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This case is a supplement to Bei Capelli (A).

In the last two years, Ujaala Borderline had lost two key accounts and the bidding process for a third large account. Ujaala Borderline’s CEO and an executive VP had just left a meeting with the firm’s largest client, Sweekar Iron and Steel. Sweekar’s CEO had informed them that he was taking his firm’s business from Ujaala Borderline and going with another provider. He had pointed out several servicing issues that had occurred over the last two years and considered these issues to have been ignored. These problems included errors in policies and quotes, and inefficiencies in communication due to Ujaala Borderline’s many organizational changes and high staff turnover. As the CEO left the meeting, he wondered what had happened. He had recently been profiled in a national newspaper as the CEO of the leading general insurer in India, but now felt that he was embroiled in changes that he knew he had created. The CEO realized that Ujaala Borderline had many problems and knew that he had to act quickly and decisively to turn things around or else risk his job.

Established in 1945, MGT Group was headquartered in France. Its LSD factory was a well-known global engineering provider specializing in the design and manufacture of high-precision valves. At the end of 2007, MGT decided to close the LSD factory in France and relocate it to Fuzhou, China. Two people were put in charge of this project: Kevin Lurton, vice chief operations officer of MGT Control Systems Division, and Jian Li, the general manager of MGT Fuzhou Company. Lurton and Li faced a series of challenges, ranging from the need for strategic planning to the need for an implementation policy for supply chain reconstruction during the cross-border factory relocation.

The case describes the situation faced by the vice president of A-CAT Corp. The company was a mid-sized manufacturer and distributor of domestic electrical appliances, largely catering to the price-sensitive rural population. The firm operated two medium-sized facilities in a remote district in Vidarbha, India. A-CAT manufactured a wide range of electrical appliances including TV signal boosters, transformers, FM radio kits, electronic ballasts, battery chargers, and voltage regulators. The focus was on its flagship product, the VR500 voltage regulator. The team planned to identify potential suppliers/vendors with their attendant strengths and weaknesses and to do so in a well-documented and structured manner. Analytical hierarchy process was a technique that could be used to meet this challenge.

In July 2004, Bombardier Aerospace announced its intention to develop a new family of aircraft called CSeries. In May 2007, three years after the initial announcement, the final decision on whether to proceed with the initiative was still pending. Moreover, during this period, the company released several confusing announcements that raised concerns among investors and industry analysts regarding the sustainability of the company’s long-term strategy. In the meantime, Brazilian Embraer had invested heavily in research and development and had taken the leadership position in the regional aircraft segment from Bombardier. Consequently, Bombardier was faced with a serious dilemma of whether or not to launch the CSeries project. The decision was expected to have a major impact on the future market positioning of Bombardier.<br><br>Students may be asked to act as advisors to Pierre Beaudoin, president and chief executive officer of Bombardier Aerospace, and recommend whether the company should proceed with the CSeries initiative. More specifically, students should do a full analysis of the company’s external environment, identify the alternatives available to Beaudoin, assess these options based on internal and external environments, and recommend a course of action. For Beaudoin, the recommendation was due before the annual meeting of shareholders, scheduled on May 29, 2007.

The manager of Visitor Services with Saskatchewan Park Services was thinking ahead to next year, even though 2011 was still four months away. Park Services had experienced a number of turbulent years around the provincial park campground reservation system. While the problems experienced were largely invisible to the public, over the years the behind-the-scenes actions required to process campground reservations had placed an onerous burden on Park Services staff, both in Regina (in Saskatchewan, Canada) and in the local provincial parks. Additionally, the present system severely limited the type of services that could be developed for tourists and campers due to the lack of quality data on campers. <br><br>While steps had been taken in 2009 and 2010 to address some of the major problems surrounding the campground reservation system, serious issues remained that required action. This was particularly true when the system in place in Saskatchewan was compared to new campground reservation systems recently employed in Alberta, Manitoba, and the federal national park system. The manager reflected on the turbulent 2008 season, the relative calm in 2009 due to the success of temporary fixes, and the new issues that had arisen in 2010. She needed to decide on a more permanent solution that resolved the operational problems of the present reservation system while also laying the foundation for improved services for campers.

In 2006, Mudra Communications, the third-largest advertising agency in India, is in the middle of an organizational transformation in which information technology (IT) is seen by the top management as pivotal. The IT setup is undergoing a transition at Mudra from manual systems to an Enterprise System (ES) which has been developed internally by the eight-member IT team led by executive vice president for technology Sebastian Joseph. As he gets ready to implement the first module of ES, known as Mudra Business Operations Support System (mBoss), covering 70 per cent of the activities of the agency, Joseph is facing some managerial dilemmas related to planning the roll-out, training the end users, and managing the change that the new system will bring to the agency. He is also facing choices between outsourcing the ES architecture or owning it, and between outsourcing the development of the remaining seven modules or developing them internally, as before.

The world famous toymaker, The LEGO Group, assembled an internal management team to create a strategic report on LEGO’s different product lines and business operations. In recent years, numerous threats to LEGO had emerged in the toy industry. The acquisition of Marvel Entertainment by The Walt Disney Company created major implications for valuable toy license agreements. LEGO had also recently lost a long legal battle with major competitor MEGA Brands, makers of MEGA Bloks, with a European Union court decision that removed the LEGO brick trademark. Furthermore, the second-largest toymaker in the world, Hasbro, was preparing to launch a new rival product line called Kre-O. It was critical for the management team to identify where to expand LEGO’s product lines and business operations, in order to develop a competitive strategy to continue the organization’s recent years of financial success and dominance in the building toy market.

The president and CEO of a provincial auto club is assessing opportunities to grow his organization at the same time as industry consolidation and changes in the allocation of national operating costs. The auto club has diversified from automobile towing and travel services into insurance, package travel, automobile sales, and service. However, the president's vision for the upcoming board of directors' meeting calls for a 300 per cent increase in operating revenues over the next 10 years. Without more members, the auto club cannot support its allocated costs of branded national and international products. The CEO's challenge is to find growth opportunities.

The vice president of communications of Domino’s Pizza International faced a significant threat to his company’s reputation due to negative social media exposure. A video had been posted on YouTube two days earlier by a Domino’s employee that showed two Domino’s employees at a North Carolina franchise tampering with customers’ pizza and sandwich orders. The employee stuck cheese up his nose, sneezed on the food prior to boxing it up, and could be overheard in the video admitting that the orders would soon be delivered to unsuspecting customers. The video went viral; it had been reposted to Twitter and Facebook, and received almost a million views and many comments on YouTube. It was also receiving attention from both local and national media channels. The senior executive team of Domino’s was meeting with the vice president in a matter of hours, and Domino’s social media team would need to devise a plan to respond to the video to protect Domino’s strong brand image before it was too late.<p>You might also like: Abercrombie & #Fitchthehomeless, Abercrombie and Fitch, Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History?

In January 2011, the group medical director of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd (AHEL), India’s largest integrated health care provider in the private sector, is weighing his options in promoting clinical excellence among group hospitals. AHEL has been using a clinical scorecard, called ACE@25, as a tool to measure and monitor clinical excellence, which is becoming a source of differentiation in the Indian health care industry. ACE@25 measures 25 clinical parameters, benchmarked against the best hospitals globally, every month. The group medical director is wondering whether his role should be limited to monitoring clinical outcomes or whether, in order to drive clinical excellence, he should also prescribe the steps that the medical superintendents of individual hospitals should take in improving outcomes on their watch.

This case, previously titled Oasis of the Seas: The Largest Cruise Liner in the World, was updated by the case writers in May 2024.<br><br>The Icon of the Seas is the largest cruise ship ever built and was launched in 2022 in the midst of a financial crisis. Two analysts from ELP Equities, a Florida-based research firm, are trying to determine which cruise customer segments the Icon is targeted at. The information they have gathered allows them to conduct a customer segmentation analysis in preparation for a hypothetical meeting with the marketing director of Royal Caribbean International, the corporation that commissioned the Icon.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is an American mixed martial arts (MMA) company based in Las Vegas, Nevada. The UFC is controlled by its parent company, Zuffa LLC, which is owned by Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta and Dana White. The UFC has seen a great deal of success since its purchase from its founders in 2001 for $2 million. The owners have made MMA a highly marketable product in terms of live event ticket sales, at-home pay-per-view purchases, and general popularity among their key demographic: men aged 18 to 34. However, this success has mainly occurred within the United States and Lorenzo, current UFC chief executive officer, wants to expand the organization’s reach across the globe. The UFC has held several successful international events in countries that are fairly culturally comparable to the United States (the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada), and Lorenzo must decide if the organization can be culturally viable in several new international markets — specifically, China, India, and South Korea.

Porsche Canada wants to encourage its Canadian customers to drive their cars in winter. The goal is increased sales of cars (by consumers unwilling to buy a Porsche only for summer driving) and winter accessories such as snow tires. This is a three-fold challenge because Canadians generally believe that luxury vehicles should not be driven in winter due to ice and salt; that sports cars generally perform poorly in winter conditions; and that it is unwise to drive a luxury car in winter when it could be more easily scratched or damaged.

British Airways took a strictly secular approach to religion in the workplace, banning any outward symbols of faith. This policy extended to the wearing of jewellery with religious symbolism. One employee who originally complied with the ban protested after she found out that the company had made accommodations to other faiths, such as allowing Sikhs to wear turbans. She then decided to wear a cross pendant in protest of the company’s perceived discriminatory policies. When British Airways disciplined the employee, it caused a public backlash by religious leaders and public supporters of the employee. The backlash against British Airways meant that even a favourable ruling by the employment tribunal would have negative consequences for the company’s public image.

The case describes the selection of an information technology (IT) product to support the operations of 1-888-Junk-Van, a small waste-collection business. Marcus Kingo, the business owner, has five alternatives from which to choose: a database upgrade, contracting out development of a new software application, using Google Docs, using an online tool framed as Platform as a Service (PaaS), or implementing a small-business enterprise resource-planning (ERP) system. Each option presents strengths and weaknesses, and students are left to make a decision. The case exemplifies the IT deployment challenges faced by small companies.

Fairmount Minerals, a leading producer of industrial sand in the United States, embarked upon a journey of sustainable development in 2005. The mining industry had a reputation for environmental harm that threatened the sustainability of the company. Given the strong personal values of stewardship of the planet and community held by the CEO, and because of the reputation of the industry, Fairmount Minerals sought to integrate sustainable development in every step of its value chain — from mining to shipping the product to the customer. Starting in 2006, each year the organization generated a set of bold goals and monitored its progress toward them. These goals clearly spelled out the benefit for the environment and the planet. The question that remained was how this benefit translated into prosperity for stakeholders and the company. Under what conditions did this stewardship of planet and people lead to increased growth for the company?

In the fall of 1996, Bestseller became one of the first international fashion companies to enter the Chinese retail market. Earlier that year, Allan Warburg and Dan Friis had made contact with the CEO of Bestseller A/S, Troels Holch Povlsen, regarding the prospect of selling Bestseller brands in China, where they felt there were many business opportunities. Holch Povlsen found himself convinced by the two entrepreneurs’ enthusiasm for the Chinese market.<br><br>They quickly proved that they had been right about China. A decade after the first store opened, Bestseller China had almost 2,000 stores, and accounted for more than one-third of the total turnover of Bestseller A/S. The secret to Bestseller China’s extraordinary success was its ability to sell price-competitive European designs with a Chinese touch, which was achieved by locating all production in China and modifying Bestseller A/S’s designs to suit the size and tastes of Chinese middle-class consumers. With a 10-year headstart over potential competitors, Bestseller China had by the end of 2007 managed to establish a strong presence in China. However, high economic growth and the growing middle class were making the Chinese market highly attractive for other companies. Although global giants, such as Zara and H&M, were devoting big chunks of their budgets to entering China and capturing market share, these aggressive new entrants were not Bestseller China’s biggest concern. In fact, the competition from local companies was seen as the real threat.

In January 2010, global automotive manufacturer Toyota faced the task of notifying customers of a recall that involved a faulty accelerator pedal on 1.7 million vehicles. Toyota had already come under intense public scrutiny the previous year over a floor mat recall that affected 4.2 million vehicles. In an attempt to reach the masses for the current recall, Toyota created a letter to customers that was featured in major newspapers and on its website. The letter caused outrage as Toyota did not apologize to consumers. Instead, it talked about the company’s 50-year heritage and how Toyota was halting production to focus on fixing the vehicles that were on the road. The president of Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. Inc. needed to identify the problems with the letter before drafting a new one.

In August 2010, Phaneesh Murthy, chief executive officer of iGATE Global Solutions, was reflecting on the strategic options before him with regard to the future of iGATE. The options were two-fold. Should iGATE continue to focus on its traditional markets of North America and the European Union, or should it change track to focus on India? The U.S. and E.U. markets had been growing at less than four per cent since 2008, and this would likely continue until 2013. However, iGATE had developed a product tailored to the specific needs of customers in the developed world who were facing the economic downturn. Known as iTOPS, it was showing the promise of adding to both the top line and bottom line of iGATE. <br><br><br><br>The IT-enabled services market in India was growing at an average of 14.5 per cent for the period of 2008-2013. The promise of top-line growth had drawn many global business process outsourcing (BPO) companies to India. iGATE would be just another player in India with plain vanilla offerings and no differentiation. The domestic market was competitive. The commoditization of its BPO products and services had, of course, opened up an opportunity to develop a product tailored to Indian needs, but iGATE had no such offering in the pipeline. It was in this context that Murthy wondered what strategy he should pursue: iTOPS or India?