Spotlight: My Internship at Elanco
Friday, September 13, 2019
Internships are an invaluable part of the process when pursuing your MBA or Masters in the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University. Not only do they provide real-world experience but also can make you aware of certain skills you may or may not have considered. We asked Tanvi Ralhan (MBA, May 2020) to give us an inside look as to what her summer internship experience was like.
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During this past summer, I held an internship at Elanco Animal Health where I worked with the Digital Supplier Procurement team on creating a new process design and automation around their Supplier Risk Evaluation process. My project concentrated on interviewing main customers and key stakeholders to understand the correct product requirements in order to move on to implement the right design. This project gave me a good understanding of the company’s digital supplier procurement process and gave me an opportunity to interact with important business functions such as Finance, Procurement, Privacy, and Quality. This was important to not only understand how they interact with each other but also how each plays a unique and crucial role that adds to the overall business picture.
Elanco encourages you and gives you the opportunity to interact across the organization. A perfect example was the MBA coffee chats we had. These were are series of meetings, spread across the internship, where MBA interns interacted with each of the individual executives of the company to understand how the leadership works, the different strategies, and plans to execute the next major steps for the Elanco after their major spin-off from Eli Lilly. I also had conversations with the entire Digital Marketing team, whereby the end of the internship, I had a very good understanding of how the Digital Elanco is evolving, how they are strategizing their growth and what marketing companies they’re partnering with. This also contributed to better awareness of the products and services the major players in marketing analytics, research and customer tracking provide. As I am aiming to move towards digital marketing after receiving my MBA, the internship gave me the right exposure for my next career move.
An Elanco internship experience extends beyond work and networking. They try to create platforms where you can volunteer, explore Indiana and get involved with your intern peer group outside work. During my time, I volunteered at the Hancock county fair and also at the family day at Elanco. During the family day, I was a part of the security team creating more awareness about technology and information security in homes.
Apart from that, they arranged various outings around Indianapolis and Greenfield where would get to network with interns and other employees. I also got a chance to visit the Indiana State Fair which was an experience in its own. We were also taken on an exclusive tour Lucas Oil Stadium, home of NFL team the Indianapolis Colts, and understand its architecture and history. Cool Fact: We even got to see the Colt locker rooms. Having a fun team just added to the experience. They were always there to guide me and engaged me as much as possible.
An interesting break to my internship was when we got the 4th of July week off and I got to travel to Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and LA – all while also celebrating my 24th birthday.
All-in-all, I had very involved, busy but fun summer. I miss it already but it was a steep learning curve and I am excited to bring that practical learning to back to school and apply it in my classes.