By F. Jordan Crespo, MBA Class of 2017

The Deloitte Supply Chain Challenge final round constituted of providing a response to a Request for Proposal (RFP) for consulting services on how to expand a multinational automaker’s operations and sales streams from India to South Africa. There were 8 teams total competing, which were pre-selected to be separated into two rooms for the first round, of which the top 4 would move on to the final.

Instead of providing a generic case, the final round consisted of a 12 hour period where Deloitte practitioners acted as both internal consulting managers and the customer itself. We had meetings, phone calls, and milestones to complete throughout the 12 hour time period, where we would be able to speak with and glean extra information from the different people and allow that to help us with our response. The first milestone was about 1 ½ hours into the competition, where we had to meet with our project manager to talk about what direction we were focusing on and see if that made sense. We then had a phone call with the customer, where they were able to tell us about their thoughts on some of the key focus areas and what they didn’t like about the expansion. We then had another in person meeting with the Principal of our project where they assisted in identifying one of the key problems our customer was interested in answering.

Overall, from 10:30 am to 11:59 pm, we worked on evaluating the considerations of the problems presented, and what types of analysis and evaluation we could provide as a consulting firm. After presenting, while we were given positive feedback, we were not moved on to the final round. It was extremely beneficial to learn about the consulting process and what different expectations a consulting firm has for its employees, as well as what is going to sell to the customer and help them make the decision to hire the consulting firm.