23 December 2017
A team of CUHK undergraduate business students took home the 1st runner up in the Thammasat Undergraduate Business Challenge (TUBC) 2017, from 10 to 15 October 2017. Milton Lam (Integrated BBA [IBBA], Year 4), Zara Chan (Global Business Studies, Year 2), Stella Chan (International Business and Chinese Enterprise, Year 2) and Diana Lam (IBBA, Year 2) formed the winning team, competing with 16 other teams from top performing institutions all over the world to become one of the finalist teams to compete in the final round of TUBC in Bangkok, Thailand.
Different from a traditional case competition where a business case study is given, this year’s TUBC invited a local bank, Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), to present their objective on expanding their business into the local small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) retail market. Teams are then required to design a business solution based on the identified key business opportunities through site visits to analyse the capabilities and capacity of the bank’s prospective clients.
“To prepare for the competition, our team worked on two simulations before the final round of the competition, and conducted extensive research on the country’s banking industry,” said Diana. “We also benchmarked on the bank’s competitors service and current strategies before working on our business solution.”
Milton shared how the team designed their winning idea, “After studying the local markets, we discovered that most local SMEs lack the financial resources to develop their own Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. To bridge this market demand gap, we designed a mobile application to act as an ERP, with additional features that enable the bank’s SME clients to form their own communities, and to better manage their orders and relations with their suppliers with just a small membership fee. Our goal is to build an entire ecosystem within the supply chain, so resources can be shared amongst different levels of businesses. As the network expands, more features and benefits can be shared across businesses.”
Teams are judged by a panel of professional judges made up of senior executives from SCB, basing on the depth of analysis, creativity and practicality of the business solution, presentation skills, and their responses to questions of the judges. Other than the competition, teams also enjoyed excursion activities, such as thai-boxing and catering classes, to experience the local culture and network with other participating teams.
