{"id":222833,"date":"2024-11-07T16:56:16","date_gmt":"2024-11-07T21:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/news\/?p=222833"},"modified":"2025-06-26T15:57:27","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T19:57:27","slug":"supplying-a-winning-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/news\/2024\/11\/07\/supplying-a-winning-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"Supplying A Winning Solution"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n

Take a common problem for procurement officials across the U.S., such as how to broaden and diversify their pool of suppliers. Give the challenge to teams of college students … to tackle over 24 frenzied hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happens?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a recent supply chain case competition at NC State, the result was a first-place finish by the Poole College team \u2014 and a national panel of state procurement officials as judges who were very impressed by the students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poole\u2019s team, sponsored by the college\u2019s supply chain club, beat eight other contenders at the National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) competition this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was an intense process \u2026 We didn\u2019t stop,\u201d Poole senior Sahithya Vederea says of her team\u2019s frantic hours researching, developing and presenting a plan for a supplier diversity program. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe referred to a lot of Poole classes and our internship experiences to come up with our presentation,\u201d says Vederea, a business administration major with a supply chain management concentration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those classes include Poole\u2019s purchasing and supply management course. Supply chain club adviser and Poole lecturer Brad Ashbaugh<\/a> notes that Poole is among few business schools with such a course. <\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cWe referred to a lot of Poole classes and our internship experiences to come up with our presentation.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Teams weren\u2019t given details about the case until Friday morning and had to be ready for presentations the following morning. In that time, they couldn\u2019t confer with anyone else at Poole. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poole\u2019s students focused on how to use their respective talents, although they hadn\u2019t even met each other before the competition. The team quickly decided who would speak at their presentation and who would take charge of technical aspects and other parts of the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was definitely a roller coaster of an experience,\u201d senior business administration and supply chain management student Jacob Lawrence says. \u201cBut we were able to leverage our different areas of expertise to put together a really solid final piece.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get to the final piece, the team researched ways to make small businesses more competitive in the procurement process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe wanted to empower them and give them opportunity. If smaller businesses don\u2019t have the capabilities, most agencies go to a bigger supplier and award them the contract,\u201d Vederea says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Winning Solution<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The team\u2019s solution involved policy changes, including requiring that any contract under $50,000 be awarded automatically to a small business. They also proposed dividing contracts between big and small suppliers and providing low-interest loans to smaller companies as startup capital to be more competitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNASPO said our technical competence won it for us. The students did a good numerical analysis of small and medium-size businesses and the contracts they produce,\u201d Ashbaugh says. \u201cThey were very confident in the way they parsed the data and found ways for these businesses to compete.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n