In July 2017, software and device giant Microsoft [NasdaqGS: MSFT] adopted a new accounting standard that market observers described as one of "the most historic accounting changes to hit the U.S. capital markets in decades." Twelve years in the making, the Financial Accounting Standards Board's (FASB) 2014-09 Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606) laid out new rules for making revenue recognition consistent across industries, both in the U.S. and internationally through its International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) equivalent, IFRS 15. While implementation of the standard; beginning in fiscal year 2018, would have an impact on many industries, perhaps the greatest effect would be felt by software companies, where "multiple-element arrangements" that bundled software licenses, upgrades, and post-contract customer support or services were ubiquitous. This case focuses on helping students understand the updated standards for revenue recognition, both in the U.S. through Financial Accounting Standards Board's (FASB) 2014-09 Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606); and internationally through the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) equivalent, IFRS 15.
This case describes the sourcing challenge faced by a firm which is involved in contract manufacturing of a device. The company must decide whether to continue as a contract manufacturer where they are engaged in a wholesale price contract, or they should get into the development of their channel by engaging with the design firm through a revenue sharing contract.
The case narrates the evolution of the Alibaba Group, starting with Alibaba.com in 1999, in four different phases, with the last phase beginning after its IPO in 2014. The evolution is described from a social sustainability perspective, highlighting Alibaba's initial efforts to help small businesses in China access the world markets and later, its focus on facilitating e-commerce led entrepreneurship in rural parts of China. Not surprisingly, Alibaba Group's evolution coincided with China's economic growth, as the e-commerce platforms have significantly contributed to the growth of businesses and consumerism in China. Specifically, the development of e-commerce ecosystem by Alibaba Group, created a platform where not only retail businesses, but also allied third party service providers could emerge and grow. After its IPO in 2014, Jack Ma, Alibaba Group's chairman, explicitly defined "E-commerce in rural areas" as one of the three strategic directions going forward. The case discusses in detail the two rural initiatives "Taobao Villages" and "Rural Taobao" that the Alibaba group pursued as part of its rural strategy. It is estimated that the e-commerce of Taobao villages created more than 840,000 direct job opportunities and rural Taobao reached 202 counties in 22 provinces and established 9,278 village-level service stations by August 2016. The case also provides a brief overview of the ecommerce industry in India and ends with the questions: if there is a way for e-commerce players to provide socially sustainable business opportunities for the Indian rural population and how Alibaba should plan its entry and growth in the Indian market.
Airvent Fans Co., which manufactures ceiling fans for two OEM customers, Tropical and WindStar, is challenged in fulfilling the demands of its customers. Its plant, currently operating at the full capacity of 0.8 million fans annually (3200 fans/day), is looking at the possibility of improvements within current available resources to increase output in order to handle the immediate future demand, before deciding whether to outsource some of the operations in the long term. This involved thorough studies of the processes, and it was concluded that capacity enhancements were required at various stations. To handle future projected demand that is rapidly growing, the management plans to further increase the planned capacity of the plant to suitable levels. The current layout is incapable of handling such a scale of operations and thus, the concept of lean manufacturing is applied to help restructure the plant's layout and operations. The design and improvements required the determination of various factors. This case study identifies and estimates the various parameters needed to design such a system. Process Flow Analysis and Value Stream Mapping are used as tools to understand and identify the bottlenecks and sources of problem. Immediate demand is met by implementing batch sizes based on Economic Production Quantity (EPQ). For the long term, investments are made in machinery, the factory layout is revised for better material flow, and the assembly line operations are decoupled to achieve higher flow rate. The plant ultimately adopts a Make-to-Stock system from the earlier Made-to-Order system.
Grameen Koota (GK) is a micro finance institution (MFI) that offers several socially focused loans for poor and low income households. Its collateral-free loans and other services are targeted at women from poor and low-income households to improve their economic opportunities for inclusive development. Udaya, CEO had set GK on a strong foundation for growth after a period of consolidation and was planning to accelerate growth. GK was growing at 2x but needed to grow at 4x. CEO was facing a dilemma as to whether GK should set up new branches and increase the customer base for lending operations or mine their existing branches. GK had started expanding beyond South and Western India by setting up operations in Central India. The case describes the strategies adopted by GK to consolidate and grow. It raises potential issues and opportunities including transitioning from microfinance to broader financial services, growing through rapid acquisition and expansion of customer base as well as lending operations. Should they retain borrowers merely as customers of a commercial, financial service or aim to make these poor borrowers financially self-reliant? The case also highlights the strategic options for GK to achieve its 2020 aspirations.
We Sell Everything in Software (WSES) Inc., sold innovative off-the-shelf products and had customers across the world. WSES specialized in providing software solutions for different industries such as defense, clinical research, consumer goods, capital markets, security, banks, retail, and insurance among others. Although the products were commercial off-the-shelf, many clients required personalization and after sales support which WSES was happy to provide. WSES did not have a structured approach to take decision regarding chasing a sales lead. Therefore, it incurred high marketing cost including their travel costs, client visits, time spent by the sales team/technical experts/support staff, and logistics costs; most importantly, this list excluded the cost of advertising, which in effect meant that the advertising costs were over and above the ones mentioned. The marketing team had several beliefs about chance of winning a deal across different geographical locations, different domains, etc. However, none of these beliefs have been validates. Jack Williams, the CEO of WSES, was worried that despite having such a huge expenditure list, the sales conversion possibilities based on the pipeline was at best an ancillary information, as there was no substance in justifying ''gut feeling''. Thus, WSES engaged Liz with a Ph.D. in statistics to understand if they could determine a structured approach to check whether the beliefs of the marketing team were in fact correct or not. Jack also believed that simple statistical analysis could help WSES with useful insights about sales conversion.
This case describes the activities and documents the challenges faced by a small-scale firm in the unorganized sector of textile wet processing industry in India. While the small scale and manual nature of operations allows firms in this industry much flexibility of accepting a wide variety of orders, in terms of size and the type of processing needed by the customers, it also poses quality and delivery related challenges that arise due to the manual nature of operations. The case therefore exposes students to the operational trade-offs between flexibility, cost, quality and delivery time and highlights the tensions between various competitive dimensions in a business scenario. The students are then provided a choice of options to choose from, which will require them to consider the pros and cons of choosing one dimension over the other, in the context a small-scale firm in an unorganized sector of an emerging market, that is constrained for resources.
This case describes how Feeding America, the third-largest nonprofit organization in the US, designed a marketplace for allocating donated food across its network of food banks. It considers the promises and pitfalls of using market-based allocation in the context of a centralized artificial currency market, and evaluates the importance of different design components in making the marketplace efficient and fair for all participants.
This case describes how Feeding America, the third-largest nonprofit organization in the US, designed a marketplace for allocating donated food across its network of food banks. It considers the promises and pitfalls of using market-based allocation in the context of a centralized artificial currency market, and evaluates the importance of different design components in making the marketplace efficient and fair for all participants.
When Satya Nadella took over as CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he inherited a firm fading toward irrelevance, plagued by internal fights and inertia. Earlier that year his wife, Anu, had given him a best-selling book by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck entitled Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, suspecting it might give Nadella some ideas for Microsoft. He adapted the idea to encourage employees to shift from Microsoft's historical "know-it-all" culture to embrace a "learn-it-all" curiosity. The case study provides background on Nadella's challenges and context, as well as how he and his leadership team executed their culture change effort.
At the age of 42, in the midst of a successful and lucrative career as the owner of an international retail consultancy, Andrew Thornton realised he had nothing more to give to his business. He quit the agency in 2006 and used his buy-out money as a down-payment for two Budgens supermarkets in north London. When profits at one store fell in 2010, he reached crisis point. With a deep conviction that companies should have a broader focus than profit alone, he founded Heart in Business, a consultancy focused on unlocking the potential of employees, and used his Belsize Park store as a testing ground. By 2016, like-for-like sales were growing at 5% - while neighbouring stores' figures were in decline - and the average length of service at Thornton's Budgens was 54% longer than that of the control store. Andrew's conviction that freeing people's potential and creativity delivers tangible business results now had strong evidence to support it: his sales figures provided that. But even better evidence was on the way, from the global assessment and training organisation BEING at Full Potential , whose Human Potential Assessment tool measured how much human potential the store was utilising and compared it to a 'control' store in a neighbouring postcode. Thornton's Budgens rated higher on every single measure. Through investing in his people with specialised coaching, Andrew had won not just their dedication, engagement and commitment, but their whole hearts and minds. By purposely trying to weave authenticity, cohesion, empathy, self-leadership, enquiry and creativity into every fibre of the business, Andrew not only raised levels of engagement - and profit as a result - but ignited the spirits of all who worked for him. In fact, it was precisely the harnessing and utilisation of his people's passions that led to their increased productivity.
It was the 28th of February 2012, and Joshua Shen, an investment associate with a large banking group, found himself saddled with a project that blurred the lines between his professional and personal lives in an unexpected manner. His Chief Investment Officer had sent to him a fact sheet on a proposed private placement subscription to the shares in Cordlife Group for a private banking client, and tasked him to prepare a valuation report on the company so that he could decide whether to recommend the private placement to the client. Cordlife was not your typical firm: instead of selling everyday consumable goods and services, it was an umbilical cord tissue bank, in the business of life itself. Joshua was familiar with the company: he and his wife had just banked their first-born's cord cells with them. But, more often than not, a good product does not necessarily mean a good company, and a good company does not necessarily mean a good stock. How does one value such a business? Should he recommend the investment to the client, and on what basis?
Koperasi Mitra Dhuafa (KOMIDA), the second largest microfinancing institution in Indonesia, was to launch its digital mobile platform by the end of 2018. The trial in selected field offices had begun. Among the many objectives, the new platform had to improve the efficiency and reliability of KOMIDA's nationwide field operations. The operational director, the point person for this initiative, had to make sure that the operations department back in its Jakarta headquarters could work well with more than 200 KOMIDA field offices nationwide. He keenly remembered the recent failure of a smart card pilot. It had to be scrapped due to cost concerns and a lack of acceptance from KOMIDA's clients. How could he ensure that the coming trials would lead to a successful rollout? What should he watch out for to keep things progressing smoothly? This case describes KOMIDA's motivations behind such an initiative and its challenges in managing the project and their vendor, TBOP. It discusses how IT project management should be mindful of the prevailing cultural and industry norms in a country. By focusing on digitalisation and the promise of deep analytics, it also discusses how an organisation can become "digital-ready".
Dr. Richard Hofstetter was wondering what was to become of his acoustic disruption technology (ADT), a technology that used sounds to change behavior patterns of several species of wood boring beetles. Initial lab tests indicated that customized sounds would change the behavior of pine bark beetles in a way that would make the insects less likely to attack a tree and generally less likely to survive and reproduce. While the technology was not designed to protect large areas of forest, it represented an environmentally-friendly way to protect individual trees on private property or high-value trees within national forests, parks, or other public areas. Unfortunately, the technology languished in a university research lab, attracting some interest from potential customers but little financial support for the needed field-testing and development. Dr. Hofstetter was eager to begin field-testing and to gain support for the commercialization of an ADT device. However, future decisions hinged on some key questions: Was this target market large enough to attract funding from external parties? If so, was a focus on public, agricultural or private-land-owners the best bet for obtaining the cash needed to jump-start the project? What sort of proposal would be most attractive to potential investors?
The Virginia Lottery offered scratcher games for which consumers could instantly win an array of prizes. In the summer of 2007, finance professor Scott Hoover determined that the lottery's website had provided false information about the number of prizes outstanding for some scratcher games. After a ten-month investigation, Hoover and a team of attorneys had gathered evidence to support a specific allegation of fraud. The lottery was selling scratcher tickets for which no grand prizes were possible, yet, its website posted information indicating that grand prizes were, in fact, still outstanding. Hoover and his attorneys worked behind the scenes to seek reform and remedies from the lottery, but those efforts were unsuccessful. He wonders whether he should go public with his allegations and file a lawsuit against the lottery. Several important ethics-related questions are posed. Does Hoover have a moral obligation to inform consumers of the apparent fraud? Should Hoover demand a return of the lottery's alleged illegal gains when those gains have purportedly benefited Virginia's educational system? Are there other approaches that do not involve Hoover going public that might motivate the lottery officials to correct the information?
Despite L&R Pallet having become the largest pallet manufacturer in the Rocky Mountain region, it was facing dire staffing and financial difficulties in 2013. James Ruder, the 44-year-old president of L&R Pallet, was convinced it was just a matter of time before the company closed its doors. However, after taking a mission trip to Peru and hearing God's message to "love on" his employees, Ruder decided to hire seven refugees from Burma in a desperate attempt to find an alternative source of labor. Within a week, the Burmese employees were outperforming his other workers. Thinking he had found the solution to his employee problems, Ruder hired an additional 18 refugees. Within several weeks, though, he found that he had a real mess on his hands with the refugees getting injured, some of his Mexican workers calling him a "Mexican hater," and the rest of his staff resenting the attention he was showering on the refugees. Ruder needed to determine how to handle the growing tension within his company's culture as well as find the necessary human capital to run his business.
This case illustrates the challenges, particularly cash flow, experienced by a team of entrepreneurs as they deal with startup issues in a coworking social enterprise, Common Ground Coworking (CGC). CGC is located in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador and was created to fill an important gap in the province's startup ecosystem by providing a flexible, affordable workspace for early-stage startups and independent professionals to build their businesses amongst the ideas, inspiration, and support of fellow like-minded professionals. As a social enterprise, CGC was structured similarly to a for-profit business, but its mission was social. Instead of paying dividends to owners/shareholders, profits would be reinvested to support better services/amenities for members. The case is set in August 2014 just four months after CGC's opening, as Executive Director, Jennifer Smith seeks to deal with financial issues that threaten CGS's future. She had to decide what solutions were best to address the immediate and long-term financial issues faced by the organization.