EBS students help Volkswagen do business in the Chinese market

EBS and Volkswagen Financial Services have signed an agreement that provides the students of EBS and its partner university Hong Kong Polytechnic University with an opportunity to draw up a project for the development of Volkswagen business activities in the Chinese market.

The project involves 12 EBS and 6 Hong Kong students who started collaboration with the aim to draw up a real plan for the development of the business activities of a global enterprise at the end of January. The final stage of the project takes place in the Asian headquarters of Volkswagen Financial Services in Beijing in March, where the students will present their plans to the company.

The EBS Vice Rector for International Collaboration Toomas Danneberg says that the project will offer the students a unique and a very practical learning experience. „The students who participate in the project are divided into three groups, whereas each team will start to solve a real business problem set by VW Financial Services. In order to find working solutions to the problems, the students need to find out and work through the best available practices and present their own propositions for the solution of VW business problems. This is not just a study assignment, but a global enterprise will receive solutions to its real problems,“ assured Danneberg.

A representative of Volkswagen Financial Services and also a visiting lecturer of EBS dr Benjamin Phillip Wille-Baumkauff assures that this is the first experience for Volkswagen to include the students of a business school in the development process of the enterprise: „It is clear that this is a learning curve for both parties – the students and the enterprise. It is not impossible that such a pilot project may be a basis for further and broader collaboration. It is rather common in the world that students are involved in the development projects of enterprises.“According to the words of Wille-Baumkauff, Volkswagen Financial Services expects that the joint project will enable to find young talented people with international experience who the enterprise may recruit after their studies.

The supervisor of the students is Toomas Danneberg, the Vice Rector for International Collaboration at EBS. The project was launched with a BootCamp held by the visiting lecturer of project management Philipp Bousa from Austria. The students will go through all the phases of project management starting from the planning of the project till the presentation of the results of the project under the supervision of Bousa.

Volkswagen Financial Services is an enterprise that supports the sales of all the brands of Volkswagen group in the world and constantly helps to raise the brand loyalty of its clients in 51 countries worldwide whereas the turnover of the enterprise amounts to EUR 158 billion.

9 Feb 2017