Would you be able to come up with a viable plan to double the annual sales volume of a vendor, write a summary of your plan, and prepare and present the findings? If you said yes, would you be able to do it in 24 hours?
That was the quest for 25 teams, consisting of three or four undergraduate students each, at the Midwest Undergraduate Data Analytics Competition (MUDAC) hosted by Winona State University and sponsored by Fastenal.
LSBE's Retail Marketing Analytics Program team placed third in the competition that included teams from Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Taking the top two spots were Concordia University of Moorhead and UW Madison.
As sponsor, Fastenal provided the business problem, which changes annually, to the teams along with some of its large relevant data sets. This year's problem was to assist Fastenal in doubling the sales volume of one of its vendors from $60 million annually to $120 million. The students were given data from customers already buying from this vendor along with a large file of Fastenal customers who do not buy the vendor's products. Teams have from 10:30 a.m. on the Saturday of the competition to 10:00 a.m. Sunday to provide their written recommendations. They present their recommendations on Sunday afternoon and are subsequently judged on both the written and oral components.