November 4, 2014. Fudan MBA’s team finished as the second runner-up in the PPM Regional Business Case Competition in Jakarta, Indonesia as the only Chinese representative in the competition, analyzing and providing solutions to a real-world and real-time employer branding case with the corporate sponsor of the competition, Bank Central Asia (BCA), Indonesia’s largest private bank. The competition brought in 61 teams overall, including some of the Asia Pacific’s top business schools: the National University of Singapore, Thailand Chu Chulalongkorn University, Baguio University of the Philippines, University of Indonesia, and PPM Business School, among many more. Despite a lack of experience with the socio-economic and cultural nuances of Indonesia, the team displayed great depth of understanding even when compared to the other Southeast Asian players, and still swayed the most critical of judges, as the team placed just 0.1 points behind the second place finisher. This is China's first business school to make the finals in this international competition.
In June of this year, the School received an invitation from the PPM Business School's "Fifth PPM Case BCA Employer Branding Competition". After the preliminary screening rounds, 12 of the original 61 teams, from schools all over the Asia-Pacific, were selected as semi-finalists to travel to compete in Jakarta. Fudan IMBA program students Wu Qi, Evan Chang, and Chen Kai En made the cut.
The tournament semifinals started on November 4 at 8:00 am, held at BCA Tower in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. The 12 semi-finalists were divided into four groups of three teams each, from which the winner of each would advance to the final round. Each team prepared a 10-minute presentation to give before entering the debate session. During the debate session, each team was required to ask questions of the other teams and to defend from questions raised by the others. In the end, through the use of tested professional models and detailed feasibility studies, Fudan’s team emerged from their group and placed among the four finalists.
The final session was a direct Q&A session with the judging committee, made up of six high-level executives and academics. It began at 1:30 pm local time and lasted a total of 30 minutes for each of the four finalists. Judges asked few questions regarding the views the team proposed in earlier rounds, rather focusing mainly on impromptu creativity for problem solving and business instincts. Members of the judging committee included professors from the host school PPM School of Management, Rotterdam Business School, and executives from BCA.
After fierce questioning the judges, Fudan’s team received 84.0/100 points, which ranked them third place, just 0.1 points shy of second, with the first place finisher ahead of both by 3 points.
Recalling the experience of this competition, the Fudan team faced two major tests:
First, the team’s time in Indonesia coincided directly with the final week of final reports and presentations for Fudan’s fall half term. This led to much multi-tasking for the team, interleaving preparation for the competition while maintaining communication with their class groups back home in order to ensure the successful completion of all assignments, greatly increasing the workload of the players and their class groups back in Shanghai.
At the same time, compared to many other Southeast Asian contestants, Fudan’s team faced an obvious disadvantage in terms of understanding social and cultural aspects of the Indonesian labor markets. Indonesia and the Philippines apart very close geographically and economically with much cultural exchange, such that the Filipino teams were very familiar with the Indonesian market.
Although the situation the team faced in terms of timing and location were not optimal given their existing knowledge and experience, they were very effective with their research and analysis, receiving strong support from the Fudan School of Management, which urged the team to focus on the "human" aspect to take a unique edge in analysis. This focus on people and their various behaviors and incentives was the key to success.
Each of them had his own perspective on their strategy and analysis:
"We learn from Chinese experience in employer branding, that the mobile Internet will become an important direction for future employers to promote the image of their workplaces," said Wu Qi, one of the team members.
"Faced with questions about the local customs and conflicts between cultural and corporate interests, we will take into account pros and cons into our analysis. There is no absolute good or bad, just appropriate or inappropriate analysis,” said team member Chen Kai En.
"We prefer a comprehensive analysis of the problems: assumptions, data, analysis and argumentation, every aspect taken into account. We are not only concerned about the directional trends; we are just as concerned with comprehensiveness,” team member Evan Chang says.
But while focusing on being comprehensive, they made an effort not to lose team cohesiveness. Although they came from different cities, diverse educational and work background made it possible for every discussion to bring new ideas to light. Effective team communication was very important, different views could always be unified and ultimately become the consensus of all the players, and not be squashed out of existence just because of different views initially.
In addition, the team members mentioned, one of the main reasons for their success was the ability to keep their wits under fire and to keep a peaceful state of mind. Compared to other teams determined to win, being able to take a step back allowed the team to stay thoughtful and keep their answers dynamic, bending and shifting with specific challenges from the judges and avoiding falling prey to dead ends or traps, while also leaving them free to actively demonstrate their strengths.
