Programme gives students a taste for real world business solutions

National audit, tax, advisory and risk firm Crowe has completed the latest of its Mindshop Excellence Programmes, mentoring 12 Walsall Academy students as they tackled a real life business problem.

The week-long event was hosted by Walsall-based vending machine business Coinadrink with managing director Tom Williams setting the students their task.

Mindshop is an internationally recognised network of strategic advisors who coach businesses in profit improvement and innovation through team development and strategic planning.

The event at Coinadrink was led by Jack Edmonds, a senior manager in Crowe 's Business Solutions Group who is an accredited Mindshop Facilitator, with support from the Midlands Managing Partner Johnathan Dudley who has over 25 years ' experience as a Mindshop Expert advisor.

Jack Edmonds explained: “Like many SMEs, Coinadrink has an experienced yet aging workforce. This provides great value but also poses a risk as time goes by.

“In a nutshell, the business problem the students were set to tackle was 'How can the company attract, retain and develop exceptional talent into the business? ' ”

“As well as interviewing current staff at all levels of the business, they were able to make use of Facilitation tools that were part of their Mindshop training during the week. They worked as a group, but split into project teams for specific tasks. ”

After collating their findings and preparing their report, they then presented to MD Tom Williams and members of the Coinadrink management team.

Tom Williams said: “For Coinadrink, it gave us the chance to put a business challenge that we are experiencing forward for those pupils to have free rein over all of our staff to come up with some solutions and recommendations as to how we can overcome this challenge.

“So the project they were tasked with addressed the issue that Coinadrink, a very long standing business established in 1962, has a very experienced management team, which is great, but our biggest challenge is, how do we foster the next generation of exceptional talent within our team, and produce the next batch of managers to drive the business forward for the next 60 years? ”

He said he and his team had been really impressed with the depth of thinking evidenced in the presentation and the findings of the 12 students had given them plenty of food for thought.

Student Lois Vita said she had found whole experience great fun and chance to show her skills.

“The project has shown me how to be a better accountant because before I first came to Coinadrink for the week all I had seen was the surface of the subject, but this has given me a deeper understanding of what accountancy is all about. ”

Johnathan Dudley said: “Working on real life problems that SMEs face on a daily basis, gives students a taste of the bigger picture and how accountants such as Crowe apply their skills to help their clients. ”