BY RICHARD RUBNAN QUE

WE, a team of masters students from the National University of Singapore (NUS), recently won US$5,000 in Las Vegas. It was our first visit to the land of casinos.

But we - Neha Gupta, Sujit Mathew and I - did not win the money at the gambling tables. The money was our prize for offering one of the most 'creative, strategic and realistic' answers to New York City's poverty.

Getting to the final round of the CA International Case Competition at The Venetian Resort in Sin City was tough. We went through a stringent selection process and competed against over 60 students before securing a place in the team to represent the NUS and Asia.

Our team leader Pan Shan-Ling, an assistant professor from the NUS School of Computing, played a significant role in bringing us together and grooming us for the two-day competition organised for top universities to demonstrate how business and information technology (IT) can be synergised to deliver superior value to companies globally.

Other participants included universities from the United States and Europe, such as Stanford University, University of Michigan, University of British Columbia and University of Helsinki.

Participants were tasked to solve a real-life problem of HHS-Connect - an integrated online portal specially designed for New Yorkers to learn and enjoy their benefits leading to self-sufficiency. Today, HHS-Connect only allows them to shop for the benefits (including health, crime and justice and human services) they are eligible for.

Although a great leap forward in local government service, HHS-Connect faces three main problems:

• how to make the portal relevant to the common people;
• how to ensure that data management, privacy and security, and proper governance measures are well in place;
• how to ensure that the HHS-Connect portal is still there once New York City's mayor changes.

We had to address these key challenges in 16 hours.

Coming from Asia - we were the only Asian team in the competition - we started on very shaky ground. For one thing, we did not know what HHS-Connect was all about, how the New Yorkers perceived the scheme and what were its benefits.

Although we were given the case a few days before the presentation, the subject was so broad that we had much difficulty trying to pin down the key elements and problems.

So we split the task, with each of us tackling the job he or she was most competent at doing: Neha, a Master of Business Administration student, took care of finance and governance; Sujit, a Master in Computing student, looked after the operating model; and I focused on the strategic marketing.

We concluded that HHS-Connect was not just a website; it could also be a strong social empowerment tool for New Yorkers. Thus we were determined not to provide an operational solution, but offer a strategic proposition instead.

Unlike most teams which gave detailed operational and IT solutions to the existing problem, we developed a strategic solution, proposing to broaden the scope of HHS-Connect to integrate more organisations, such as those from education, career services and housing. This would help reach out to more people and empower New Yorkers to be self-sufficient.

It was an intensive two-day battle of wits, strategies and endurance over a series of gruelling preparation and Q&A sessions. The judging panel, comprising senior executives from HHS-Connect and CA International, found our approach creative and more strategic, as compared to the other participating teams.

On hindsight, not knowing too much about HHS-Connect was, in fact, our advantage. Without any preconceived notions about the project, we were able to look at the case objectively and offer fresh perspectives, which impressed the judges and won the second prize.

Guided by the vision of turning New York into a city of self-sufficient individuals, our strategy sparked a lot of interest among the judges. They informed us that they intended to explore our ideas further, hopefully turning some of them into reality.

To us, the first-hand experience of participating in a case competition was truly memorable. The US$5,000 cash prize we won was just icing on the cake. We took more pride in knowing that senior executives had found value in our ideas.

We hope that our proposal could also be applicable in Singapore. For instance, we could integrate various Web tools such as Singpass with services offered by government agencies such as the Housing and Development Board and the Ministry of Health.

Despite not spending enough time visiting the casinos as we hoped to, Las Vegas now holds a special meaning for us. It was at this very city where we 'gambled' - and won.

This article was first published in The Business Times on December 22, 2008.