Priyanka Jagtap

‘Dear Priyanka,  Heartiest Congrats!  Felt nice to see that you  successfully competed with Best schools of country and achieved commendable success And compliments to Prof Pendse and other colleagues who guided her, all the best for future endeavours’ wished Dr.Uday Salunkhe,Group Director, WeSchool.

Here is the story of her victory in Priyanka’s own words…

Being a student of the E-Business course at WeSchool, I always wanted to get a feel of the real challenges of the Business Analysis scenario and how the analysts go about approaching the problem at hand. And When I saw the mail sent by Prof. Jalpa Thakker, about an upcoming competition SyncQuest 2011, a  case study competition in association with Cognizant Business Consulting services(CBC) at LITMUS, the annual event of NITIE, It presented me with the opportunity to get a feel of the real world.

In the case study competition one had to describe a scenario where Cognizant was approached by a leading Building material distributor in Europe to consult and advise them with the Business Process Reengineering and suggest a IT platform to implement their solution. The case study was to be a one page case study with about twenty questions that needed to be answered. The questions were specifically asked to test the approach to the problem at hand. An example of the questions asked was: What will be the sources of domain knowledge (about European Building material distribution industry) that you will refer, considering that all your previous experience has been in retail sector.

From amongst the seventy five entries received, five each were shortlisted as finalists and waitlisted teams. . When I saw the shortlist, I realised that it was going to be a very tough competition and that I needed to prepare thoroughly for the same. The next two days were spent in making a presentation. Covering all the aspects of the solution, without making the PPT too lengthy was a Herculean task. Remembering to mention all the crucial points and yet covering the content in a mere span of 15 minutes took a lot of practice. My solution for the case focussed on waste elimination from the processes by the method of MUDA and Business Process Reengineering.

The second round of the competition consisted of presenting the solution to the esteemed jury from Cognizant. The judges were Mr. Girish Murti- Lead consultant at CBC, Mr. Ranganath Kulkarni- VP of CBC and Prof. A.D Raoot- Dean IT Management course at NITIE.

Just before the presentations started, the judges came up with a surprise for the teams. Mr. Girish told us that after all the presentations were over, we will be given extra 5 minutes, in which we will have to present a solution completely different from what we have put in the slides. We were told that the activity was voluntary and the team with the best on the spot solution would get bonus points for the new solution presented.

The presentations that were made during the competition were in depth and covered the solutions part in detail more than the approach part of it. In the Q&A session, the judges were giving frank feedback & asking trick questions to the teams. For eg, the team from IIM Indore was asked the question: “If you are given an opportunity to present this in a different manner, what changes will you make to the presentation that you just gave?”

And before I knew, it was my turn to present. All my preparation and practice paid off. I remembered to stress on the important points at the right moment. Prof Deepa Dixit’s Business communication classes in the first Trimester and Prof Ridgley’s Hard skills sessions helped me in delivering an effective presentation.

The next hurdle that needed to be crossed was the 10 min Q&A session. At the end of the presentation, Mr Girish said. “I will not ask you a difficult question. But I will ask you a weird one. If you had to present this whole solution in just 3 slides, what would you do?” I thought for a moment and my answer to the question was “A picture is worth a thousand words. So I will just put 3 data flow diagrams on the slides : As-Is processes on slide 1, DFD with Wastes identified and highlighted on slide 2, and the end result DFD after the wastes have been eliminated on slide 3.” And I could see that he  seemed to be happy with the answer. But he asked a further question:”OK. I was not expecting this answer. You have raised my expectations. Now please tell me what will be the headings that you will give to the slides. And please don’t disappoint me. Let the answer be as creative as the first one.” I thought for a minute. This was the make or break situation. I took a risk by answering: “Given the creative freedom, I would probably name my slides Kal, Aaj, Aur Kal.” He did not give me a feedback to this answer, but laughed and thanked me for my presentation. I was nervous that I may have spoilt it all with the answer.

In the post presentation 5 min round, only one team from IIM Indore came up with a solution. The initial solution they had proposed was implementation of completely new ERP and CRM at the client location. They later proposed the integration of the existing legacy systems in the ERP. The judges praised them.

When the results came out around 20 minutes later, I was amazed and happy to hear my name as the winner. IIM -C was the runner up. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Prof. Pendse, Prof. Deepa Dixit and Prof .Jalpa for the constant support and encouragement.