4/12/2020 Excellent Case Competition Example | Consultant's Mind
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Excellent Case Competition Example
by Consultant's Mind | 2 comments
Case competition season is about to kick into high gear. Yes, we have teams going around the
country to compete with other Business Schools. Their goal? Take an ambiguous and complex
business problems, poetically break it down into parts, and then sum it back up into a
persuasive recommendation within 24 hours. Oh, and win.
Do you doubt the ability of undergraduates to put together Big 3 / Big 4 quality presentations?
You shouldn’t.
Check out this presentation from last year’s winner HKUST (Hong Kong University of Science
and Technology) at USC Marshall Case Competition here. There are so many things I like about
this presentation, I could teach an entire 75 minute class on this gem. You can see the original
case it was built on here (11 pages + 7 pages of exhibits).
Start with the Executive Summary
This is de rigeur with management consulting. Start with your takeaway. Don’t make the
audience (and judges) guess what you are saying and where you are heading. In this example,
it’s particularly useful because you can see the logic of the set up: situation, questions,
recommendation, and impact.
Big point: Don’t forget the impact. Clients want to know what your recommendations will get
them.
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4/12/2020 Excellent Case Competition Example | Consultant's Mind
Cover the basics quickly
The format of this case competition was 15 minutes + 15 minutes of Q&A. Not a long time. Yet,
there are 24 slides and 3 pages of back up. Without having attended the presentation, not sure
how they managed so much content in a short amount of time (without feeling rushed), but the
slides themselves, do the trick.
This slide is busy – yes – but also conveys a lot of information well. 1) Graph on the left is
clearly labeled with title, axis, graph colors, and trend lines. It’s clear that China is a smaller
market, but growing quickly. 2) Some of the factors a ecting slow growth in the US are shown
on the right, and the kicker box in orange reiterates the point.
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4/12/2020 Excellent Case Competition Example | Consultant's Mind
Show your thinking
Consulting = putting things into buckets and prioritizing them e ectively. Sometimes you have
multiple choices and multiple of criteria, which creates a huge excel grid of factors. This is when
a maturity model can cover A LOT of information succinctly. Below, there are 4 markets
(columns) and 5 criteria (rows) which are evaluated on a 4 point scale. Of course, you need to
have backup data to defend your assessment, but this quickly gets the audience nodding their
heads that China is the right target market.
Consulting tip: Think backwards from the nal product. Even though this is the nal
presentation, can imagine that the team actually debated a good deal on what the criteria
should be. When you are earlier in the project (or case competition), select criteria which maps
to your logic, hypotheses, assumptions, and potential recommendations.
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4/12/2020 Excellent Case Competition Example | Consultant's Mind
Use frameworks to refine scope
This was from a 15 minute presentation, so it’s critical to narrate the story quickly, while also
not losing the judges. This is where frameworks are very helpful to shape the edges of the
metaphorical puzzle. It de nes what’s in/out of scope. Here you can see that the team frames
this within a supply chain context. They also make the argument that upstream is well-
established (China has a strong manufacturing base), and therefore, the Zuru company should
focus on distribution and end consumption.
Yes, I know that “use frameworks to re ne scope” sounds like MBA jargon. In simple English, it
might say, use some commonly-understood WAY to guide the audience. Tell them what you
ARE and ARE NOT going to talk about.
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4/12/2020 Excellent Case Competition Example | Consultant's Mind
Drive towards your recommendations
In this presentation, the supply chain view (upstream, downstream) was repeated 6 times. The
title remained the same, and new data points were layered on top of the same slide. This has
the same e ect as animation. This has the nice bene t of 1) providing an over-arching
sca olding 2) subtly reminding the viewer of what’s already been covered 3) advancing the
discussion to the next point 4) providing a takeaway in the orange box below.
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4/12/2020 Excellent Case Competition Example | Consultant's Mind
Get specific
Yes, consulting starts with a top-down approach at the hypothesis stage – to put things in
buckets and smartly guess your way e ciently to the answer. However, it should not stop
there. You have to get to the speci cs, after all, clients don’t pay $millions in consulting fees to
get regurgitated best practices, and management truisms. No they want to know what your
point of view is, and perhaps more importantly, why you have the conviction.
There is no such thing as average. In the same way, “improve marketing” has 15 di erent
meanings. Are you trying to drive more awareness, interest, consideration, purchase, or
repurchase? Great question. Look below.
This team thought the question all the way through, and used this framework for 8 pages. . .
giving the reader conviction that 1) yes, we can drive awareness of the product through A,B,C.
2) once they are aware, we can get them more involved and interested in the product by doing
D,E,F 3) Yes, the number of prospective toy buyers in the funnel are narrowing down, but we
can get them to purchase by G,H,I 4) Then once they buy the toys and are satis ed, we can get
them to buy more by J,K,L 5) Finally, we want to drive word-of-mouth and advocacy by M,N,O.
Without even knowing the details of A-O, you’re kinda convinced, right?
Provide a timeline
As a part of getting speci c, executives always want to know how long it will take, how much it
will cost, and what the risks are. Time frame matters. This team has these lined up nicely here.
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4/12/2020 Excellent Case Competition Example | Consultant's Mind
Not entirely sure what the di erent shades of blue mean – but I believe it’s related to the
“intensity” legend on the bottom left.
Measure the results
One concept I reiterate in my strategy class is the concept of leading and lagging indicators.
Here the team lists the key performance indices (KPI), target, and the contingency plan if the
plan is not met. From the audience’s perspective, we are pretty sold because the team has
really thought this through. The targets are speci c; as one partner once told me, “speci city
lends credibility.”
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4/12/2020 Excellent Case Competition Example | Consultant's Mind
Show the impact
Here is a nice summary of the sales and pro t forecast. Is this a forecast. Of course. Does this
contain many assumptions? Yes. Is this still super helpful for executives to think through the
problem? Yes.
Document the assumptions
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4/12/2020 Excellent Case Competition Example | Consultant's Mind
This is a very elegant way to use the existing market funnel framework introduced many pages
earlier, and layer the assumptions which help get to the estimate of 1.4M Chinese spending $45
for a toy = $66M. Using the same waterfall methodology, the team shows how another $45M of
revenues could come from educational toys.
Mitigate risks
All recommendations involve risk. So which parts of the plan have the greatest risk, and how to
qualify and mitigate those risks? How to make it easy for the client to say “yes”?
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4/12/2020 Excellent Case Competition Example | Consultant's Mind
Really admire the work this case competition did. Also, respect USC for posting both the cases
and the nal deliverables here. For those reading this blog, take a look at these decks and
admire here. If a team of 4 students can do this quality of work in 24 hours, what can you do in
2-3 weeks?
2 Comments
Thomas on January 8, 2020 at 8:24 pm
Great presentation, thanks for sharing!
Really appreciated, good source for improving mine.
Reply
Consultant's Mind on January 10, 2020 at 12:14 am
Thanks for reading.
Reply
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4/12/2020 Excellent Case Competition Example | Consultant's Mind
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