Peter Ruck from Ballymena, a final year student in Human Resource Management at the University of Ulster at Jordanstown has been named a winner of the Ulster Business School’s Placement Innovation Awards 2012 in the Department of Management and Leadership. Peter spent a year with InterTrade Ireland where he instigated an event management system which successfully increased attendance at the organisation’s events and reduced costs.

Professor Marie McHugh, Dean of the Ulster Business School, explains, “During any academic year the Ulster Business School has over 300 under graduate students in both local, national and international placements. As a School, we are actively engaged with the business community and student placements and internships are an integral part of our business. We place a very high value on the excellent relationships that we have with employers and through placement, we have an excellent opportunity to develop employability skills, and for Ulster Business School graduates to secure employment and ‘hit the ground running.’ Peter is to be congratulated for maximising his time and experience with InterTrade Ireland where he undertook to improve attendance at events which are provided free of charge to local companies. The system he designed is now in common use across the organisation.”

Congratulating Ballymena student Peter Ruck (right) on winning the Ulster Business School’s Placement Innovation Award 2012 in the Department of Management and Leadership are Professor Marie McHugh, (centre) Dean of the Ulster Business School and Connor Sweeney, (left) Project Manager, InterTrade Ireland.

Peter successfully utilised InterTrade Ireland’s new customer relationship management system to manage attendance at events and over 6 months there was a reduction in non- attendance of 28%.

Congratulating Peter on his award Connor Sweeney, Project Manager InterTrade Ireland said: “Peter identified his project on his own initiative and the system he implemented is now in common use at InterTrade Ireland and we note that our events are well attended, with the added benefit that a full event is generally seen to be a successful one. Previously, much-needed resources were being wasted on hiring venues that were too large or sometimes not large enough and overspending on catering arrangements with the associated food-wastage and environmental implications.”