and confidentiality requirements.
Offer feedback to help students interpret results and focus on what matters most to your organization.
Collaborate on scope and direction to refine objectives as data realities and analytical opportunities emerge.
Embrace the partnership as a learning-focused experience.
Working with the ACP team was an extremely valuable experience. Their recommendations were not only analytically sound, but also actionable, making it easy for our team to implement and execute.
The students armed us with tools and resources that extended the impact well beyond the project.
The collaboration was a great example of how academia and industry can be woven together, creating an environment for explosive efficiency, meaningful learning, and business growth.
Marc Gosselin President, Marketing Impact Limited
The Future is Bright for Innovation
Industry and ACP examples
We have partnered with organizations across industries on an array of projects including estimation, optimization, predictive modelling, dashboarding, and other data science and analytics problems. The examples reflect a cross-section of the industries and projects completed in previous semesters:
Industries
Arts & Entertainment
Consulting
Financial Services
Government
Healthcare
Projects
Analytic Dashboards for Emergency Services
Attainable addressable market
Cash Flow Modelling
CRM, Marketing Automation and Analytics
ESG Analysis and Recommendations
Become an ACP Project Partner
Manufacturing
Mining, Oil & Gas
Retail
Technology
Transportation
Operational Insights of Transit Data
Ontology Generation
Prediction Model of Churn Users
Pricing Intelligence Technologies
Trading Strategies & Market Predictions
We are actively seeking organizations interested in partnering with the Schulich ACP for the upcoming semester(s). If your organization is interested in learning more, please contact us:
