Deloitte Case Reflection

After reflecting on the Deloitte case process and presentation, I am very happy with how it went. We had effective recommendations, an appealing slide deck, presented well, and answered the questions the Deloitte judges asked. My group had a great understanding of Hammer Co. and the issues that they faced, but I wish we spent more time thinking about how our recommendations could help in more than just the two issues we looked at. Specifically, we didn’t include anything on Hammer Co’s debt problem or discuss how our recommendations would combat their debt. This seemed to be something the judges were interested in. We also changed one of our recommendations going from getting rid of the stone and tile division to strategically improving the stone and tile division with a LEAN business model, expanding the customer base by increasing profit margins through efficient and cheap production.

I believed this could work because Hammer Co was underutilizing valuable manufacturing assets which could have been invested into optimizing manufacturing, producing products for cheaper, and therefore undercutting competitors to grow their market share. I was confident when presenting this to my group mates as a possible recommendation and believed this outside of the box thinking would have separated our group from others simply getting rid of the division. It turns out that the winning team actually did say to get rid of the division. Lastly, this was my favorite project I have ever done as I truly felt I was in a work environment dealing with business matters. It did not feel like school at all, which was refreshing and gave me confidence that I would enjoy potentially doing something like this in the future.