Student Enterprise Competition:Four Galway-Mayo IT students had a 'true-to-life' experience, writes Ciarán Brennan.
While some students may have gained a reputation for endless partying, late mornings and missed lectures, others spend their days thinking about how to maximise revenue streams. Those include four students from Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) - Cathal Flanagan, Dermot Healy, Conor Moran and Eoin Tighe.
The four formed the team that won the inaugural Newstalk 106- 108 FM student enterprise competition. It was designed to give the participants a "true-to-life" experience by using case studies on real Irish companies. In the case of the final, it was Ionad Cois Locha, a small Donegal tourist attraction that was adding a new venue, which would have to be managed and marketed to a wider audience (see case study).
"There was a new building and an opportunity for new management," says GMIT captain Cathal Flanagan of his team's proposals for the new venue and existing facilities.
"We felt that with what they had at the moment and what was coming on stream, there were really big opportunities there to build something fresh and new, something that wasn't there in the area already, a niche."
The team decided that the entire centre could be used to target the corporate market and student bodies.
"At the moment it is only being used by families," says Flanagan. "We saw a big opportunity there, much like adventure centres, to introduce things like water sports and paint-balling which we felt could be outsourced and it would be a very low-cost way of producing big revenue streams."
Such a move would also extend the traditional operating year of the centre. The normal season was from mid-March to early November with the climax of the year a Hallowe'en fund night with fireworks.
"It was very much a seasonal business at the time but with the facilities they have, we saw big opportunities to be able to make it into an all-year-round business," Flanagan says. "There are big opportunities there for the Christmas season, Halloween, taking advantage of all holidays throughout the year."
Targeting the corporate sector would require a new form of marketing, the group concluded. "We considered a lot of approaches and we finally decided on direct mail because we decided that general advertising would be lost on the people we were trying to target. By specifically addressing it to them and sending information to HR people who would be organising events, they would pay more attention to it. We thought it was a good approach to make."
The plan also involved providing a service to the local community which would also have the benefit of increasing revenues, according to Flanagan.
"For the local community, we saw an opportunity to use the venue for traditional music concerts and a cinema. It is a very practical use of a space. It only requires a projector and a DVD player. It generates very good revenue in a local area where a rolling cinema would only come around once a year. We really thought there was an opportunity there for the local community to get involved."
The key to the group's plan, he adds, was to "use what you have without spending loads of money to maximise revenue streams".
The competition gave the students a chance to develop teamwork skills and take a more practical approach to business issues away from the pressurised exam environment.The fact that the students were studying different elements of business also stood the team in good stead.
"I'm doing accountancy and finance management, Flanagan says. "Eoin Tighe is doing HR, while Dermot Healy and Conor Moran are doing marketing. We had a really good balance in the team. In all case studies, there were elements of marketing, strategy, finance and HR."
Later on this year, the four GMIT students can look forward to a study trip to Haiti where they will shadow decision makers in Digicel.
