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The associate director of hospitality services at a large university had to address overcapacity at an on-campus eatery. The eatery was experiencing long lineups and severe bottlenecks, especially at its full-service coffee outlet. Seating capacity was also short of demand, and no additional space was available. The associate director also faced pressure from university administration to consider closing a nearby eatery as a result of its poor profitability, but doing so would put additional strain on the already overcapacity eatery. After examining profitability and completing a corporate assessment, the associate director expected to have a better idea of how to tackle the current capacity and profitability issues.

Amazon was the biggest Internet-based retailer in the United States and had frequently been featured on lists of the most admired companies. In 2015, The New York Times published an article that portrayed Amazon as a ruthless employer with brutal human resource management practices and a toxic work atmosphere. Employees were divided in their opinions: some found the culture invigorating and others found it hard to survive in. Leaders in the industry came to Amazon’s defence, while employees at other organizations began to disclose their own experiences of toxic work environments. Could Amazon continue to grow, thrive, and retain employees if it maintained its current employee management strategy? Did stress foster innovation, and, if so, at what point did that stress become destructive?

On July 28, 2014, the eRecon technical team at Physician Services Group in Hospital Corporation of America, gathered in the main conference room just as it did every Monday morning. The goal of the meeting was to review the project plan and update task completion for the team's two-year undertaking — a six-phase, in-house development of a custom, web-based accounting software called eRecon. As the team members worked through each task and updated the percentage that they had completed to date, they grew increasingly concerned about obtaining the critical source data that they required from the human resources department. They were approaching their deadline, and it was unclear what the consequences would be if they did not obtain the data on time, and what impact the delay would have on the completion deadline of December 8, 2014, for the next phase. With 125 end users patiently waiting on eRecon’s completion, could the technical team ensure the success of the project?

In 2011, China-based Wensli Group’s newly appointed chairwoman was preparing to transform the company’s silk business into a global luxury brand. It was a lofty goal for a company that started out as a township silk factory before growing into the largest silk-producing company in China. Tapping into the luxury market, however, presented a challenge because Chinese companies were better known for producing cost-conscious products. That meant Wensli, a family-owned business, was facing a huge hurdle in building a brand in a marketplace where it simply had no experience. What steps are needed for the company to gain a foothold in the high-end luxury segment currently dominated by European players? Should the company seek talent expertise from beyond its borders to build an international luxury brand?

The purpose of this note is to introduce students to the basic use and vocabulary of Microsoft Excel. Excel is commonly used to do quantitative analysis in business. Students will encounter Excel applications in just about every area of business, including finance, accounting, operations management, marketing, and analytics.

This teaching note provides step-by-step illustrations and practice problems to assist students in learning how to use basic mathematical functions in Microsoft Excel. These functions are the necessary building blocks for many spreadsheet models. This teaching note includes practice exercises, answers, and a supporting Excel workbook for students.

The purpose of this note is to illustrate how to use cell references in Microsoft Excel. References are necessary when using functions and building models. This teaching note provides students with practice exercises and a supporting Excel workbook.

The purpose of this note is to illustrate the use of good modelling practices in Microsoft Excel. An effective spreadsheet model can be a valuable decision-making tool for businesses wanting to improve or expand their operations. To do so, a model must provide information relevant to the decision maker.

The purpose of this note is to introduce the concept of logical statements in Microsoft Excel and to illustrate the use of Excel’s built-in logic functions. The note includes practice exercises and their solutions, and a supporting Excel workbook for students.

The purpose of this note is to illustrate the use of Microsoft Excel functions for generating descriptive statistics for continuous data. These functions are common when analyzing data to provide insights for decision making. The note includes practice exercises and their solutions, and a supporting Excel workbook for students.

Histograms are graphs that provide a large amount of useful information for all types of data and display the frequency of observations in a data set. The purpose of this note is to introduce histograms for several types of data, provide examples of insights that can be gained and calculations that can be performed using histograms, and demonstrate how to build histograms in Microsoft Excel. In addition, this note reviews the Normal distribution, which can be used to approximate many empirical distributions. The note includes practice exercises and their solutions, and a supporting Excel workbook for students.

The purpose of this technical note is to introduce and illustrate the use of Microsoft Excel’s built-in advanced logic functions. Excel’s advanced logic functions add logical capabilities to normal descriptive statistics functions. The note includes practice exercises and their solutions, and a supporting Excel workbook for students.

The purpose of this note is to illustrate the use of Data Tables in Microsoft Excel. Data Tables are commonly used for performing sensitivity analyses, sometimes called “What If?” analyses, and for preparing data for graphs. Data Tables can also be used to enable a Monte Carlo simulation in a spreadsheet in more advanced models. The technical note includes practice exercises and their solutions, and a supporting Excel workbook for students.

The purpose of this note is to illustrate the use of Microsoft Excel’s Goal Seek feature. The technical note includes practice exercises and their solutions, and a supporting Excel workbook for students.

Jade eServices Pvt. Limited (Jabong), an e-retailer of fashion products in India, regularly had to balance conflicting expectations from its supplier brands and consumers. The discounts that e-retailers had to offer to consumers to generate sufficient sales resulted in brand dilution, which compelled these brands to avoid the online channel. After allowing large discounts on Jabong’s website for two years, Puma, a major international sports shoe brand, decided to stop discounting product lines that were contributing to 14 per cent of Jabong’s footwear sales. Puma products helped to attract new customers, and Puma’s decision had the potential to affect the commercial terms offered by other footwear brands, which would have even more impact on Jabong. Jabong’s director of sports apparel knew that he was unlikely to meet the required growth figures without discounts on Puma’s products. He needed a new strategy to compensate for Puma’s withdrawal of discounting options, and he needed it immediately.

In 2015, many people in southwest Sri Lanka were experiencing severe health problems as a result of poor water sanitation, decaying pumps and pipes, and the resultant unsanitary water. With Sri Lanka’s dubious credit record and extremely poor economy, the country's government was unsure of how to raise the US$70 million that was required to build new sanitation plants and replace many aging pipes throughout the region. Would it have to accept the first offer of support or would its long-time allies from other foreign governments come to the rescue? There was little doubt that Sri Lanka would be faced with a number of caveats and conditions as part of any agreement to secure the necessary funding. Furthermore, even if the country could find the funds, would the designated officials use them appropriately without falling prey to corruption? As in any developing country, there were many concerns that needed to be addressed, and very few resources with which to address them.

In 2015, the chief content officer at Netflix was responsible for the company’s globalization strategy, which included $5 billion in new content and an expansion to nearly every part of the world by the end of 2017. Although original programming helped Netflix to grow its subscriber base, it was also very expensive. As a result, Netflix earnings were declining even as the company added new subscribers. The company's chief financial officer warned that the financial situation would only worsen due to the high fixed costs associated with content development and international expansion. See supplement 9B16M119.<br><br>The case is a sequel to “Netflix lnc.: Streaming Away From DVDs” (9B12M040), which provides a history of Netflix, examines its U.S. strategy, and familiarizes students with both the impact of disruptive technologies and the link between technology and business model viability. This case can be used to build on the lessons outlined in the previous case. It also works as a stand-alone case, either to focus on international market entry and globalization or to examine the challenges that digital media companies face, particularly piracy and content regulations.

The case supplement focuses on the implementation of Netflix's global expansion in early 2016. As criticism of its strategy mounts, the company's share price declines and Netflix encounters problems with censorship and content laws in various countries. ln some locations, governments attempt to block the service. This is a supplement to 9B16M118.

Spreadsheet to accompany product 9B16E010.

Spreadsheet to accompany product 9B16E011.