This article was originally sourced from the news piece “Big Data, Big Win” on Kellogg’s news and events page.
A team of One-Year Program students from the Kellogg School of Management once again emerged victorious at the Adobe Digital Analytics Competition. Alex Bourdeau, Yajur Kapoor and John Elder came in first place out of 66 competing teams to take first place in the case competition that challenged participants to use Adobe’s data analytics software to tackle the challenges real-world companies face online.
This win comes a year after Kellogg teams took first, third and fourth place in the 2013 event. This year, competitors were tasked with using Adobe’s data analytics software to improve the performance of Lenovo’s website in Mexico. With only “un poquito” of Spanish among the team members and Google Translate at their disposal, the Kellogg team looked to benchmark the sites performance against comparable websites in Mexico and beyond.
“Once we actually established those benchmarks, we could figure out which metrics Lenovo Mexico could perform better on,” Kapoor said.
According to Elder, the dynamic trio decided to focus on the user experience, separating themselves by not only identifying areas of opportunity, but also by presenting concrete plans to get there.
“There was a lot of room given for creativity,” he said.
The team won $15,000 for coming in first place to which Elder said, “I never got to hold a big check before. I really wanted to hold a big check.”
“I think there’s also a really exciting element to case competitions that I certainly appreciated, and that’s the opportunity to represent the Kellogg School,” Bourdeau added. “That was a very proud moment.”