Treat Kitchen - company based challenge
Food gifting company Treat Kitchen has worked with Nottingham University Business School over a number of years by taking part in our company based challenge.
The company based challenge runs every year in June over a three-week time frame. Selected teams of MSc students are invited to work with a local company to help solve a specific real-world issue.
The teams are made up of students from across our MSc programmes, bringing a range of cultures and academic backgrounds to the challenge.
They have many opportunities over the duration of the project to benefit from work integrated learning by interacting with the business they are working with and learning about their business and the challenges they face.
Treat Kitchen Brand Director, Jess Barnett said: “We love working with students from Nottingham University Business School. They inject new ideas into the business and provide us with the in-depth research that we don’t have the time to do for ourselves.”
Jess continued: “The kinds of issues we have asked the teams to look at in the past include looking at new export opportunities for us, and identifying what opportunities there might be for British confectionary in overseas markets. The most recent challenge we posed was to come up with suggestions for how we could double our e-commerce sales over the next year. The teams provided lots of different strategies for us to consider.”
Companies taking part in the scheme set the challenge in advance. This is agreed in partnership with the Business School, to make sure that it is realistic and achievable within the timeframe. The students are allocated a mentor – usually either one of our Professors of Practice or an Entrepreneur in Residence. They also receive training for our careers and academic advisor teams to help prepare them for this exciting opportunity. They work together in teams to find solutions to the challenge, and at the end research period they present their ideas to the company, in a competitive process.
Jess added: “The students have just graduated from a top course from a leading university. They bring expertise and knowledge that either we don’t have or the time for. The challenge provides us with implementable steps to make improvements to our business, that we can embed within our own strategy.”
For the students taking part in the company based challenge, it is an opportunity to develop range of skills including project planning, issue-based problem solving, team working and to gain experience in presenting their ideas to a client. They gain commercial experience that they can add to their CV and have worked on ideas that have been implemented in a commercial setting.
“It’s an easy way to bring extra expertise into your business,” Jess explained. “It doesn’t require too much investment in your time, or that of your team. The students from overseas can bring real insight into what the market is like there. And it’s a great way to seek out new talent."
“The scheme at Nottingham University Business School is really well run, and the quality of the work that the students produce is of a really high standard – it saves us time and expense and it’s a great way to get fresh insight on your business.”
