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An operating manager who as an equity stake in Thamesford Logistics is preparing himself for what he believes will be a difficult conversation with Thamesford Logistic's chief financial officer (CFO) on a current project despite the fact that the operating manager has a legal dispute with the CFO on another deal. In the recent past, the operating manager and the CFO were partners trying to package and sell a mining project on behalf of the mine owners. The agreement between the two expired and the CFO continued to push the project ahead, cutting the operating manager out of the proceeds. A disagreement over the ownership of the success fee led to the operating manager's lawsuit against the CFO. Meanwhile, Thamesford Logistics is trying to acquire a rival in Montreal. This pending transaction requires the operating manager and the CFO to cooperate on the deal. The operating manager is thinking about how he should approach a meeting with the CFO, what he should say, what he would not say and what he wanted to achieve by the end.

The general manager, U.K. for Inglewood Instrument Co. (Inglewood) is sitting outside of his company's headquarters in Burnaby, B.C., waiting for a meeting with the founder of the company to clarify his future as the firm's general manager, U.K. The general manager suspects that the founder and the vice-president Business Development, are actively trying to find a replacement for the general manager, U.K. position. As the general manager is barely one year into a two year contract, he feels shortchanged by the fact that the opportunity, which he uncovered, is being taken away from him. He knows that he needs to strike the correct balance between fact-gathering and advocacy. He needs to uncover what the founder has in mind for his career at Inglewood. The general manager wonders how he should prioritize his issues and how he should approach the conversation.

The vice-president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) was reflecting on the role NASSCOM currently played: it was considered the voice of the software and services industry in India and had been extremely successful in promoting Indian information technology (IT) to the world. Each success had now forced NASSCOM to reconsider its goals to better align itself to the complex needs of the quickly evolving IT business process outsourcing (IT-BPO) industry in India. The vice-president had been asked to address attendees at a leadership conference with details of NASSCOM's strategic refocusing. How could NASSCOM maintain its relevance in an industry that was already considered a global leader? How would NASSCOM position itself in response to its own president's desire to focus on the small-medium enterprise (SME) segment of the Indian industry, and also in response to a report that identified the domestic market as a significant future growth driver of IT enabled services? What role would it play, and how would it get there?

In November 2008, Bell Canada Enterprises Inc. (BCE) appeared to be on track to meet a December 2008 deadline to complete a $52-billion privatization deal. A consortium had previously submitted a winning leveraged buyout (LBO) bid that was estimated to add around $32 billion in debt to the company. Mere days before the deal’s termination date, BCE executives were stunned to hear that KPMG auditors advised that the deal was in jeopardy of collapse — based on a clause that normally merited little attention. The auditors noted that, on the basis of preliminary assessment, the company had not passed a required solvency test which compared the estimated value of BCE’s assets and liabilities in the event that BCE needed to liquidate. BCE executives had little time to determine if the deal could still be saved and, if so, how. Conversely, if the deal could not be completed, what would the organization’s next steps be?

The Li family, the sole owners of Hongxing Auto Sales and Service, are ready to sell the company. They must determine how much the business is worth and the best method of negotiating the sale of the business. This case deals with the valuation of a small, privately-owned business, and will develop students' skills in sizing up a business and placing a value on a business using a variety of methods, including liquidation value, discounted cash flow and price-earnings multiples.

Test marketing is an important aspect of market research. This technical note deals with why test marketing is undertaken and how to do it. Topics include test market design, selection of test markets, length of test and interpretation of results.

A fourth year business student prepares for an interview as an assistant marketing manager with one of the world's largest electronic conglomerates. To help secure the position, he develops a marketing plan for the Canadian launch of a new product. This case serves as an introduction to marketing management at the undergraduate level. Students can properly analyze this case after having been introduced to the 4 Ps (product, placement, price, promotion) and or a marketing framework. Students are required to complete the following: 1) an industry analysis, 2) a corporate size-up, 3) a consumer analysis, 4) a competitive analysis, and 5) a marketing plan design.

The general manager at the Islington Golf Club (Islington) was facing a challenging context. This private equity club in the west end of Toronto, Ontario, had been in existence since 1923. Membership waiting lists had been the norm and the finances had been in good shape. However, the context was changing. The economy was working against the relatively high-cost and time-consuming game of golf. Green fee revenue was down and club food and beverage revenues were down. Capital to update the clubhouse and course was required. Older members had different ideas as to what the club should become than younger members. Competition was heating up with new clubs being built. Islington was being forced to ask some fundamental questions. What was the general manager to recommend to the member board to sustain the club into the future? The case can be used as a general management or general marketing case as it forces students to think through not just what the manager should do, but the process or framework(s) that would be helpful in getting to the decisions.

The franchise owner of a Marble Slab Creamery (Marble Slab) in Ontario must submit a grand opening proposal to franchise headquarters in Calgary, Alberta, in two weeks' time. This proposal is to include her chosen target market, the franchise location and decisions made regarding product variety and pricing. The franchise owner also has to decide how best to allocate her $10,000 promotional budget to gain exposure and bring customers into her store.

In April, 2009, the director of media strategy at henderson bas, a Toronto-based online advertising agency, was evaluating the current campaign for Primus Telecommunications (Primus). It had been two months since the Primus home phone bundle banner advertisement campaign had been launched, and initial results were not as expected. While there were a lot of visitors attracted to the Primus website, those visitors were not converted into paying customers at a high enough rate. This poor conversion rate had pushed the cost per acquisition of new Primus customers to uncomfortably high levels, threatening the campaign's future. By gathering form usage data from the website and subsequently implementing visitor-tracking software, the director focused her attention to analyze the results to determine why visitors to Primus' website were not converting into paying customers.

In late 2006, the four partners of Oncidium Business Consulting disagree on a number of questions, such as the firm's future direction, the responsibilities of each partner and how profits are to be divided. The A1 case, 9B09D015, takes the viewpoint of the founding partner and majority holder of the firm's shares. The A2 case, 9B09D016, looks at the situation from the position of one of the minority partners.

In late 2006, the four partners of Oncidium Business Consulting disagree on a number of questions, such as the firm's future direction, the responsibilities of each partner and how profits are to be divided. The A1 case, 9B09D015, takes the viewpoint of the founding partner and majority holder of the firm's shares. The A2 case, 9B09D016, looks at the situation from the position of one of the minority partners.

The case illustrates a sports betting product offered by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission. The particular game involved has odds that favour the bettor over the game provider under certain settings. The supplement B case, product 9B09E015, summarizes the results from a series of bets made and provides an email response from the game provider following the discontinuation of this particular game. The case provides an interesting introduction into probability or simulation and expected value calculations.

This supplement to OLGC Finds Its Match (A), product # 9B09E014, summarizes the results from a series of bets and provides the email response from the game provider following the discontinuation of this particular game.

<p style="color: rgb(197, 183, 131);"><strong> AWARD WINNER -INFORMS Case and Teaching Materials Competition, 3rd place</strong></p><br>A freelance geologist was asked for advice regarding two mining claims to property on Sturgeon Lake, near Thunder Bay, Ontario. Specifically, he was asked if there was enough gold on the property to pursue an economically feasible mining opportunity. The geologist determined that an analytical approach would best aid the analysis of the multiple factors he would need to consider in arriving at a decision about whether or not to proceed with the mining operation. The first stage in ore extraction involved building an access road, and the second stage was to implement a drilling program. There was considerable uncertainty surrounding the costs and actual feasibility of completion of these stages; yet only when these stages were completed could actual mining of the property begin. If mining proceeded, it was assumed it would take 10 years to extract all the gold from the site, and the total amount of gold in the mine would be extracted at an even rate over the 10-year period. Mining costs were assumed to be $30 an ounce, and the geologist used a discount rate of 20 per cent before taxes when evaluating projects.

In recent years, many countries with publicly funded healthcare have started using cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) along with review of clinical data as a tool to assess the overall benefit of a new drug to the society and set priorities with regards to health care budget. Cost effectiveness was formally incorporated into the Ontario drug review system in 1993 and the Canadian drug-review system in 2003. The issue of using cost effectiveness has become increasingly contentious in recent years: some newly approved cancer drugs cost $3,000 to $6,000 or more for one treatment cycle, but their high prices means that they were often classified as being not cost effective. This note reviews many of the competing interests in debates over drug funding and dilemmas about healthcare financing decisions in the presence of limited budgets.

This case considers the process of organizational transformation undertaken by Partners Healthcare System (PHS) since the 1990s as their hospital and affiliated ambulatory medical practices have adopted both EMR and CPOE systems. Encompassing a strategic investment in information technologies, wide-spread process change, and the pervasive use of institutional clinical decision support and knowledge management systems, this story has been 15 years in the making, culminating in 2009 with the network-wide use of EMR and CPOE by all PHS doctors. These developments in turn opened the door to the redefinition of services delivery and to the replacement of established therapies through the leveraging of the knowledge residing in 4.6 million now-digitized PHS patient records. As such, the PHS experience serves as a window into how one organization strove to address the daunting challenges of 21st century health care services information management, as a template for success in the implementation of large-scale information systems among research-based hospitals across the United States, and more broadly as a learning platform for industry executives in their efforts to transform health care delivery through data and knowledge management.

A professor is considering buying a new car and is evaluating two models, one with air conditioning and a comfort package, the other with no extras. The two cars are relatively close in price but still above his initial budget, and he is wondering how much he might be able to negotiate the price. A factor that complicates the matter is that the car with the comfort package has a lower interest rate. The professor therefore needs to understand what the net present value of the difference in the two payment plans is.

One of the most basic revenue management problems is how to allocate a fixed capacity to various types of classes of customers so that the total profit is maximized. Using the example of a flight traveling from Toronto to Vancouver, the revenue management problem is to decide, in each period, how much of the realized demand to accept and how much to reserve for the latter classes in order maximize the revenue. The crux of the problem revolves around the trade-off between spoilage and dilution. The author uses various mathematical formulae (including the static model, Littlewood's Two-Class model and n-Class model of expected marginal seat revenue) to model optimal seat-allocation outcomes.

This case presents the management challenges of a high-growth manufacturing company based in India that is contemplating a major international acquisition. Its decision will involve both geographic and product diversification. Students have to grapple with the trade-offs of an exciting growth opportunity that can bring the company to new heights against significant risks and challenges that such an acquisition would entail. The case also provides an excellent context for studying the evolution of international strategy in a firm, as it shows Havells growing from an entrepreneurial start-up trading company to a successful manufacturing firm and then a global company.