AS an information systems undergraduate, developing business models, identifying unique selling points and crafting business strategies are not what my classmates and I typically do in class. But that was exactly what I was immersed in when I participated in the CaseIT 2009 competition in Vancouver, Canada, last month.

The contest proved to be an exciting and enriching experience for me. Together with my team-mates Elaine Hee and Andy Quah from the NUS Business School, we had to fend off some stiff competition to win this year's contest.

Hosted by Simon Fraser University, CaseIT is an international undergraduate business case competition with a strong focus on Management Information Systems (MIS).

Besides NUS, there were 15 other leading universities which took part this year, including Carnegie Mellon University of the US, Canada's University of Calgary, Maastricht University of the Netherlands, and fellow Singaporean varsity, the Singapore Management University.

As part of the competition, each team was given 24 hours to analyse a MIS-based case, put up suitable proposals and prove the viability and profitability of the case. The presentation itself was a gruelling affair, as we were required to present our case after an entire day of case deliberation with precious little time for sleep.

A key factor that helped our team was our multi-disciplinary training and skill sets which enabled us to complement one another's strengths.

Having previously taken part in case competitions, Elaine was our team leader in charge of overall strategy formulation. Andy leveraged on his finance background to provide a detailed analysis of the business viability and profitability. I helped to position IT as a strategic contributor to the business, while identifying the possibilities, limitations and risks relating to the proposed technology. The result was a team well-equipped to present a comprehensive and in-depth case that made an impact on the panel of judges comprising industry professionals from a variety of companies.

The given business case revolved around TripIt, a free online trip planner and travel itinerary website for organising vacations, group trips and business travel.

What's unique about TripIt is that it helps travellers to create itineraries based on their bookings on online travel agencies such as Expedia or Travelocity. All travellers need to do is e-mail their booking confirmations to TripIt and a master itinerary would be created.

The team identified three key areas that would help TripIt: how to increase its user base; how to retain customers; and finally, how to generate revenue.

In our opinion, what differentiated us from the competition was our clear, overarching strategy for the case. We termed it the P3 strategy - Participation, Product development and Profit maximisation. These would help TripIt increase its user base, retain customers and generate revenue.

This strategy was further enhanced by the incorporation of novel IT applications in our proposal. This included a Green Locator, designed to help TripIt users see the number of carbon credits tied to a particular airline or hotel. This would help them calculate the environmental footprint of their travel itinerary and give them the freedom to select a service provider that was more environmentally friendly.

The NUS team also excelled in the lightning round of the competition, which tested the ability of team members to think on their feet. All four finalist teams were posed exactly the same set of questions and had only 60 seconds to deliberate before being given another 90 seconds to answer the questions.

Besides participating in this competition, I also gained tremendously from the other programmes held around the event. One of these was a talk delivered by Ian Banks, vice-president for Global IT, at the CIO Association of Canada.

At that event, Mr Banks shared his observation that there is a strong demand for a new breed of IT professionals. These professionals are able to successfully fuse IT knowledge to formulate effective business solutions that can generate a competitive advantage for businesses worldwide.

Moving forward, our experience at the CaseIT competition has impressed on us the significance of positioning technology as a strategic advantage provider to achieve business goals. We are looking forward to applying these insights that we have gained to our studies and prospective careers.

The writer is a third-year Information Systems undergraduate at the National University of Singapore

This article was first published in The Business Times.