Two Binghamton University School of Management (SOM) teams are about to head into a national business spotlight after winning the regional rounds of intercollegiate business competitions.
Within the last month, two SOM teams have taken first place in two state-wide competitions. One team won the New York Regional round of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Research Challenge, which is a finance competition. Teams conduct a hypothetical financial analysis of a publicly traded company, and present the report to Wall Street executives.
A second team won the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS) Supply Chain Competition, which asks teams to analyze a business’ operational “back-end,” or the behind-the-scenes operations such as inventory management. The teams are judged on the quality of their analyses and their presentations.
The CFA team, which consisted of BU students Eric Dohn, Liam Hayes, Brandon Hohenberg, Robert Pim and Ronick Sanon, will advance to the Americas Regional round in Chicago this April. This round will host teams from across North and South America, and if BU wins, they will be eligible to compete in the Global Final.
“To be able to compete at this level and advance to the national competition is a great experience,” the team said in a statement. “We are excited to be the first team in school history to make it to this stage of the competition and are excited to represent Binghamton University at the national level.”
BU has participated in the competition for the past six years, and this team is the first to make it to the Americas Regional round. The team beat groups from Cornell University, Fordham University, SUNY Albany and around 20 other New York universities.
The team’s adviser, SOM finance professor Dina Layish, said she was proud of the team and looks forward to the next competition.
“All of their hard work has paid off,” Layish wrote in an email. “They were extremely prepared with their recommendation, as well as with enough knowledge to answer the difficult questions posed by the judges at the local level that took place in New York City. I wish them all the best at the next level of the competition. I know they will continue to make Binghamton University proud.”
At the APICS competition’s Northeast regional round, Binghamton University teams placed in all three of the top spots. The Binghamton teams managed to beat schools including Rutgers University, University of Connecticut and University at Buffalo. The first-place team, consisting of David Berlin, Kate Butera, Sam Clarke and Peter Mattar, will move on to the national round in Washington D.C. this September after their success in the regional round.
“We analyzed a fictional orange juice company and made decisions on the operations side of the business,” said Berlin, a sophomore majoring in business administration. “Using that analysis, we made a PowerPoint presentation and delivered it to the judges and it worked out well for us.”
All three teams in the APICS competition were coached by operations management professor Donald Sheldon. He said he was proud of the teams’ hard work and dedication to the competition.
“I knew we had three very competitive teams going into this competition,” Sheldon said. “They worked very hard since last October to prepare for this event, and we obviously had a lot of fun this weekend as the work paid off.”