Ms. Smith (your participating client) operates a restaurant in the busy downtown College Park, which is going smoothly and steadily. There are critical business decisions to be made about running a restaurant, and customers’ satisfaction is the most important key to success. Many customers have written various reviews and posted numerous photos on the social network about her restaurant. Now, Ms. Smith welcomes any helpful insights to make her popular restaurant more successful.
You and your friends have started a company (give it a cool name) for business intelligence and data analytics. Ms. Smith recently heard about the power of business intelligence and data analytics. In order to help Ms. Smith advance her business to the next level, you will need to collect and analyze review data about Ms. Smith’s restaurant to generate business insights, and present the findings to her so she may make effective improvements decisions.
The competition is open to all Smith undergraduate students in all programs. Students will need to form a team of two to four members to compete. Teams will go through the process of signup, tryouts, eliminations, and the final competition. The final presentation will be five minutes at the TechFest on Thursday April 18 by using ONLY Microsoft Excel. KPMG will present financial awards to top three teams ($70 to $120 per student depending on the final competition outcomes).
Please complete the student signup form. The earlier you signup, the more time you will have to prepare. Participants selected to the Second Round will be invited to join Discord to interact with organizers, mentors and other participants.
First round:
After signing up as a team, you will be provided with sample Yelp and Google Maps review data in an Excel file. The dataset contains reviews to a restaurant since its opening. Your team shall analyze rating, food, drink, service, ambiance, operation, location, etc. in the dataset. You will submit an Excel file and a report file of your methods, findings, discussions, and possible conclusions by 6PM, Friday April 5, 2024.
The top six teams with the most relevant and successful results of the first round will continue onto the second round.
Second round:
Each team shall identify a running restaurant or business in the greater College Park area. The organizer will guide the team to apply analytical methodologies to extract, mine and analyze the Yelp, Google Maps, TripAdvisor, GrubHub, UberEasts, and/or real world reviews on the restaurant/business chosen above.
On Friday April 12, the six teams will present their findings and recommendations to a team of judges from KPMG, who will select the top three teams for the final round, based on, but not limited to, two criteria:
How insightful the analyses are
How impactful the presentation is
Each team will have ten minutes and use an Excel file with a presentation file of slides. Three teams were selected to compete in the final round (in the order of presentations on April 18):
Capital Consulting (client: Shotted Specialty Coffee; mentor: Valerie Markel)
K&A Associates (client: Taqueria La Placita; mentor: Arjun Rao Kaveti)
Tech Girlies (client: Dog Haus; mentor: Jessica Choong)
Final round:
At the TechFest 2024 (5-6:50PM, Thursday April 18, 2024), the three finalists will present their analyses and recommendations to the general audience and KPMG judges. Each team will have eight minutes for a presentation using only an Excel file, followed by five minutes of Q&A. The winning team will be announced at the conclusion of the competition.
First Prize: K&A Associates: Kevin Garcia, Abdullah Hijazi (client: Taqueria La Placita; mentor: Arjun Rao Kaveti)
Second Prize: Capital Consulting: Tamzid Muttaki, Rida Fatima Alvi (client: Shotted Specialty Coffee; mentor: Valerie Markel)
Third Prize: Tech Girlies: Rebecca Zhang, Ellen Zhang (client: Dog Haus; mentor: Jessica Choong)
Questions and comments, please email to Prof. Adam Lee.