Graduate School of Business’ MBA Case Team brought home a first place victory at IDEAcorps MBA Consulting Challenge, hosted by Loyola University New Orleans and its Center for Entrepreneurship over the weekend of March 22-24.
The team consisted of Spencer Adams of Montgomery; Dalton Kerby of Town Creek; Jessica Hastings of Mason, Ohio; Sudarsan Murali of New Albany, Ohio; Landon Robertson of Attalla; and Laci Williams of Auburn.
The team offered a winning recommendation to RentCheck, a startup based in New Orleans, after just four days of time spent working with the company. The RentCheck app simplifies property inspections for renters in the New Orleans area. After careful consultation with Marco Nelson, CEO of RentCheck, the team captained by Sudarsan Murali created a campus brand ambassador program to target millennial and Generation Z renters.
The IDEAcorps MBA Consulting Challenge is unique in that each competing team partners one-on-one with an entrepreneur to solve a real world problem. Rather than working on a theoretical problem, participating student teams get to work hands-on in developing a solution that could help a company achieve profitability, improve personnel operations or grow its customer base.
Murali relished the opportunity to deploy his business-building skills in the challenge. “As the co-founder of a company myself, this competition provided a very unique perspective on business development that I’ve never had before,” he said.
Possibly one of the most attractive aspects of this competition was that it could help a newly founded company. Quoc Hoang, Case Team adviser and director of Experiential Learning at the Culverhouse College of Business, said, “Through leveraging design thinking concepts such as developing hypotheses, voice of the customer, data-driven decision making, etc., the team provided Marco Nelson’s RentCheck with pragmatic and timely help that he plans to use this week at Tulane’s Business Model Competition and New Orleans Entrepreneur Week’s IDEApitch, where he’s one of three finalists vying for $50,000.”
“I’m proud of the team’s work and the fact that they had fun along the way. That said, I’m even prouder that their work has the potential to change the trajectory of this young man’s life and company.”
The Manderson Case Team has had a winning 2018-2019 season, placing third at Race & Case in Denver and second at the Katz Invitational at the University of Pittsburgh.
Manderson is located within the Culverhouse College of Business. For more information about MBA Case Team, contact Quoc Hoang at qhoang@culverhouse.ua.edu.