Consulting, Training and Event Management Previous Year Questions (PYQs) for XAT: 3+ Solved Questions with Step-by-Step Solutions

Common Description:

TrueColor, an event management company in eastern India, had been in a business of inviting Tollywood singers to a city called Tivanna, and made money out of selling tickets of their concerts. The stars were paid a fixed fee regardless of the number of tickets sold. The company had a specialized team that negotiated the singers’ fee with their managers. However, for selling the tickets of such events, they were reliant on an external media agency called Zedius. Zedius had a long-standing relationship with TrueColor, and had been instrumental in achieving a target of 50,000 tickets for each of the flagship events.

Mr. Sukanta Rao joined TrueColor as an inhouse sales and marketing manager, a position exclusively created for him. The CEO, Mr. Adil Banerjee, had assigned a task of increasing the sales of tickets to 100,000. In Sukanta’s earlier stint, he had seen that similar cities sell more than 75,000 tickets for such events. He felt that, over time, reaching 100,000 was plausible for TrueColor.

The following year, Sukanta discussed with Adil that unless they got into the ticket selling process, they might not be able to improve the ticket numbers. However, this would mean moving away from Zedius, and the transition could cause short-term pains since TrueColor would be entering into unchartered territory.

Further, Sukanta added that TrueColor would achieve self-sufficiency over couple of years. Adil was concerned about the risk of taking over an activity that the organization was not competent at, but understood Sukanta’s point. In the interest of building long-term competencies, he authorized Sukanta to take it forward. Sukanta did not renew Zedius’s contract in the following year; instead, he recruited a skeletal team of three freshers from a premier business school as his support staff.

As the event approached, the team dedicated themselves to executing their plan. However, by the time the ticket sales window closed, they managed to sell only 40,000 tickets. This shift in strategy provoked considerable dissent within the company, challenging Sukanta's decision.

Disturbed by the situation, witnessing the internal turmoil, Adil must now navigate the company's immediate reaction.

Which of the following should now be Adil’s BEST course of action?

Common Description:

Humane Dynamix is a leadership training organization based in Mumbai. Established in 2015, the organization is gradually becoming a leader in behavioral training. In the organization, trainers are assigned to training projects based on their expertise. Corporates seek behavioral training services on a regular basis, from Humane Dynamix, for upskilling their executives. Humane Dynamix is headed by the Chief Executive Officer(CEO), to whom the Training Assignment Officer(TAO) reports. The TAO position rotates among the senior trainers for a fixed tenure; the CEO assigns this position to a senior trainer.

Companies, desirous of hiring Humane Dynamix, share their training needs with the organization. The TAO assigns a trainer to the client. Typically, the satisfied client requests for a particular trainer that the client is satisfied, giving repeat business to Humane Dynamix from the same client company. However, the TAO takes the final call. Years of training experience plays a big role in client satisfaction, and hence, senior trainers conduct most training programs while the newly recruited trainers apprentice with them. However, the senior trainers have the autonomy to decide on who they want to accept as an apprentice.

Further, during a training program, the senior trainer takes most of the sessions, if not all, while the apprentice helps the senior trainers to organize their sessions, and occasionally take a few sessions. As the apprentices gain experience, they start getting their own independent projects, but that typically takes quite some time.

Dheeraj, a senior trainer, takes over as the TAO. As soon as he assumes the office, the CEO shares a concern with him: “We have a lot of young trainers who we have recently recruited. Since they are not known to the outside world, they do not get enough opportunities. Many of them are impatient to prove their mettle. Unless they are assigned more programs, we risk losing them rapidly.”

Dheeraj decided to assign some of the repeat clients, at random, to their young trainers, to address the concerns of the CEO. Many young trainers appreciated him for giving them more opportunities.

Sudha Iyer, a senior trainer, popular for her training programs in “Deceptive Communication Methods,” was surprised to see that some of her long-standing clients were assigned to a young person. She was concerned that the clients would feel shortchanged. Moreover, she was chagrined that she was not even consulted. This led to the reduction in her number of training hours.

Since, Humane Dynamix incentivizes trainers who cross a mandated number of training hours every year, Sudha was also concerned about her possible revenue loss. Sudha wanted Dheeraj to stop assigning established clients to the young trainers. Which of the following actions would BEST help Sudha to stop Dheeraj from assigning her programs to the young trainers?

Common Description:

TrueColor, an event management company in eastern India, had been in a business of inviting Tollywood singers to a city called Tivanna, and made money out of selling tickets of their concerts. The stars were paid a fixed fee regardless of the number of tickets sold. The company had a specialized team that negotiated the singers’ fee with their managers. However, for selling the tickets of such events, they were reliant on an external media agency called Zedius. Zedius had a long-standing relationship with TrueColor, and had been instrumental in achieving a target of 50,000 tickets for each of the flagship events.

Mr. Sukanta Rao joined TrueColor as an inhouse sales and marketing manager, a position exclusively created for him. The CEO, Mr. Adil Banerjee, had assigned a task of increasing the sales of tickets to 100,000. In Sukanta’s earlier stint, he had seen that similar cities sell more than 75,000 tickets for such events. He felt that, over time, reaching 100,000 was plausible for TrueColor.

Just two weeks before the flagship event, Adil received a few emails from competing media agencies that accused Zedius of selling phony tickets in the “black” market. When Adil enquired with the security agency in charge of gatekeeping the events, they told him that they had no mechanism to check the authenticity of tickets.

Which of the following options will BEST help Adil to ignore the accusations from the competing media agencies, and maintain status quo?