March 2, 2006
Delta Consulting Takes First Texas Win at USC's Case Competition
By Amy Lavergne

The University of Texas at Austin added the McCombs School’s “Delta Consulting” to its list of championship teams last week.

The student team from the McCombs School won first place at the Marshall Case Competition at the University of Southern California held Feb. 23-25.

After winning the internal McCombs Undergraduate Case Competition in fall 2005, the team which included, Melissa Chu, finance senior; Shawn Mathew, PPA and BHP senior; Roshan Nair, BHP and PPA senior; and Sarang Parikh, BHP and MIS senior, achieved the McCombs School’s first win at USC’s case competition.

Taking on the Challenge

Facing the problem of how to keep Jets International, a privately held company for chartered jets, ahead of their harsh competition, Delta Consulting prevailed, beating 23 other top national and international schools.

“I felt like we did our best and really that’s what we went there to do,” Chu said.

The Marshall Case Competition brings together teams from top-ranked business schools to work in simulated business conditions with incomplete information and formulate recommendations to solve a real business problem.

Team members were expected to have expertise in a wide range of business disciplines from finance, marketing, economics and accounting, to international issues, technology, quantitative thinking, and management. Mathew believes that his team offered all of these qualities and more.

Getting Results

“We were able to win because each of us have unique skills, and we complement each other well,” Mathew said. “We can rely on each other to take care of the parts we were good at.”

The company, Jets International, acts as a brokerage between charter operators and travelers. Barriers to entry in the airline industry have been decreasing recently because unlike commercial airlines, charter operations use lighter, more fuel efficient jets and cater to more high net worth clients, which turn a higher profit per trip. The teams were asked to recommend ways to keep Jets International ahead of their competition.

Delta Consulting focused their solution on quality service for travelers, loyalty programs for operators and diversifying Jets International’s revenue streams. For travelers, they designed programs with a segmentation strategy aimed at expanding beyond Jets International’s high net-worth customers to the small- and midsize-business market.

Their loyalty program for operators gave them bargaining power with suppliers, an Internet forum to facilitate their operations, and a task force to actively recruit new operators and help them maintain safety standards. Finally, Delta Consulting decided to diversify the business to allow Jets International to hedge its risk in case the company’s brokerage system was no longer sufficient.

“It sounds complicated, but we condensed it down pretty well for our presentation,” said Chu. “And the Q&A is always our team's strong point.”

The Finishing Touches

Parikh emphasized that his team was sure to not let any loose ends in the solution spoil their presentation.
“We made sure everything passed a sanity check at the end,” Parikh said. The team meticulously checked each of their proposals and ensured they weren’t fooling themselves into group think.

“We’ve fully realized what our strengths are, how to lean on each other and how we look after getting no sleep for 36 hours,” said Nair.

After the competition, the students were told that they had “the whole package in terms of ideas and presentation.” The team received the Marshall Cup as well as individual trophies inscribed with each student’s name.