Entrepreneurial students at Northumbria University have been honing their skills with a major national organisation.
Forty two lucky students on Newcastle Business School's Entrepreneurial Business Management (EBM) programme travelled with two staff to Weatherby as guests of The Bayford Group -a number of diverse entrepreneurial companies run by people inspired to make a difference.
Bayford & Co Ltd (Bayford) was founded in 1919. A diverse history has seen it involved in coal, electronics, environmental services, property investment and the UK's downstream fuel industry. Today Bayford, via its divisional companies, supplies fuel to more than 25,000 customers in the UK, via fuel cards.
The students were set a business challenge by Chief Executive and Northumbria University alumnus Jonathan Turner, Managing Director Liz Slater, Mark Kilvington (Director - BeFuelcards) and Adam Walsh (Director - The Right Fuelcard Company).
The challenge centred around the future of the vehicle re-fuelling industry in the short, medium and long term, and asked them to make recommendations on where the future of Bayford could be, in relation to those times frames.
Jonathan Turner said: "The students are a real credit to the Newcastle Business School and we were really impressed with all of them. We enjoyed the day and have some very useful output from the sessions that we will be working on. This project will come to fruition in some way over the next few years and we look forward to sharing that with Northumbria University."
Students on the innovative EBM programme have the opportunity to participate in two ‘Generator Sessions' a year in teams as an entire programme group. It is a chance to show off what they are good at, what they have learnt and to apply it to a real business situation. It is a combination of brainstorming, problem solving and presentation.
Five teams competed at Bayford - in thestunning surroundings of Bowcliffe Hall - and the winning team, NE Unity, was awarded a £200 donation to a charity of their choice and a chance to shadow Adam Walsh and his team in Leeds for a day.
EBM student Liam Watson said: "The best thing about the day was the opportunity to solve a real life business problem, and to work in a professional business environment. The people were inspirational and represented exactly what I think entrepreneurs should be like. It's eye opening what you can achieve if you put your mind to it."
Other participants on the day noted how constructive the feedback that they received for their proposals had been. Fellow EBM student Tom Loveday added: "They really appreciated how hard we worked and the effort we'd put in, they really seemed to value our ideas."
