Envirosystems Ltd, Greenlands Nutrition and Bactaclean are privately owned, highly entrepreneurial companies supplying innovative products to the UK Dairy Industry with a small amount of exports. The business is owned and managed by Liz Russell, in 2010 Liz won the Institute of Directors award for the North West region ‘Director of the Year’. Through the company products, research and networks, there is an initiative to further develop the business into supplying products targeted at the eradication of infections such as MRSA and C Difficile.

Liz approached UCLan in the first instance, with a need to develop the commercial side of the business. The Placements Team at Uclan discussed and agreed a project brief, this lead to an agreement to place Amar Seth to develop current and future sales strategies. Amar had just graduated from UCLan’s Lancashire Business School with a 2.1 Honours in Global Business Management. Amar made a very big impression and within just a few weeks Liz decided to offer him a full time role in the business. He was recruited as Commercial Manager with responsibility for:

• Develop commercial opportunities from placement of order to settle of invoice
• Provide management and other information to support MD and Sales
• Ensure all activities meet internal and external customer satisfaction
• Organise administrative support to realise the above

Sometime later and as a result of Amar’s success, a further need was identified to provide close support to the direct marketing organisation. As a result of this, Stephanie Bedford, a recent UCLan Marketing graduate was interviewed and placed. Much to our surprise, Stephanie was also offered a full time marketing role within the company with responsibility for:

• Primary responsibility focused on customers and external market place
• Ensure customers and potential customers understand benefit and effectiveness of product
• Conduct market research and design bespoke marketing plans
• Identify means of exceeding customer expectations and monitoring customer satisfaction

Subsequent to this, Liz approached UCLan with a request to help with her website. She wanted to introduce some information of the company products and the comments of some of her satisfied customers through the media of film. Anthony Camm, a recent graduate from the School of Journalism, Media and Communication, met with Liz, agreed a proposal and the video was then produced.

The result can be found http://accmedia.co.uk/2010/07/23/envirosystems and by clicking play on any of the videos. The film produced by Anthony and the voice over done by Liz are first class and will undoubtedly help the business to market its products in a clear and emphatic way.

Thus, three small but growing, dynamic companies provided excellent placement opportunities for three of our graduates, all with different skill sets. Two of the three secured full time employment whist the third had a great experience and has a very creditable film he can add to his portfolio.