The case presents the real-life situation of XRM Vision, an SME IT consulting firm specializing in the design and implementation of CRM solutions. Like most SMEs, XRM Vision faces major, sometimes conflicting, management challenges such as which growth strategies to pursue while simultaneously increasing process efficiency and urging employees to identify business opportunities while fostering operational excellence. This case focuses on the challenges and difficulties SME managers face in their struggle to strike a balance between exploiting and exploring. The case describes the exploitation-exploration tensions faced by XRM Vision's management since the company's founding and outlines the strategies and actions/practices it has deployed to navigate the choppy waters between exploitation and exploration.

This two-part case study of a Canadian knitwear SME called Ça Va de Soi (CVDS) presents a real-life situation: an IT project failure (part A) and how the project was "resuscitated" and transformed into a success (part B). The case highlights (1) the challenges and risks of IT projects for SMEs, (2) the importance of evaluating and selecting the right IT supplier and managing relationships, and (3) how, during a retrospective, lessons learned from a project failure can be transferred and applied to other IT projects.

Supplement to case HEC138. This two-part case study of a Canadian knitwear SME called Ça Va de Soi (CVDS) presents a real-life situation: an IT project failure (part A) and how the project was "resuscitated" and transformed into a success (part B). The case highlights (1) the challenges and risks of IT projects for SMEs, (2) the importance of evaluating and selecting the right IT supplier and managing relationships, and (3) how, during a retrospective, lessons learned from a project failure can be transferred and applied to other IT projects.