...CONSULTING CLUB CASEBOOK 2004/2005 CASES Page 6 of 48 Copyright 2004, Do not copy or distribute without permission CONSULTING CLUB CASEBOOK 2004/2005 SOURCE / FIRM: DATE / CONTEXT: ISSUES COVERED: ISSUE/PROBLEM POSED: INFORMATION PROVIDED: SOLUTION: OTHER USEFUL TIPS: Page 9 of 48 BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON 2nd round interview for summer internship 2004 Brainteaser Estimation How would you value a football (soccer) player? Business Case None I went around the houses a bit on this one. Identified sources of revenue for a football club including: Ticket revenue, Revenue from TV coverage, Sponsorship Merchandise sales (e.g. shirts) Talked around how to determine the contribution that an individual player makes to those revenue streams The final conclusion was that the best way to divide the portion of revenue related to the actual players (over their lifetime) between the team would be based on individual ratings (like those published for each player in the fantasy football league) Talked around valuation as the present value of future cash flows related to each player Open discussion with structure maintained through making notes and drawing tree diagrams was appreciated – used diagrams as prompt for directing discussions Copyright 2004, Do not copy or distribute without permission CONSULTING CLUB CASEBOOK 2004/2005 SOURCE / FIRM: DATE / CONTEXT: ISSUES COVERED: ISSUE/PROBLEM POSED: INFORMATION PROVIDED: SOLUTION: ...
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...BRAINTEASERS AND GUESSTIMATES Vault Guide to Finance Interviews Brainteasers and Guesstimates Stress Tests Perhaps even more so than tough finance questions, brainteasers and guesstimates can unnerve the most icy-veined, well-prepared finance candidate. Even if you know the relationships between inflation, bond prices and interest rates like the back of a dollar bill, all your studying may not help you when your interviewer asks you how many ping pong balls fit in a 747. That is partly their purpose. Investment bankers and other finance professionals need to be able to work well under pressure, so many interviewers believe that throwing a brainteaser or guesstimate at a candidate is a good way to test an applicant’s battle-worthiness. But these questions serve another purpose, too – interviewers want you to showcase your ability to analyze a situation, and to form conclusions about this situation. It is not necessarily important that you come up with a correct answer, just that you display strong analytical ability Acing Guesstimates We’ll start by discussing guesstimates, for which candidates are asked to come up with a figure, usually the size of a market or the number of objects in an area. Although guesstimates are more commonly given in interviews for consulting positions, they do pop up in finance interviews as well. Practicing guesstimates is a good way to begin preparing for stress questions in finance interviews, as they force candidates to think aloud – precisely...
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... What is the length of your shoe (guesstimate or measure exactly). 9 inches 2. Walk from point A to point B and back, recording the number of shoe lengths (stepping heel to toe). 31 steps 3. How many shoe lengths from point A to point B? 16 steps 4. How many shoe lengths from point B point A? 15 steps 5. How many shoe lengths total? 31 steps 6. Repeat steps 2-5: 7. Walk from point A to point B and back, recording the number of shoe lengths (stepping heel to toe). 31 steps 8. How many shoe lengths from point A to point B? 16 steps 9. How many shoe lengths from point B point A? 15 steps 10. How many shoe lengths total? 31 steps How much agreement between 3 and 4 (split half reliability)?...
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...CRAP Assignment 1-5 of 50 Guesstimates 13th July 2015 B. ROKESKUMAR Roll No. 214 1. Find the annual market size of shampoo sachets in India. Population of India = 1.2 Billion Percent of higher income group who would prefer shampoo bottles = 30% So, number of people who would buy shampoo sachets = 0.7 * 1.2 Billion = 84 million Assuming equal distribution between genders, there are 42 million males and 42 million females. Assuming males take shampoo bath once in 3 days on an average and females twice in a week. Males:- Assuming 5ml of shampoo per bath, 5 * 365 days/3 = 5* 122 ~ 600 ml Consumption by males = 42 Mn * 0.6 litre = 25.2 Million litre Females:- Assuming 10ml of shampoo per bath, 10*2*52 weeks ~ 1000 ml Consumption by females = 42 Mn * 1 litre = 42 Million litre Approximately 70 Million litre going into 10 ml sachets = 7000 Million sachets On an average, a shampoo sachet of 10ml costs 5 rupees, so 7000 Million * 5 rupees = 35,000 Million or 3,500 Crore rupees. The annual market size of Shampoo sachets is Rs. 3,500 crore. 2. Guesstimate the number of sedan cars in Delhi. Population of Delhi = 18 Millions Assuming the average size of a family being 4, number of households in Delhi = 4.5 Million households Now, of the population, let’s assume only 40% of the population afford / prefer to buy cars. 40% of 4.5 Million = 1.8 Million households Now, assuming 20% of them owns 3 cars, 30 % of them owns 2 cars...
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...Associate Level Material How Retirement Planning Fits within your Financial Planning You want to know how long your retirement money will last. Who doesn't? But first you must tackle an even tougher question: how long will you live? Ah, if we only knew. But you can have some fun coming up with an educated guesstimate by going to the Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholars in Aging Research Program Here's how: type in Beeson-- beeson.org/livingto100 – if only we could --/quiz.htm. The life expectancy calculator asks 23 questions ranging from do you smoke to eating habits to a little family history. According to the calculator, I can expect to live a fraction more than the male average of 84 years. Obviously you really can't predict how long you'll live, just as you can't know how well your portfolio would do over time. But a new generation of calculators will compute the odds that your mix of stocks, bonds and cash will support your desired standard of living during retirement. These Monte Carlo simulations work out the probability by running thousands upon thousands of results including worst case scenarios. The best known is offered by financialengines.com. So let's go to financialengines – one word --.com. And from the home page, put our cursor on my info. The advice costs money, but you can get a free forecast and see if you like the service and whether you like looking at the world through the lens of probabilities rather than certainties. Don't forget your Social...
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...Adolf Hitler. Even the establishment of European outposts was, according to the revisionist critique, a regrettable development. Although this division of interpretations no doubt confused and dampened many a Columbian festival in 1992, it also elicited a most intriguing historical debate: did the esteemed Admiral of the Ocean Sea kill almost all the Indians? A number of recent scholarly studies have dispelled or at least substantially modified many of the numbers generated by the anti-Columbus groups, although other new research has actually increased them. Why the sharp inconsistencies? One recent scholar, examining the major assessments of numbers, points to at least nine different measurement methods, including the time-worn favorite, guesstimates. 1. Pre-Columbian native population numbers are much smaller than critics have maintained. For example, one author claims “Approximately 56 million people died as a result of European exploration in the New World.” For that to have occurred, however, one must start with early estimates for the population of the Western Hemisphere at nearly 100 million. Recent research suggests that that number is vastly inflated, and that the most reliable figure is nearer 53 million, and even that estimate falls with each new publication. Since 1976 alone, experts have lowered their estimates by 4 million. Some scholars have even seen those figures as wildly inflated, and several studies put the native population of North America alone within a range...
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...Financial Reporting policies in healthcare are a commonly used set of standards that the company compiles by use of authoritative and accepted ways to record and report accounting. Corporate compliance is designed to prevent any violations of the law by those such as, agents, employees, of a business. The ethics are equally important these are a set of morals or moral principles set by a person or agency. Fraud can be described as a breach or deceit and abuse can be described as a misuse of authority. Now that I have explained a few commonly used words it should help you to have a better understanding of some of the topics raised in this paper. In healthcare financial management, there are four elements those are; planning, controlling, organizing, and decision making. Each element has its own underlying task which include, for planning there is to identify what must be done in order to make completion possible. In controlling, there are steps that should be followed to ensure there is a work and ethics practice followed. Organizing requires a detail oriented person to perfect the skills of hiring the right person for the right position, ensuring there is a schedule of employees work loads, knowledge of what resources are most profitable and what ones are least effective. In financial management reports are viewed and logs are tracked as to what information is provided by the other 3 elements can improve the success of the business. Generally accepted accounting principles...
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...and work on the launch of a digital graphics projector, the BG700 3. Stop projects on developing BD700 and instead start working on getting BG800 to market at the earliest Strategy to opt for I would suggest Barco to go with option 3 from the list above. Rationale behind my suggestion are enlisted as follows:- Why not option 1? * Cutting down on prices of well-known products offered by Barco would negate the reputation earned by these products and result in brand equity erosion for Barco * Barco was never in a price war with Sony, and should not opt for such a path just in the spur of the moment as reaction to the sudden news * Sony has still not announced what the price of the 1270 projector would be, and Barco could guesstimate the range of prices. It would be a risky move cut prices based on estimates Why not option 2? * BD700 as well as BG700 would be inferior in quality to Sony's 1270 * This option would mean delaying the process of launching the new product from the targeted month of October to December * By the time BD700/BG700 was...
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...between the Product Description and the Value Proposition is data: “Show me the numbers.” Supply some quantitative data that supports the feasibility of your business. Find facts and figures that show the size of your potential market, their disposable income, the projected growth of a particular market niche, etc. Cite industry analysis, if appropriate. Use a graph or pie chart to highlight the data. For example, in the case of LittleMissMatched, the Value Proposition would focus on: i) the population of “tweens” in the U.S. (How many are there?) ii) the potential buying power of that age group (How much do they spend on clothes each year?) ii) the number of socks sold each year (5 Billion) iii) Then, Little Missmatched would guesstimate from the data above how many socks they can sell. 5) Competition: Show that you have some knowledge of the competition...
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...Andre’s Hair Styling 05/15/2016 Draft A cost accounting system (also known as product costing system or costing system) is an outline utilized by businesses to guesstimate the cost of their manufactured goods for lucrativeness evaluation, inventory valuation and cost control. Appraising the precise cost of products is precarious for moneymaking operations. A company needs to recognize which products are lucrative and those that are not, and this can be determined when it has assessed the accurate cost of the product Andre’s Hair Styling Andre has asked you to evaluate his business, Andre’s Hair Styling. Andre has five barbers working for him. (Andre is not one of them.) Each barber is paid $9.90 per hour and works a 40-hour week and a 50-week year, regardless of the number of haircuts. Rent and other fixed expenses are $1,750 per month. Hair shampoo used on all clients is $0.40 per client. Assume that the only service performed is the giving of haircuts (including shampoo), the unit price of which is $12. Andre has asked you to find the following information. 1. Find the contribution margin per haircut. Assume that the barbers' compensation is a fixed cost. Show calculations to support your answer. To find the contribution margin per haircut the formula is: Contribution margin= Selling Price – Unit Variable Costs Selling Price= $12 Unit Variable Costs= $0.40 $12 - 0.40= $11.60 The Contribution Margin per haircut is $11.60 2. Determine the annual break-even...
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...Statistics in Business Tania Correia QNT 295 April 6, 2015 Jeff Jung Statistics in Business Statistics can be defined as the way we look at, understand, and interpret “data” using math. By collecting the data, or information, we can analyze certain portions of this information to allow us to come to a conclusion or guesstimate of what may happen next or even to get an answer to a specific question. It all depends on the purpose of gathering the data. There are four different levels that we can measure statistics. The first would be the nominal level of measurement. It is the lowest of the four ways to characterize data. Nominal data deals with names, categories, or labels, leaving it to be a qualitative type of data. The second level would be, ordinal level of measurement. Data at this level can be ordered, but no differences between the data can be taken that are meaningful. As with the nominal level, data at the ordinal level should not be used in calculations. The third level would be the interval level. This level of measurement deals with data that can be ordered, and in which differences between the data does make sense. Data at this level does not have a starting point. The fourth and highest level of measurement is the ratio level. Data at the ratio level possess all of the features of the interval level, in addition to a zero value. At the ratio level of measurement, not only can sums and differences be calculated, but also ratios. One measurement can be divided...
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...The Scientific Method Paper The Scientific Method is a process that I have always struggled with. It is a process that assists you in organizing your information. It also is useful in the fact that you are able to keep all of your steps in order. The steps that are in the Scientific Method are Observation and Questioning, Hypothesis, Testing, Results, Explanation, and New Question. The Observation and Questioning step is very important. In this step we look at what we want to do an experiment on. In the Hypothesis step, you guesstimate what the outcome of the experiment will be. I feel that the Testing step is self-explanatory. In this step you perform your experiment and test the hypothesis you came up with in the previous step. After you perform your experiment, you have the Results step. This is where you have your outcome. If your outcome supports your hypothesis, then you are able to go onto the next step of the process. But there are times that your outcome will be different than your hypothesis, if this is the case you go back to the beginning of the process. If this happens, you have to do all of the steps all over again. Next we have the Explanation step. You need to figure out an explanation that addresses the question that you are experimenting. The final step is the New Question step. Here you come up with the conclusion to your experiment. Quite often your conclusion could lead to a whole new set of questions, in which would lead to new experiments...
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...10 Reasons why project fails 1) Lack of Team Planning Sessions * There is not an effective way to kick off a meeting than to have the entire team come together for a planning session. This enables everyone not only need to work together on the project artifacts but also need to bond as a team and buy into the project. 2) Decision making problems * Key decisions for strategic, structural or architectural type decisions are made by people who lack of the subject matter expertise to make the decision. When making critical decisions, expert advice is either ignored or simply never solicited. Lack of “situational awareness” results in ineffective decisions being made. Team avoids the difficult decisions because some stakeholders may be unhappy with the outcome. Group decisions are made at the lowest common denominator rather than facilitating group decision making towards the best possible answer. 3) The Accidental Project Manager * In this instance, what typically happens is that a technical person for the software developer, chemist, etc. succeeds at the job. Based on that, should get promoted to project manager and is asked to manage the types of projects they just came from. The problem is they often don’t get training in project management and may well lack the social skills the job calls for, so they flounder and often fail despite previous successes. 4) Lack of Communications * The people who involve in a project will know the project...
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...restaurant you might have: dry goods, chilled goods, frozen goods, beverages, cleaning materials, packaging and so on. Step 2. Create a simple spreadsheet or use the 'simple stock taker’ template from mybusiness1st (located in the assets section below) Step 3. Establish what a 'unit' is for each stock item. You need to establish what you are going to call a ‘unit’ of each stock line and then be consistent in the use of this measurement. e.g. product | unit | comment | Sweetcorn | 120g tin | During stock take count the number of tins. I case count has 12 tins | This can be trickier when you are dealing with small stock items. Where items are fairly low in value so it is best to go to the case or box as a unit and then make a considered guesstimate on loose stock or open...
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...力来解决问题等等。因此，一个互动性很强，和实际联系很紧以及要求分析能力较高的Case Interview可以很好的衡量面试者的这些素质。 (3) Case Interview考察哪些能力和素质 领导能力 咨询师常常需要独立工作，并且带领团队和客户去达成共同的目标，因此领导力对于一个成功的咨询师来说是很重要的。在面试当中，你需要通过主动掌握整个面试，有信心的提问题来表现你的领导力。 分析能力 咨询业的核心就是分析－根据事实提出假设，把数据break down，然后形成一套分析框架，并且最后得出结论和建议。在面试过程当中，你需要通过有效，有目的性的提问等来反映你的分析能力。 Presentation Skill 一旦咨询师对案例进行了完备的分析并且想好了相应的策略，他们就需要把他们的发现和建议展现给整个案例小组和他们的客户。因此，这个能力对咨询工作也是十分关键的。所以在面试当中，宁愿说慢一点，花点时间思考，也不要结结巴巴的做陈词。 精力 咨询公司往往希望他们的咨询师能够在10小时的飞机之后依然精力充沛的出现在客户面前。所以有力的握手，真诚的笑容，自信的眼神以及整洁的外表都是他们所看重的。 冷静 在Case Interview中，面试官有时会刻意营造一种很tough的氛围，比如不断challenge你，或者不断否定你的回答，这不代表你做的不好，而是他们在故意考察你能够面对压力冷静思考。要知道：当咨询师面对客户的时候，面对压力而冷静的发现问题以及思考是很重要的素质。 (4) Case Interview的类型以及特点 Case Interview一般分成三类，guesstimates, Business Cases和brainteasers。下面就这三类分别介绍一下。 Guesstimates 这种问题也常被称作market sizing，就是需要你在没有什么细节提供给你的时候估计一个市场的大小，比如：请估计北京中关村家乐福一天的客流量。和所有的Case Interview一样，你不需要得出一个正确的答案，关键是考察你如何把一个大的问题分解成小的问题来回答。在这种问题中你需要有一些常识（比如北京的人口1000万等）。 Business Cases 最常见的Business Case...
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