Put a student team on a business challenge
Leverage our students' knowledge and skills to benefit your business
Put a student team on a business challenge
Leverage our students’ knowledge and skills to benefit your business
At a glance
Who it's for
Local small and medium organisations in the private, public or third sector.
Cost
Free. Students receive course credits rather than payment.
Timescales
Around ten weeks. Undergraduate projects follow the academic year with projects starting ; MBA projects run June to September.
Best suited to
A project that matters to your growth but isn’t business-critical or urgent.
What's involved
A team of our students takes on a live challenge in your organisation, works on it over around ten weeks, and delivers a consultancy report with recommendations you can act on.
You don’t need to provide desks. The team works mostly on campus and out meeting the people they need to - your customers, your staff, your competitors’ customers. Each team is supported by an experienced academic colleague, and the students attend weekly seminars on consultancy practice alongside the project.
Students have taken on projects such as:
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Using marketing theory to develop better social media strategies
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Conducting competitor analysis to highlight gaps and opportunities
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Creating sustainable ways to attract funding for a social enterprise
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Interviewing staff to optimise internal business processes
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Evaluating customer feedback to generate solutions
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Recommending new products and services
Which is right for your business?
Business Consultancy Projects
Final-year undergraduate students. Follows the academic year, with an application window. Long-established - hundreds of clients to date.
MBA Consultancy Projects
Postgraduate students from our Global MBA. Runs June to September. Specialises in local SMEs and suits a more strategic brief.
Technical Consultancy Projects
Creative and Design Consultancy Projects
Case studies
Diamond Cut Refinishing: £500,000 raised for US expansion
DCR manufactures alloy wheel cutting lathe technology and was preparing to enter the US market. A student team spent ten weeks improving the firm’s sustainability using the UN Sustainable Development Goals and circular economy principles, then strengthening its marketing.
They delivered a revised mission statement, web and social media recommendations, and a method for monitoring customer experience. Their US market research went straight into DCR’s investor pitch deck and directly contributed to the company securing £500,000 to expand into the United States.
The University went beyond the task outlined in our training needs analysis. They proved excellent at getting to know our methods of operation and understanding the needs of our business.”
Spark Community Space: a fundraising campaign built from scratch
Spark asked a student team to build a marketing plan that would raise the charity’s profile locally. The team analysed Spark’s business model and marketing strategy against academic models, gathered over 100 survey responses, and researched the national and local charity sectors, Spark’s users, and potential new audiences and funders.
The charity went on to launch a fundraising campaign asking supporters to get moving for 25 minutes a day for 25 days in May, using Strava and Spotify to drive donations.
I asked them at the start to dream and think big - and they came up with a new campaign which we are now implementing.”
How it works
1. Tell us your challenge
Register your interest and we’ll talk through whether the project suits a student team, and which route fits.
2. Write a brief with us
We help you shape the challenge into something a team can deliver in ten weeks. You don’t need a polished brief to start.
3. The team works on it
Around ten weeks. Expect roughly 90 minutes of your time a week - a check-in, access to people and information, and answers to questions as they come up.
4. You get the report
A written consultancy report with recommendations, presented to you by the team at the end of the project.
Before you enquire
Student consultancy projects work best when the challenge is real but not urgent. They aren’t suitable for business-critical work, or for anything that has to be delivered to a fixed external deadline, because the project runs to the academic calendar.
You’ll need to be available - around 90 minutes a week, plus access to the people and information the team needs. Projects where the client can’t be reached are the ones that disappoint.
If your project involves commercially sensitive information, tell us at the enquiry stage and we’ll explain what we can put in place.
Tell us about your challenge
You don’t need a finished brief. Tell us the problem and we’ll help you shape it, and let you know when the next window opens.
