WMU intern gives Stryker Instruments sales force a boost

Imagine an internship where you get to design from beginning to end a website and a mobile application to help a large company's sales force. Sara Simic, a Western Michigan University senior, had that internship.

 

At Stryker Instruments Simic designed a tool to be used by the company's 150 sales reps. The site provides a one-stop shop for pretty much everything a sales rep might need  to make a sale. They can search for a brochure, look up information, create a presentation kit for a particular client or brush up on their anatomy or clinical knowledge.

 

To create it, Simic quickly learned about Stryker's products and interviewed about 20 employees to find out what they would like to see in the tool. Then she worked closely with Chicago-based software company SAVO to design the product. From sketches of the homepage to menus and tabs, the product took shape. 

 

To test her ideas, she presented her plans in August to sales reps from across the country at Styker's mid-year meeting. She gave reps a teaser of what was to come. They were excited. So she formed a smaller "beta" group to gather constructive feedback to improve her design before launching the tool. 

 

About 30 people in the sales force volunteered, helping Simic fine tune her ideas over the next four months. Simic also had to work with regulatory compliance to make sure everything met the letter of the law.

 

Simic started the project in May when she began what started as a full-time, three-month internship. She wasn't close to completing the project when the three months were up, so the company let her stay on as a part-time contractor and see her project through to launch. She's continued to work on it 20 hours a week, while also going to school full time. 

 

Simic will continue working at Stryker until May 1, when she will start a co-op position at Johnson & Johnson in Los Angeles, where she will work for six months in the supply chain field.

 

"It's just been great," Simic says. "I had vice presidents and managers come and sit in on my presentation, and they said that they've never seen an intern do so much work and have such an impact on a company. So that was really great to hear. I couldn't be more happy with my experience at Stryker."