The chief of the Waterloo Regional Police Service was again faced with a crisis in the ongoing development of the CIMS project. It was early 2005 and he found himself again debating the future of this increasingly time-consuming and expensive project. Complicating matters now, however, was the fact that several of his partner organizations in CIMS wanted to go live with those portions of the software which had been delivered from the vendor. These organizations had been struggling with antiquated systems, and wanted to push forward with implementing the new system, despite the continuing presence of system problems. What should he do? Should he encourage those regions to wait and rethink the project or was it best to continue moving forward with those elements.
The chief of the Waterloo Regional Police Services (WRPS) found himself preparing for an important board meeting to discuss the fate of the CIMS project. Earlier that year he had recommended that the contract with ITG be cancelled and negotiations toward this end were proceeding. Now the chief was faced with the task of recommending an alternative vendor and approach for completing this important project. WRPS needed to install a suitable computer-automated dispatch and record management system - key CIMS components - prior to December 31, 2005 as 2006 was the federally mandated deadline for implementing this functionality within police agencies. The chief knew that WRPS resources would be heavily tasked to meet the December 31, 2005 deadline, even if a vendor was chosen as soon as possible. The chief was well aware that a decision needed to be made regarding the best vendor to manage the next phase of the CIMS project as quickly as possible to allow WRPS and the vendor project team time to implement the required solution. The chief believed that the first step was to select the best vendor and then present the recommended solution to the board.
It had been four years since the chief of the Waterloo Regional Police Services (WRPS) met with the board to discuss critical next steps regarding vendor management for the Common Information Management System (CIMS) project. CIMS was an information systems project originally involving the WRPS and seven other police organizations. Since then, considerably more resources had been invested into the CIMS project by all stakeholders involved. The relationship with the current vendor, ITG, was growing less productive and the chief knew it was time to reassess the project to determine the best next steps toward successful project implementation. It was September 2005 and the chief found himself preparing for an important board meeting to discuss the fate of the CIMS project.
The case follows the professional and personal lives of John and Andrea Rice, illustrating the challenge of "juggling" the multiple aspects of life (career, family, community, self) in the pursuit of a personal vision of success. Particular attention is paid to the role of entrepreneurship. The case is set in mid 2007. John Rice, founder and CEO of Management Leadership for Tomorrow, is passionate about the nonprofit's commitment to minority leadership development, and access to opportunity. But he also is excited about launching a new for-profit venture, CareerCore, with his wife. He must decide what role to play in each of the organizations going forward.
This case addresses the issues of leadership and change management in the process of transforming an industry through an innovative public-private partnership approach to policy making. In 2005, the Governor of Arizona issued an Executive Order to create a roadmap for the state to achieve statewide electronic health data exchange between various entities in the health care delivery system. The Roadmap development project, a key initiative for Arizona, was led primarily by the State CIO. Being one of the first States to develop a statewide Roadmap, Arizona was being recognized as a national leader in the area of healthcare IT. While CIO and his team had successfully initiated a large-scale transformation within the state, they were now faced with the challenge of transforming the blueprint into reality. This case documents the process of creating this Roadmap and the issues that need to be addressed to achieve a true and lasting transformation in the healthcare arena.
On June 17, 2007, Real Madrid sealed its first Spanish league championship under new president Ramon Calderon, ending an unprecedented title drought. Real Madrid had seen a significant growth in revenues and now was the world's biggest soccer club and among the largest and most profitable sports franchises globally. Although Calderon signed several new stars in his first year, he also rejuvenated the team by acquiring the promising youngsters, thereby moving away from what had been dubbed the "Galacticos Strategy" introduced by former president Florentino Perez. Would the move away form this strategy bring continued successes on the field? And how would it impact real Madrid's business performance?
The announcement of merger or acquisition conveys new information to the capital markets. This note describes how the stock prices of a Buyer and Target behave after the announcement of a deal. First, for an all-stock deal that is certain to go through, the note defines accouchement effects and describes the fundamental arbitrage relationship between Target and Buyer stock prices. It shows how post-announcement prices may be used to infer the market's estimate of synergies. It then explains how the betas of the two companies change post-announcement and the arbitrage relationship between prices in a cash-and-stock deal. Finally, it defines event risk and explains how it affects the prices of the Buyer and the Target.
Describes the governance issues facing the Board of Governors of the American Red Cross. After a series of issues--FDA consent decree on its blood operations; the response to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina--the Red Cross board was under pressure to fix its governance from the public, the media, and from Congress. Describes the Red Cross governance structure and practices in place and the process used to examine them.
Consumers of health care constitute a highly diverse market, but the idea that companies might segment customers and profit by addressing their varied needs seems almost foreign to the health industry. You can tap hidden value by making use of patterns in the demand for health products and services, especially if you segment consumers according to health and wealth at the same time.
A company's ability to function during a flu pandemic is only as good as the weakest link in its supply chain. Hoffman-La Roche, the maker of a frontline antiviral drug, works closely with its suppliers to ensure that their preparedness plans are as robust as its own.
Executives of multinationals partnering with Chinese firms should be alert to Mao Zedong's lingering influence on some of the country's most successful executives--and, in particular, watch for a leadership tactic that can undermine a joint venture.
Private equity fund performance is most often reported in a way that exaggerates the truth. A modified calculation gives a more accurate read of performance and can change a fund's relative rank.
With so many management tools out there, from benchmarking to outsourcing, it's hard to decide which ones to try. To help executives make informed choices, the authors compare levels of use and satisfaction for the most popular tools, and chart the evolution of a select few.
By watching a colleague assemble diverse, high-performing teams, the CEO of the Boston Consulting Group learned the art of nurturing individual strengths and steering team members away from tasks that would expose their weaknesses.
A detached and impassive executive may seem like the corporate decision-making ideal, but people make better choices when they're experiencing intense emotions, according to new research.
Ed Zore is the CEO of Northwestern Mutual, a highly admired 150-year-old insurer. Relevance, not innovation, matters most to customers, he says, and should matter most to companies as well.
Marketers commonly estimate customer lifetime value in order to decide which customers are worth continued investment. But the way companies typically calculate that value is flawed because it overlooks the real option of abandoning unprofitable customers.
This teaching case discusses the decisions facing GlobShop, a global travel-retail company, in its efforts to offshore a significant portion of its information technology (IT) work. In response to the business challenges that arose due to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the company decided to outsource many of its IT activities to an Indian vendor. This case traces the key decisions made by the CIO and the challenges that were encountered during the planning and execution of the company's offshore sourcing strategy. These decisions pertain to the choice of tasks to be offshored, decisions about the vendor and the nature of sourcing arrangement, managing the vendor relationship and change management issues induced by offshoring. As GlobShop nears the completion of its 3-year agreement with the offshore vendor, the CIO is faced with decisions regarding continuing offshore outsourcing, extending the contract and related implications for the future of IT organization at GlobShop.
This teaching case discusses the challenges being faced by the technology managers at Indian Railways (IR) in the current scenario of a resurgent national economy coupled with increasing customer expectations. In the face of growing competition from road and low-cost airlines, to retain its customers, IR has responded by changing its business rules. The Railway Ministry expects a rapid response from Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) to incorporate all these changes in the passenger reservation system (PRS). The old PRS, which is time-tested and reliable, and has been serving the customers' needs for nearly two decades, is now proving to be relatively inflexible to match the rapidly changing business requirements. Although the current scenario of a constant need to change the programming logic of PRS has been making maintenance tougher for CRIS officials, they have realized that PRS is a time-tested, proven, and reliable technology. Though they would be happy to replace the old PRS with a new state-of-art system that would provide them greater maintenance flexibility, the repercussions associated with possible failure of the new system are far too serious. The case exhibits the current dilemma being faced by the head of CRIS, the umbrella agency for information technology (IT) implementation in IR: whether IR should continue using the old PRS technology with its inherent shortcomings, or should it take the risk and go in for a wholesale replacement with a new state-of-art technology which would provide greater maintenance flexibility?