An East Midlands start-up is planning to modernise its products and revamp its website following a successful consultancy project with students from Nottingham Business School (NBS), part of Nottingham Trent University.
East Midlands Roller Doors was established in 2021 and supplies residential electric garage doors across the region. Following a successful first year of trading, the company is looking to expand into the commercial market with a view to recruiting more local talent to the organisation.
Six students from MSc Management and International Business and MSc Global Supply Chain Management courses carried out a competitor and SWOT analysis and explored the potential size of the market and the scope for the company to enter into it. They also considered steps that East Midlands Roller Doors could take to develop the commercial side of their business.
Their recommendations covered customer finance options, product diversification and the business rationale for developing a strong brand identity.
Greg Spencer, founder and manager of East Midlands Roller Doors, said: “As a new start-up we were looking for fresh ideas on how we could grow our business. We set the students the task of looking at how big the potential market is for roller doors in the East Midlands area. We also asked them to find out what could set us apart from other garage door companies working in the region.
“Throughout the project they were passionate, motivated and it was a pleasure working with them. After several weeks of research, the students presented their feedback to us.
“We will certainly be using some of the recommendations. We are looking at new, innovative features that will modernise our products. We’re also incorporating some of the student ideas into our new website build. We now have some exciting things we’re working on that will be released in the coming months.”
Prajwal Hulikere Mohan Kumar, MSc Management and International Business student, said: “This professional consulting project was a highly motivating experience for a Masters’ student like me to step into the professional world. This project gave us the real time experience to understand the requirement of a real business and analyse their challenges.
“We had an initial meeting with our client to understand their aim and what they wanted to achieve in the next few years. After analysing their requirements, we presented frameworks and recommendations for the best strategy to enter the commercial market.
“As a team we were happy that we could achieve our task with hard work and meet the client’s expectation. This consulting project helped me learn how to handle a client and understand their requirements in real time business.”
The project is one of 45 NBS student projects which took place over the autumn. The teams are supported by an academic supervisor who guides them through the process.
During 2021/22 NBS arranged 157 business projects for more than 700 post graduate students – 92% of organisations surveyed said they’d recommend these projects to others.
Greg Spencer added: “It has been a very good learning experience for us and given us ideas to take into the new year that will help us achieve our goals. I highly recommend companies working with NBS on these projects as the fresh ideas can be eye opening and it’s all useful information for potential growth.”
NBS is looking for businesses to host new projects from May 2023. Organisations interested in taking part can email nbsstudentprojects@ntu.ac.uk for further information.
