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The program head for retail talent acquisition at Yes Bank Limited needed to improve the talent acquisition process to fill vacant positions for relationship managers—a critical position within the business unit. Competition for talent was severe, with multiple positions at competing organizations open to suitable candidates, and screening the necessary number of candidates to ensure recruitment success was time-consuming and frustrating for everyone involved. One of the bank’s business leaders, particularly frustrated with the hiring process and the lack of consistency with candidate selection, was pressing for an urgent solution.<br><br>One option was to use an artificial intelligence (AI) platform, which centralized the candidate applications and improved the screening process by using machine learning to review videotaped candidate interviews. AI ranked the candidates, providing access to a larger talent pool and a quicker path to acquiring the needed talent. The process would resolve the bottlenecks that job aspirants typically faced in the traditional interview process, but would the tool dehumanize the entire process and undermine the interactions that ultimately led to better conversions and future integration with the brand and values of Yes Bank?

On June 9, 2021, the owner and director of S.I.T. Car Rental, which was located in Trinidad and Tobago, was considering whether he should upgrade his fleet of cars. The COVID-19 pandemic had negatively affected his sales in 2020 and 2021, although the owner was hopeful that he could increase demand by the end of 2021, once the need for pandemic-related lockdowns had ended. He had recently retired one of his older cars and so needed to decide whether he should purchase a new car to replace it or downsize his fleet. If he decided to purchase another car, he had to choose between a used economical vehicle and a new luxury vehicle.

On April 5, 2017, the lead link at Liip AG, in Lausanne, Switzerland, was reflecting on the past seven years. The digital services organization had gone through a rapid development, from a company with a team-based structure led by a top management team to a holacratic organization. A holacratic structure was based on a skeleton of roles and processes, with individual employees self-defining their work with the intent to help the company fulfill its purpose. However, was a holacratic structure sustainable over the long term for a growing company? What potential inefficiencies might Liip AG face under a holacratic structure and how could the organization overcome them?

O’Desi Meals was a food and beverage start-up based in Dublin, Ireland that aimed to deliver high-quality, healthy, home-cooked Indian food meals at affordable prices to customers who wanted delivery without compromise on taste or health. A second and more important objective that had driven the founding of the venture was to empower the population of underprivileged homeless individuals in Dublin. In March 2020, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically affected projected estimates for O’Desi Meals operations and revenues. Demand for meals and its subscription-based sales increased exponentially. The substantial increase in orders and popularity strategically challenged the venture’s sustainability. To address this challenge, O’Desi Meals adopted two strategies: one short-term, to ensure sustainability (i.e., revenue generation); and one long-term, to ensure growth. Could O’Desi Meals become a successful and socially responsible authentic Indian meals provider by applying these two strategies?

In September 2021, the chief operating officer and executive vice-president of HealthCare atHome India Pvt. Ltd. (HCAH India), based in Mumbai, India, was concerned about his company’s future. Founded in 2012, HCAH India provided a wide range of health services at home, including intensive care, step-down beds, post-operative care, nursing, physiotherapy, attendant services, and elderly care. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company was growing at a rate of 60 per cent month over month. While the COVID-19 virus continued to strain the country’s health care system, the chief operating officer and executive vice-president faced numerous organizational and social challenges. HCAH India had responded quickly to address the home health care needs of patients during the pandemic. It was even recognized for its excellence by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry as the best home health care provider. However, how could the organization evaluate its options and focus on internal capabilities, while building on its strengths to meet future challenges?

Maison Singulier was an online vintage furniture and home goods store founded in October 2020 and based in Montreal. Since its inception, Maison Singulier had succeeded in building a loyal customer base across Canada and the United States. Despite the early success of Maison Singulier, the founder realized that she could increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the store’s marketing communications if she adopted a more systematic approach to its marketing strategy. Although she had a good understanding of the typical Maison Singulier customer, she wanted to have a more formal definition of her target segment so that she could fine-tune Maison Singulier’s marketing communications. Having enlisted the services of a local market research company, by the end of June 2021, Maison Singulier had the information it needed to redesign its marketing communications strategy to effectively reach out to the selected consumer segments. It was crucial for the future of the company to successfully manage this period.

Burlap & Barrel was an upcoming and successful public benefit corporation based in the Queens borough of New York City that imported spices from foreign farms and sold them to restaurants, gourmet food stores, home cooks, and other food services in the United States and other markets. In March 2020, when COVID-19 gripped the world and forced most food establishments to close down temporarily, the two co-founders of Burlap & Barrel saw an instant drop in their revenues because half of their sales volume normally came from restaurants. To stay afloat in the pandemic, they changed their focus from wholesale channels to a direct-to-consumer business model. Media coverage in major outlets helped demand increase, but the shift from wholesale to direct-to-consumer raised many supply chain inefficiencies in sourcing, storing, packaging, and transportation. In early 2021, as restaurants began gradually reopening, the two B&B co-founders became concerned about meeting the growing demand from both direct-to-consumer and restaurant orders while retaining their core ethical, environmental, and business values.

Dell Technologies Inc. was founded in 1984 in Austin, Texas, and became a global company that designed, developed, and manufactured personal computers and a variety of computer-related products. In 2016, it merged with EMC Corporation to create the largest privately-controlled technology company with the most comprehensive end-to-end solutions portfolio in the industry. In March 2018, the company formed an internal strategic group named Dell Global Operations and tasked its senior vice-president of strategy with planning the digital transformation of the company’s supply chain. in 2018, the Dell Global Operations group had to consider the intrinsic challenges of a giant and diverse enterprise. How would the company ensure that key actors were aligned with its digital vision? Which levers were needed to establish a digital vision that matched business strategy and priorities with supply chain operations? How could an actionable roadmap be developed to achieve the digital transformation of such a complex supply chain? What actions or goals should be prioritized?

Two women entrepreneurs' early-stage company achieved notable success when they introduced an innovative zero-sugar product into the highly competitive beverage market. After navigating a rebrand, the co-founders were poised to scale their company through product line extension, thereby entering the even more competitive ready-to-drink beverage market. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated their direct-to-consumer marketing strategy. The co-owners had to determine both the timing of the new product launch and the marketing strategy.

Huanglongxi, a historic town in Sichuan Province, topped the list of “China’s Iconic Cultural Tourism Towns 2020.” In October 2017, Zhang Dafan, the executive director of the Huanglongxi Overseas Chinese Town Group (OCT), had led his team in initiating a smart cultural tourism project in Huanglongxi against the backdrop red-hot rivalry between China’s ancient towns. In just three years, the project had led to the remarkable transformation of Huanglongxi into a smart, award-winning ancient town. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic had left the tourism industry in limbo. To emerge from these difficult times caused by the pandemic, Huanglongxi the OCT had to assess how to strengthen the depth and breadth of its Huanglongxi’s smart cultural tourism construction offer in order to bring draw travellers back. How had Huanglongxi overcome the homogeneous competition it faced to develop into a unique, smart ancient town in 2017? Given the new challenges it faced, how could it do so once again?

Following a weekend strategy retreat in October 2018, the vice-chair and group CEO of Kuwait-headquartered mobile telecommunications company Zain, was proud of the company’s performance over the previous year. Zain Group had much to celebrate, having blazed a trail in advancing women’s empowerment and inclusion in the workplace—a double challenge in a technology industry that was also based in a region heavily influenced by traditional gender values. Its strategy included the launch of the Women Empowerment Network initiative (WE Initiative) in November 2017, a strategic master plan aimed at achieving gender equality, empowering women, and advancing women’s careers at Zain. However, a great deal of progress remained, and new challenges were emerging. The company had put significant emphasis and resources toward women’s empowerment and development, leaving some of the male colleagues feeling overlooked and left out. As well, other groups, such as people with disabilities and younger generations, also had barriers to overcome. How could the company continue its efforts to support women while also being inclusive and considering the needs of all its employees?

LenDenClub (LDC) was a primarily online platform operated by Innofin Solutions Pvt. Ltd. in the peer-to-peer lending industry in India. To offer differentiated products in a growing segment, LDC decided to focus on the untapped segment of low-salary earners. However, it was risky to serve this segment; borrowers had little credit history but often required loans immediately for emergency expenditures, and these borrowers had limited repayment capacity, so it was challenging for LDC to remain profitable. LDC responded by developing a new product based specifically on the targeted segment’s needs that allowed LDC to give small loans to more borrowers while achieving the lowest default rates. In June 2020, with preliminary testing done, LDC needed to refine InstaMoney’s features to achieve the best version of the product and obtain the best performance of InstaMoney in terms of conversions and the lowest default rates.

Student spreadsheet to accompany product W25400.

Instructor spreadsheet to accompany product W25401.

Spreadsheet for product 9B19M119.

Founded in 1984 in Vancouver, Aritzia has been a massive success story, expanding across Canada and into the United States with no signs of slowing down. In March 2020, however, with the COVID-19 pandemic spreading rapidly through North America, the women’s fashion retailer was forced to shutter all its 97 boutique stores and shift sales to the e-commerce channel, while making other key financial and operating decisions to respond to the pandemic. In May 2020, with Aritzia given the green light to begin slowly and cautiously opening its locations, the CEO and the executive team needed to decide how to move forward in a time of crisis and continue its growth plans.

In May 2019, a retail investor in the Philippines had to decide whether or not to immediately sell his shares in Holcim Philippines, Inc (HPI). The San Miguel Corporation had just announced the acquisition of around 86 per cent controlling interest in HPI. The price of HPI had increased considerably in the months leading up to the acquisition announcement, and this investor was anticipating a large gain. Now, he needed to run a fair value estimate of HPI’s price using both the capital-asset-pricing-model-based discounted cash flow method and the comparable multiples method in order to decide what to do: Should he sell his shares at the prevailing market price, wait until the future potential tender offer, or hold his shares indefinitely?

Instructor spreadsheet for product 8B21N006.

Student spreadsheet for product 9B21N006.

If you can understand football scoring or read a recipe, you can understand an income statement, with the help of this note. It is important to understand an income statement because it tells investors or any stakeholder of a company whether or not the company is making money. An income statement also gives information to company managers to make better forecasts and decisions.