Case & Guidelines

View the case and rules for the Data Analytics Competition.

2023 Case

SC&H Group is a nationally recognized management consulting, audit and tax firm serving clients from rapidly growing private sector businesses to Fortune 500 companies with global brands. The firm’s strategic practices provide the leading-edge thinking and advice that transform our clients’ businesses and help them outpace the competition. We embrace the future and help clients prepare, innovate and evolve their businesses in this complex and highly competitive world. For more than 30 years, SC&H Group has demonstrated its commitment to delivering powerful minds, passionate teams and proven results on each engagement. 

At firms like SC&H Group, it is important to measure how well employees are utilized across practices and clients to maximize the profitability of a company. This generally indicates how “healthy” a firm’s processes are when interacting with clients and key when making important business decisions and forecasting. Employee utilization is the percentage of an employee’s total working hours spent along work that can be billed to a client versus administrative tasks. Administrative tasks are considered working hours that are non-billable. An industry standard for utilization rate is around 80%. 

In this case, you are provided with data pertaining to employees and client information between 2019 to 2021. Typically, this kind of data is proprietary so we have added masking to our client and employee names; we have also added a wholesale weighted alteration to bill rates. Your objective is to analyze the dataset to determine clients with the highest profitability and employee utilization to help SC&H Group drive more opportunities. Make sure to support your recommendations with adequate analysis.  

Register below to receive the case with data schema and data set. 

Sign up for the 2023 Data Analytics Competition.

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Guidelines & Rules

Rules & Judging Criteria

      • Any student currently enrolled at Towson University may participate, with the exception of PhD students. 
      • Entrants may work individually or in teams of up to three people.
      • All entrants must register online and indicate if they are working in a team or individually. If working in a team, they must list their partners, including their TU ID. Register here.
      • Team must provide both a one-page report analyzing their findings and a visualization of their findings.
      • You may use any software tool to analyze the data set.
      • You may use any software tool to create their visualization.
      • The report should include a brief description of your process and how you came to your conclusions.
      • The visualization and summary must be static and in PDF format.
      • Names, colleges, and TU IDs, must be clearly visible on both submission documents.
      • Both documents must be in PDF format.
      • Both documents must be named as follows: "LastNameVisualization.pdf" OR "LastNameSummary.pdf"
 
  • 10 Finalists will be selected from Round 1 
  • Finalists will receive an email if they are selected.
  • Finalists will have 7-10 minutes to present their visualization to the judges and discuss what is unique about their analysis and the process of analysis. 
  • No slides will be allowed for the presentation. Finalists will use their visualization to discuss their results. 
  • Finalists should be prepared to answer questions from the judges. 
  • Finalists will dress and present themselves in a professional manner. 

All entries will be judged on how well the visualization and analysis answer the case question(s). The analysis should be complete, and the visualization should be clear and creative. The visualization should tell a story about the case using the provided data. Additional public data sets can be added if needed.

Submit your summary and visualization here.

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