Canterbury Christ Church University students are doing us proud

From a competition of 273 teams from over 100 universities, five students from Canterbury Christ Church University are now one of the last 10 groups competing to win the IBM Universities Business Challenge, as well as the reward of £1,000.

The group of second year students from Christ Church have sailed through the competition of the Challenge so far.  The competition was offered to the business students as an extra curricular activity and team member Michael Alexander said it was 'a good network opportunity'. 

The group, consisting of Chris Andersson (team leader), Michael Alexander, William Hahlani, Jack Dalton and Moses Alausa, started the competition with online rounds, and were given a scenario of running a brewery.  

They had to decide the finance, marketing, product and so on for 5 weeks and their decisions where put through a simulator which calculated the outcomes. 

The students won this process due to the fact their business, compared to other universities online, raised the highest profit and a customer satisfaction of 96%.

On March 4, the Christ Church men went to Bishops Gate, Liverpool Street, Business state in London for the semi final. Top employers were at the event including Lloyds TSB Bank and IBM.

Here they competed against 9 other teams, such as Southampton, Exeter, Regents College and Portsmouth.  Again they were given a scenario, this time about running a hotel, and again made the most profit, beating off the competition once more.

The team members, three of whom are housemates, are now looking forward to the final. Michael Alexander said: "There were other teams there with people studying medicine and engineering, they were older than us.  Christ Church was the lowest ranking university there and we've managed to give the uni some recognition, it feels like a great achievement".

Moses Alausa said: "I have high hopes of winning".

And William Hahlani said: "It's exciting.  I was nervous at the semi finals and I'm nervous about the final, however it is a very inspiring experience". 

The team are heading to IBM Head Quarters in Middlesex for the final this Friday.