CaseIT competition marks 11 years at the top

Schools from across the globe will gather in Vancouver this week to compete at CaseIT, the Beedie School of Business’ annual undergraduate Management Information Systems (MIS) case competition.

The competition will be held from February 5 to 8, and will encompass a corporate networking event, a discussion panel, and a 24-hour case deliberation. This year’s case will focus on the topic of “Big Data”, a collection of data sets so large and complex, that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications.

CaseIT offers business undergraduate students from around the world an opportunity to showcase their skills in areas such as teamwork, problem solving and critical thinking in real-life business scenarios through strategic IT analysis and presentation in front of a panel of industry professionals.

Since its launch in 2004, CaseIT has grown into the largest student-run MIS case competition in North America, each year attracting some of the best and brightest minds from schools all over the world.

“The organizing experience is rigorous but extremely rewarding,” says Nicholas Heng, Vice Chair of the 2014 CaseIT organizing committee. “Each year’s organizing committee tries to provide a captivating competition, by innovating the format of the competition every few years. This year we are incorporating a wildcard round that will allow teams a second chance to enter the competition’s final round.”

Initially launched by two Beedie undergraduates as an internal MIS case competition, CaseIT has since grown with each passing year, first expanding to Western Canada in 2005; the United States and Denmark in 2007; Africa, Asia, and Europe in 2008; Australia in 2012; and finally welcoming its first Latin American team in 2013.

The 16 universities competing this year include HEC Montréal; Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Queensland University of Technology, Australia; National University of Singapore; and Corvinus University of Budapest.

The Beedie School of Business is a founding sponsor of CaseIT, along with the CIO Association of Canada, and world-leading enterprise software provider SAP AG. In addition, Microsoft has been announced as the technology sponsor of the 2014 competition.

For more information about CaseIT, visit http://caseit.org