The Technology Consulting Competition (TCC) provides students with the opportunity to apply their competencies, skills, and cutting-edge technologies to tackle a complex business challenge. TCC is the largest technology-focused case competition in Canada, and attracts teams of students from universities across the nation.
Now in its 8th year, the competition is an annual collaboration between the Western Founders Network (WFN), the largest technology club at Western University, and the Ivey FinTech Club (IFTC), a student-run Ivey Club sponsored by the Scotiabank Digital Banking Lab.
TCC 2022 was held virtually on Saturday, January 22nd, 2022, welcoming over 150 delegates from more than 10 institutions across Canada and the United States. IBM served as the Title and Technology Sponsor for this year’s event. After an introduction and a well-received keynote from IBM Consulting Associate Partner Shannon McLaren, delegates got to work.
Experiential learning and real-world technologies
This year’s case featured the fictional Bank of Calgary, a major Canadian bank facing a number of service inefficiencies that had been exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the accelerating shift to digital banking. The case was the product of a collaboration between undergraduate Western and HBA students at WFN/IFTC, and a team of consultants from IBM, who drew upon their experiences working with clients facing similar issues throughout the case-writing process.
Delegates had just 4 hours to assess the situation, devise a solution, and propose a realistic implementation plan to combat the Bank of Calgary’s pandemic woes. Faced with a suite of relevant IBM technologies, such as ERP systems, chatbots, and internal dashboards, delegates were tasked with creating a comprehensive solution that was both cost and time-efficient, while justifying their choice of technologies.
Making fintech and technology consulting accessible to all
One of the competition’s central aims is to expose students to potential career paths and relevant topics within fintech and technology consulting. Unfortunately, students with non-technical educational backgrounds are often deterred by the technical elements within fintech and technology consulting. Thus, the student organizers implemented a variety of initiatives to make the competition more accessible to students of all educational backgrounds.
Prior to the competition, a “Technical Briefing” was distributed, outlining the IBM technologies featured in the case, and offering delegates the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the technical case elements ahead of time. In addition, a comprehensive “Intro to Case Comps” workshop was hosted by WFN President Krish Gandhi (HBA ‘22) and TCC Co-Lead Organizer Eric Xu, welcoming over 50 delegates.
The mentorship and learning opportunities continued through competition day. Drop-in feedback rooms, staffed by a team of Ivey Business School HBA students, were made available to all delegates. Networking booths gave interested students the chance to connect with consultants at IBM and explore the many career paths within fintech and technology consulting.
Of course, none of this would have been possible without the financial generosity of our corporate partners, including IBM and Scotiabank, and the dozens of volunteers across IBM, the Ivey Business School, Ivey’s Business Foundations Department, the Western Founders Network, and the Ivey FinTech Club, who contributed their valuable time and energy into helping the competition run smoothly - from organizing, to mentorship, to judging. Thank you!
Congratulations to the winning teams
Taking home first place, and the grand prize of $1,000, was the team of Nick Liu, Lena Tang, Alec Yang, and Jason Yu, all from Western University.
The team of Yihan Li, Sherry Yang, Akshay Samuel, and Keerat Juneja placed second.
Rounding off the podium in third place was the team of Annie Liu, Hannah Mahr, Shirley Mu, and Thomas Cwintal. Once again, congratulations to all of our winners!