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Paul Miller Paul Miller, Executive Part-time MBA 2003
Completing an MBA at Bradford School of Management enabled Paul Miller to change his career path from sales to marketing.
Paul, aged 37, who took a part-time evening MBA programme, is now Marketing Manager for BP lubricants UK and Ireland. This includes managing the whole marketing mix for the brands such as the market leader Castrol, as well as Duckams and BP in the automotive lubricants category. He has a team of 13 marketing professionals covering a wide range of disciplines and a solid agency roster.
"I had reached a ceiling in my sales career and wanted to explore other disciplines. I knew trying to switch without an appropriate qualification would probably mean going backwards in career and salary terms," Paul explained of his decision to take an MBA.
"I chose Bradford because of its reputation and accreditation, its international recognition as well as the position in various surveys such as The Times and AMBA. It was also close to home and I wanted to meet other students face-to-face, not only in an online community.
"The programme has given me an insight into a lot of different areas, which helped me understand the complex interactions in a business and how to align them to create a better and more synergistic output - such as how sales and marketing can interact better with manufacturing and logistics.
"The MBA has allowed me to manage a career change to move into marketing at BP lubricants and accelerated my progression through the company in seven years to a senior marketing position. As a result, this has had significant financial benefits for me. I have also recently become a Fellow of the CIM.
"I would advise students taking an MBA to get to know your colleagues in your cohort. I am still in contact with some of the people I met on my two-year course and consider them to be good friends as well as occasional advisors or sounding boards. Also, I learnt as much from my colleagues as I did from my tutors. I would also advise students to study topics that they are not so strong on. I had a strong sales career before doing my MBA, but did not take any of the sales-based modules instead concentrating on finance, economics, operations and marketing which have proven far more valuable even if it made the exams a little tougher. Finally, challenge the theory and the professors... some of my strongest memories and learning points were from challenging and debating what was said during lectures or tutorials or joining in on others debates. Get involved. Just because it is in the text book does not make it fact," Paul concluded.
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