IBM has established a service delivery system to provide service and maintenance parts for its installed base of computers. The case outlines the competitive pressures IBM faces from alternative providers of maintenance services (e.g. other OEMs, third-party maintainers, and independent retailers) and describes the shifting service requirements of computer users. Describes a variety of programs that IBM has undertaken to improve its after-sales service operations, and proposes a variety of alternatives that IBM is considering implementing. Illustrates the value of communication and coordination between different functions within IBM (e.g., between maintenance, manufacturing, distribution, and marketing) to allow services to be provided in a competitive manner and to provide appropriate feedback from the field.
Provides a context for the evolution of information technology in business organizations, explains the emergence of information as an important resource to be managed, and provides a framework for assessing the strategic potential of information in the firm.
"Think global, act local" goes the saying. But Gurcharan Das, who helped build Vicks Vaporub into what is now one of Procter & Gamble's most successful Indian brands, believes that "think local" is at least equally good advice. The key to all business success, he argues, is local passion. The most successful global brands, Das argues, are those that make best use of the rich experience their geographical diversity gives them. Business truths are invariably local in origin, but they are often expressions of fundamental human needs that are the same worldwide. Flexible, open-minded managers can take local insights with a universal character and make them global.
A new paradigm is required to explain patterns of competitive success and failure in information technology. Success flows to the company that establishes proprietary architectural control over a broad, fast-moving, competitive space. Architectural strategies have gained importance in information technology because of the astonishing rate of improvement in microprocessors and other semiconductor components. Since no single vendor can keep pace with the outpouring of cheap, powerful, mass-produced components, customers insist on stitching together their own local systems solutions. Architectures impose order on the system and make the interconnections possible. The architectural controller is the company that controls the standard by which the entire information package is assembled.
For many managers, being strategic means pursuing the opportunities that fit the company's resources. This approach is not wrong, but it obscures an alternative approach in which being strategic means creating a chasm between ambition and resources. Winners find less resource-intensive ways of achieving their ambitious goals. Managers at competitive companies can leverage their resources in five basic ways: by concentrating resources around strategic goals; by accumulating resources more efficiently; by complementing one kind of resource with another; by conserving resources whenever they can; and by recovering resources from the marketplace as quickly as possible.
As CEO of the Swiss Corp. for Microelectronics and Watchmaking (SMH), Nicolas G. Hayek has engineered one of the world's most spectacular industrial comebacks - the revitalization of the Swiss watch industry. But SMH is more than a turnaround story. It is a case study of Hayek's management philosophy and strategic thinking, both of which are strikingly at odds with prevailing wisdom about how to compete in the new economy. For example, conventional wisdom suggests that "stateless" global companies should seek low-cost production wherever they can find it. Yet SMH is committed to its Swiss home base. Ultimately, Hayek's unconventional philosophy embraces corporate muscle and strategic imagination: "If you combine powerful technology with fantasy, you create something very distinct."
For generations, emigrant Chinese entrepreneurs have operated in a network of family and clan across many national borders. Chinese businesses in the Pacific Rim and beyond make up the world's fourth economic power. The author calls this global network of entrepreneurial relationships the Chinese commonwealth. The author details the Confucian tradition and the values that have hindered so many Chinese businesses in the recent past, including Wang Laboratories. The sudden wealth of expatriate Chinese communities and the new possibilities for business still come down to a patchwork of many small enterprises that often have no respect for one another. But a new ideology of economic self-interest that transcends politics and the constraints on traditional Chinese business may lead to even greater integration of the commonwealth.
Day after day, CFOs and investors alike make decisions based on the principles of modern financial theory. Developed in the decades after World War II, these theories began as isolated academic concepts. Today they shape our corporations. Now the thinking is changing. As a result of the increasing globalization of the markets and the increased technological firepower of its participants, there is both a pragmatic and philosophical attack being waged against both the efficient market hypothesis and the capital asset pricing model. As such, the benchmarks and yardsticks that used to matter to managers--such as the well-known measure of stock price volatility, beta, and the ubiquitous credit rating--are now in question. There are, however, only the sketchy outlines of the new philosophies and practices that might eventually become post-modern theory.
In this fictional case study, Vision Software was an interesting and exciting company--on the cutting edge of computer technology and a leader in its field. CEO John Clark was proud of its enlightened human resource policies, including efforts to hire and promote women. Yet something was wrong. In just two years, four top women had resigned after working at Vision for many years. Liz Ames, Director of Consumer Marketing, blamed sexism at Vision, and she had drafted a memo to Clark about it. She described a workplace where women felt undervalued. In the midst of this discouraging atmosphere, Vision's best women were just giving up. Liz turned to a trusted male friend at Vision for advice, and step by step as he read the memo, he had to agree with what she had said. But how should he counsel her? Would Clark be open to the criticism, or would he use it against her? Would she harm her relationships with other men in the company? If he advised against sending it, would he be condoning sexist behavior? A broad range of experts comment on Liz's memo and discuss issues women face in the workplace.
Few companies have systematically revamped their operations with customer loyalty in mind. MBNA credit cards and State Farm Insurance are successful because they have designed their business around customer loyalty--a self-reinforcing system in which the company delivers superior value and reinvents cash flows to find and keep customers and employees. When a company consistently delivers superior value and wins customer loyalty, market share and revenues go up and the cost of acquiring new customers goes down. The company then can pay workers better. Increased pay boosts employee morale and commitment; as employees stay longer, their productivity goes up and training costs fall; employees' overall job satisfaction, combined with their experience, helps them serve customers better; and customers are then more inclined to stay loyal to the company. Finally, as the best customers and employees become part of the loyalty-based system, competitors are left to survive with less desirable customers and less talented employees.
People don't take vacations to "get away from it all," states marketing guru Ted Levitt, but to escape from modern commercialism. And the chief culprit is advertising: omnipresent, relentless, loud, sometimes tasteless. Even if you like a product or love an ad, the ubiquitousness, the repetition of advertising can drive you crazy. But advertising helps a lot too, Levitt asserts. Facilitating the free flow of commerce, advertising creates opportunities and employment and spurs innovation. Informing, entertaining, and exciting, it presents a change of pace amidst the usual news, drama, sports, or MTV. Ads open doors to the products people create to reshape their environments and enhance their lives, the tools they use to get results. And in an era where there is so much to mistrust, advertising is straightforward in its purpose. Acting in behalf of whoever is paying, it hides no agenda but blatantly seeks your money.
Mark Ain is the founder and manager of Kronos, which has grown to a $33 million dollar company in 13 years. The case focuses on Ain's role in the company. Presents data from a personality assessment of Ain and his senior management team as input to this decision.
After 10 years of running a small laboratory at Yale Medical School, Dr. R. Bernd Sterzel assumes leadership of a nephrology clinic in Nurnberg and Erlangen, Germany. In his ambitious efforts to transform the clinic into a leading academic research institution, he encounters numerous challenges associated with health care management in a socialized medicine context.
David Fletcher, manager of the Emerging Growth Fund at a New York investment management firm, decides to assemble a team of analysts to which he can delegate part of his workload. The case explores the challenges of being a producing manager and Fletcher's efforts to select and manage a team of professionals.
LaPeux Eau de Toilette focuses on inventory valuation of a merchandising company. It tests students' understanding of LIFO, FIFO, weighted-average cost, lower-of-cost-and-market rule, FOB destination, FOB shipping point, purchase discounts and duty and taxes on importing. The president and owner, Nicolette LaPeux, is the decision-maker faced with the task of assessing how the accounting methods used in the inventory valuation affect the overall financial position of the company.
The newly appointed president and CEO of Wellington Insurance, a company without hope according to a recent consultant's report, is faced with the challenge of effecting a complete revitalization at Wellington when prospects for the industry and company look bleak. The case series Wellington Insurance (B) and Wellington Insurance (B1) (Condensed B Case) provides the opportunity to experience the full breadth of strategic analysis, from analyzing the competitive options within an industry to assessing an organization's readiness and capability for revolutionary change.
The Wellington (B) case takes the position of the new chief operating officer of Wellington. He is looking back on the successful turnaround achieved by Murray Wallace (this is described in Wellington Insurance (A)), and wondering how he can build on it. In particular, he is concerned about (a) whether the high-stress environment of change that Wallace generated can be sustained, and (b) whether he is in the position to take decisive action, bearing in mind the temporary appointment of the chairman as CEO.