American Express has developed a number of strategic partnerships with Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter to improve their card members experience and lower its customer acquisition cost. The case details the history of these partnerships, examines American Express' own social platforms, and talks about American Express' future plans in the realm of social strategy. It then presents students with two options related to Amex's future options and asks them to pick one.
In April 2011, Vithal Gambhir, the marketing director of Vibhava Chemicals (Vibhava), an entrepreneurial venture and leader in the black phenyl category in the home cleaning agents (HCA) market in South India, was faced with a marketing challenge. A slew of multi-national corporation (MNC) brands in the emerging new category of specialty cleaning agents had whittled down Vibhava's share of the traditional black phenyl category by 50 per cent over the previous eight years. The marketing efforts of the MNCs had also led to a gradual transformation of the HCA market, expanding and segmenting it in terms of applications (e.g. floor-cleaning agents and toilet-cleaning agents) and benefits (e.g. disinfecting, cleaning and deodorizing). As a result, Vibhava's leading brand, 'Black Belt' black phenyl disinfectant, began losing ground in the market. Vibhava had successfully responded to this decline by launching Ozone, a pine-oil-based floor cleaner, in 2003. Positioned as an herbal, eco-friendly, deodorizing floor cleaner, Ozone managed to keep out of the way of Domex, the leading MNC brand of disinfecting floor cleaner; however, during the last couple of years Domex had been available in many variants serving many segments and the market became flooded with both MNC and established Indian brands. While the sale of Ozone rose in absolute terms, Vibhava's share in the growing home cleaning market dropped from 25 per cent in a predominantly traditional product market in the 1990s, to 11 per cent in the transformed market of 2010. Gambhir now faced the daunting challenge of meeting an ambitious sales target of INR1 billion for 2011/12, which was double the sales of the previous year.
Why would busy executives participate in business case studies? The relationship that develops between executives and faculty through the case writing process is a powerful example of sharing and trust. And because a number of executives are unaware of what exactly the process entails, they ask for a description of it. This note describing the process may be customized to suit the needs of all case writers.
This year, television service provider Oz TV's financial figures are troubling, despite steady demand. Is operational performance hurting financial performance? Oz customers rent a set-top box when they buy their programming package. Set-top boxes drive Oz's key performance indicator: utilization. Students examine Oz's box-return process in order to discover the link between financial performance and operational flow measures.
PRIDE Industries made a $2.6 million capital appropriation request to replace older electronics surface mount technology with newer and more capable machinery. PRIDE, a non-profit enterprise that hired workers with disabilities, wished to earn business and reputation based on the universal measures used by customers worldwide — price, quality and delivery — while maintaining its social mission. The proposal looked good on paper, and the company predicted that it was the only way to keep PRIDE’s current electronic manufacturing services customers happy as well as capture new business. One of the other important pieces of the capital expenditure analysis was to study trends in the manufacturing sector, especially evidence that manufacturing was returning to the United States from offshore. Yet, the investment represented a risk for PRIDE if the projected new business opportunities did not materialize.
Simbhaoli Sugars Limited has deployed a new system of communication services through Voice Web, a mobile-based Internet technology, in rural areas for better engagement with the farmers who supply sugarcane to the SSL factory. The importance of perceived value of services to the end-users and the need to involve all stakeholders during the innovation set-up process are explained. Critical aspects of the service innovation concept are used to analyse the issues observed during the pilot deployment of Simbhaoli Sugars Limited’s new communication services.
This case presents a trading situation arising out of the acquisition of Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited, an Indian pharmaceutical firm, by Daiichi Sankyo, Inc., a Japanese pharmaceutical firm, in 2008. After buying out the Ranbaxy’s founding family’s stake in the company, Daiichi Sankyo made a partial tender offer bid for the remaining shares of Ranbaxy. The uncertainty as to whether or not the deal would go through and what the eventual acceptance rate would be resulted in a special situation investment opportunity. In the case, a risk arbitrageur needs to evaluate this potential opportunity and determine an appropriate trading strategy. Key decisions include whether to buy or sell the target stock and when to implement this purchase or sale. In this way, the case presents an unfolding situation augmented with a rich set of relevant secondary data such as news and stock prices, so that students are exposed to a real trading situation. The case requires students to understand market mechanisms and perform detailed analyses to justify their decisions.
Material requirements planning (MRP) systems have been widely used by manufacturing firms to maintain an optimum flow of inputs for best production results. By using an MRP system, a firm can prepare a production plan that specifies the number of sub-assemblies that go into the final products along with the exact timeline of an order, from placement to completion. This case analyzes how Sunita Menon's adoption of an MRP system at A-CAT Corp. (A-CAT) has improved the production-planning process. To make one unit of A-CAT's main product, P0110, requires two P0X units and two P0Y units; in addition, each P0X unit needs two types of subparts: four P1X1 units and three P1X2 units. The case examines the intricacies of procurement, warehousing and processing costs of various material components by critically evaluating different techniques in practice. Using situational scenarios, the case presents lot-sizing techniques - including lot for lot, economic order quantity, least total cost and least unit cost - for balancing costs such as set-up costs, ordering costs and inventory-holding costs.
Logical conditions that link different elements of a business decision are very common in managerial practice. For example, a firm can ship only to and from warehouses that are open; patients needing MRIs can only get service in clinics that have MRI equipment; regarding an old power plant, one can decide to close it or retrofit it, but one obviously cannot retrofit a closed plant. The list goes on. In quantitative modeling of such situations, a natural step is to use IF statements such as IF(a warehouse in city N is open, then we can ship to/from it; otherwise no shipments can be made in/out of a warehouse in N). In optimization models, however, IF statements lead to non-linearity with all the associated challenges. Fortunately, nearly all logical conditions can be modeled linearly using binary variables. This note describes some helpful modeling techniques for doing that.
Well-established fashion brand Eileen Fisher has traditionally appealed to older women. However, to drive growth, Eileen Fisher's management team wants to target a younger demographic and has revamped its Fall product line to offer more fashionable styles to appeal to younger women. But, repositioning the brand has proven to be harder than expected. This case explores the challenges of appealing to new target markets, without alienating existing customers. The case follows Eileen Fisher's initial forays into social media as they chase a younger demographic, and demonstrates the opportunities and pitfalls that await big brands when they enter the world of Web 2.0.
At 2:46pm on March 11th, 2011, a 9.0M earthquake shook the Tohoku (Northeastern) region of Japan. The epicenter of the earthquake was in the coastal waters of Tohoku and reverberations from the quake triggered a tsunami that ravaged the coastal shores of Eastern Japan. The tsunami was the greatest recorded wave in history, with its highest peak at 38.9m and waves higher than 10m hitting 530km of coastal Japan.
In June 2010, Bharti Airtel, India's largest mobile services operator, acquired the African assets of Bahrain-based Zain Telecom for $10.7 billion-the largest ever cross-border deal in emerging markets. Bharti's executives envisioned that they would replicate the highly successful high-volume, low-cost telecom model that they had pioneered for the Indian masses in Africa. But when they began to integrate the companies, Bharti's executives discovered a slew of unexpected challenges, including cultural differences between their Indian and African employees, poorer infrastructure than they had expected with higher-than-anticipated costs, a monopolistic distribution network, strong competitors, a weak partner ecosystem, and a market that was unresponsive to tariff cuts. In early 2012, a year and a half later, the company has outsourced its networks, IT and customer service operations like it did in India; launched a unified brand across the continent; and culturally integrated with its new environment. Key business metrics, including profit margins and market share, are showing early signs of improvement. But questions remain about whether the company will be able to overtake MTN, Africa's leading player, by lowering tariffs like it did in India, and what its strategy should be going forward.
Following the financial crisis of 2007/2008, HSBC CEO Michael Geoghegan saw a fundamental change in global opportunities and risks. With increasing regulation and fierce competition between banks, the Western hemisphere was going to be a tougher place to do business. Emerging markets, however, offered many opportunities. Geoghegan reasoned that in HSBC's case, a turn to emerging markets would be a return to its roots and to managing risks that it knew. But HSBC needed to understand what the implications of the new strategy-"moving to emerging markets"-were for its portfolio and overall risk profile. Especially, how should HSBC reallocate capital freeing up in the West across its diverse geographies and business lines?
The Serena and Lily case describes three challenging situations faced by Lily Kanter, CEO of Serena and Lily, a luxury home goods company. The first vignette involves Marta Calfee, one of Lily's first and most dedicated employees. As the company grows, Marta takes on increasing responsibilities, but it soon becomes clear that her title, compensation and domain are all greater than her actual capabilities, and Lily must determine how to scale back or let go one of her most loyal and trusted employees. In the second vignette, Lily deals with an extremely challenging investor/board member whose abrasive style and conflicting ideas about the strategic direction of the company threaten to severely hinder the company's progress. Finally, Lily is trying to recruit a highly valuable consultant to a permanent position at the company, but must figure out how to compete against a lucrative counter-offer from a highly esteemed retailer.
Sitara was a village in India whose local governing body had 15 members headed by the gram-pradhan. In 2011, the gram-pradhan had approved a project for renovation of a large village pond as per the directives of the central government’s MNREGA scheme. However, on starting the excavation work at the project site, it was found that the area was extremely marshy. Manual labourers turned up at the site everyday but declined to work in life-threatening conditions. MNREGA prohibited the use of machines except in the case of extraordinary circumstances without exactly defining what such circumstances might be. Thus, the gram-pradhan was forced to pay labour fees for no work. The case is set at this juncture, where a solution must be found. Part A illustrates how the Indian style of management that relies on competencies such as jugaad (creative improvisation), innovation, and resourcefulness leads to talent management and capability-building even at the bottom of the pyramid. Part B brings forth the trade-off between the management practice of jugaad and management through “systematic innovation.” Part C sheds light on the public policy approach of examining the whole situation. The case also explores the competencies needed for the effective functioning of social and commercial institutions in the Indian context.
St. Mary Maternity Hospital, a nonprofit organization, had a mission to deliver healthy babies at normal weight and to offer medical care to expectant mothers regardless of their financial situation. This case demonstrates the value of staying focused on achieving a mission statement. To achieve the hospital’s mission, it was important to identify factors that could affect the weight and health of babies. This case demonstrates how a few factors related to birth could result in insightful and actionable recommendations for doctors, administrators, and policy makers.