Lucas has been invited to collaborate with the University of Kent and a group of 15 students to run an “i-Teams” challenge, an exercise that links university students with companies to develop solutions to real world business challenges.

Lucas has set the students a practical challenge. To think of ways we can best utilise new technologies to build on our existing client relationships, and communicate with clients more effectively to drive a better customer experience.

The students have been chosen from across the whole range of degree subjects such as computer sciences, economics, history and the arts. The challenge is designed to give the students practical experience of real business issues to solve, while they may have a completely fresh take on the problem.

Lucas set an intense six week challenge and having offered initial guidance we will review progress at the halfway stage before formally receiving their plans and recommendations in early March

I-Teams challenges were originally initiated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States and now several UK universities have adopted the idea.

James Valentino, Head of Innovation, Digital and Marketing at Lucas said: “New technologies assist companies to communicate frequently with their customers, and in a personalised way. But that’s not so well established between businesses and their business clients – B to B rather than B to C. We will be very interested to hear the ideas developed by the students and hope they can make a real difference to our customer relationships management”.