The Department of Management and Marketing (DMM) at the Faculty of Business and Administration (FBAE), Notre Dame University-Louaize (NDU), participated from October 9 till October 11, 2017, in Le Gray Hotel, Beirut, in a two-day KPMG-sponsored workshop/competition titled, “Ace the Case,“ and won the KPMG Lebanon case competition.
This workshop helped the NDU “Aces of Strategy” team (composed of Danielle Abou Fayad, Joanne el-Khoury, Fayez Haddadin, and Charbel Daghfal) to develop their analytical, case writing, and presentation skills through a networking session. All contestants from different Lebanese universities got acquainted with each other as well as with the KPMJ staff during a cocktail, which included interactive activities. Following a training session, the NDU team introduced the KPMG 7-step process for case analysis and presentation training.
On competition day, the NDU team was placed in an advisory role within an international services firm interested in helping AMORIM, a fourth-generation family-run business and the world’s largest manufacturers of cork-based products, to use data and analytics to improve its strategic development process. More specifically, the team was charged with making recommendations about current and future markets and product offerings through the creation of a strategic plan that emphasized innovation and cost-effectiveness.
To solve the case, students needed to identify opportunities and threats, leading to the identification of the main strategic issues. “We were required to provide solutions in the immediate short-run, the short-run, the medium-run, and the long-run,” said the team’s spokesperson. “All solutions proposed were backed by both qualitative and quantitative analysis proof to ensure rationality, legal and social validity, and increased profitability and operational efficiency.”
The spokesperson added, “One of the solutions was utilizing the concept of green marketing through recycling. We encouraged wine producers to use DDP shipping as a way to convince customers to exchange used crocks for wine bottles; hence, lowering production costs (improved profit margin), giving trees more time to re-generate bark, and appearing socially responsible (also fulfilling the need for succession planning since it is a family-run business) .”
NDU’s “Aces of Strategy” team will travel to Malaysia in April 2018 to participate in a global competition and experience the opportunity of a lifetime.
All updates and progress will be shared via the various University media platforms.