„The best way to acquire the knowledge I need, develop my skills and successfully integrate in my everyday business life.“

My name is Adnan Saidi, I am 29 years old and come from Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany). I am very happy about studying at SIBE and the possibility of a double degree (Steinbeis University and Post University).

I have successfully completed my Bachelor’s degree in General Management with a focus on Corporate Management and Human Resource Management (HR) in 2014. Afterwards I gained a foothold in wholesale and founded my own company in 2018. My company Stradity Trading Group GmbH is specialized in trading with household goods and textiles.

Why entrepreneur?

School is usually not a place for entrepreneurship, because students tend to be taught more: „Make an effort, then you will get a good job with a company“. Yet this country needs more entrepreneurs, because entrepreneurs create progress, taxable added value and jobs.

Creating jobs instead of claiming them does not seem to be a desirable goal. At the same time, entrepreneurship fits very well to many wishes of many students and graduates: Independence, free time management, freedom of design and openness for every business opportunity without being tied to a specific job description.

This is of course connected with the challenges of entrepreneurship. Independent thinking and acting as well as taking the initiative and responsibility are indispensable for a foundation. Successfully running a business is not an easy task and involves a lot of responsibility.

Entrepreneurship means identifying market gaps/niches, developing business ideas and formulating business plans. Entrepreneurs then have to implement these plans successfully, which usually starts with a big mountain of own work and can later be outsourced to human resources management in case of successful growth.

In addition to the core business, an entrepreneur has to conduct customer meetings and convince investors. The marketing has to be designed, the accounting has to be done and potentials have to be recognized in order to improve internal processes and to discover market gaps. An entrepreneur must therefore be familiar with many areas of expertise or at least have a good basic knowledge of them, and thus the necessary specialist knowledge for the core business is not even mentioned. At the beginning, a start-up stands on shaky ground and usually cannot afford a large number of employees. Therefore Entrepreneurs do not only have to be all-rounders, they also have to be constantly educating themselves in order to meet the current requirements.

Why study at SIBE?

For me, studying at SIBE is the best way to acquire the knowledge I need, develop my skills and successfully integrate and implement the newly acquired knowledge in my everyday business life.

How has the study program influenced or even benefited your work?

During my studies, the study program at SIBE made it even clearer and confirmed that the concept of SIBE is perfectly suited to entrepreneurs. During the various courses I was given the opportunity to use case studies using my own company and thus apply them directly in practice. Furthermore I was able to refresh and intensify my previous knowledge from my BA in General Management.

For example, in the course Economics of Accounting & Finance, a good overall economic context was presented and key financial figures were discussed in order to be able to use business management indicators for the successful evaluation of company performance. These insights will help us to examine the key figures in the course Financial Tools for Managers in a more targeted manner and to apply them in everyday business life using practical tools. This way you can see that certain courses and modules complement each other and deepen practical knowledge, so that you can put theoretical knowledge into practice and apply it in your own company through the case studies.

In project management, for example, I was able to successfully plan an anniversary celebration and develop a tool that I can also use in future projects to plan and implement them successfully. In Business Analytics, I was able to work out a tool that we are currently in the process of fine-tuning to enable an automated evaluation from our ERP-System, bank transactions and the evaluation of different sales platforms, so that the company’s performance can be displayed on a daily basis and an interactive dashboard can be used to easily evaluate and compare it with previous months or previous years‘ figures. This gives us greater flexibility and the ability to react more quickly, as we always have a transparent picture of the company’s performance in front of us. In Business Strategy and Planning, I was again able to carry out an in-depth analysis of my company through group discussions and cooperation in teams, as well as to develop recommendations for action that can help the strategic orientation of the company, taking into account the current challenges of the market and the corona crisis.

We can state that the business administration subjects alone can enable one to successfully manage a company, but the additional personality and competence development during the studies completes the overall concept of SIBE. On the one hand, scientific knowledge is imparted in order to be able to produce professional and appropriate scientific papers and on the other hand, the competence development courses provide the opportunity to check and compare one’s competence development and focus from the beginning of the studies, through the middle of the studies and at the end of the studies. Thus, the development of competence and personality can be followed throughout the entire course of study and thus enables not only to meet the professional requirements but also to meet the personality requirements of a successful managing director or executive on the management board. For the reasons mentioned above, it is clear that studying at SIBE has many advantages and is therefore all the more suitable if you want to start your own business or be part of the management board of a large company.