Applied Predictive Technologies, a DC-based strategic consulting and software firm, hosted a weeklong University case study competition this week, which ended with an awards ceremony and reception yesterday evening.
APT hosted the competition with the University's chapter of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) to help students understand what consulting careers entail.
The competition, which began Monday, allowed first-, second- and third-year students to participate in simulations to test and evaluate the effectiveness of different advertising styles. Participants were graded in three categories - analytical skills, business intuition and presentation, and client interaction.
Third-year Commerce students Taylor Richardson, Tony Li, Matt Powell and David Harsh took first place in the competition.
"Its nice to step back from academia and be able to apply what we learn on a day-to-day basis to the real world," said Ashley Samay, a third-year Engineering student who was part of the team which placed second.
Fed Cohen, an APT business consultant and 2011 University graduate, said in an email the competition requires students to face hypothetical situations which arise when planning a marketing campaign for slushies.
"The case competition strives to show students how strategy consultants work on a daily basis," Cohen said. "The case takes students through every step of a client engagement, from meeting the clients and understanding the problems to getting to real business answers that help drive value. It's our best attempt at simulating what we do on a daily basis, trying to show the exciting nature of this work."
About 100 participants were divided into teams of four or five students. Each team examined three different mock marketing campaigns for slushies.
"We ran a lot of statistical analysis on [the campaigns]," third-year Engineering student Timothy Bernica said. "We had [a] lot of data. We looked at profit before and profit after, and whether the profit increased after the marketing campaigns."
The team which not only noticed the correct trends in the data, but also correctly analyzed the causes of the data trends was declared the winner. Greg Siegel, associate product manager at APT and 2011 University graduate, said it was "not enough to say [one campaign] is better." If slushy sales were going up but soft drink sales were falling, it was important for participants to realize that customers were switching products, he said.
The judging panel consisted of several University professors and APT employees who had graduated from the University.
"The winner [was] the team that most effectively drives value for the client, while excelling at the three core fronts mentioned," Cohen said. "We hope that students [came] up with feasible yet creative answers that can help the hypothetical client as much as possible."
Bernica said he enjoyed interacting with the challenging case study, which placed more emphasis on data analysis than previous competitions.
"The case was very realistic," Bernica said. "We got fake emails and data and were presented with a real problem. It was interesting to dig through all [the] info."
Siegel said the majority of similar case competitions are geared toward MBA students instead of undergraduates.
"Usually [in these types of competitions], participants get a huge stack of materials and spreadsheets and are told to go," he said. "APT wants to give different pieces of information that aren't just presented in paragraph forms so that students have to really tease out what it means."
First and second place teams received a cash prize ranging from $750 to $1,000.
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