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The case was written for an introductory business course, particularly the section on operations. It deals with managing capacity and demand. In early 2008, McKenzie Scott, manager of administrative services at Nipissing Bank (Nipissing) in Ottawa, Ontario, was trying to decide how to carry out a management initiative to add additional marketing materials to client mail-out packages. In particular, Scott was considering upgrading the bank's current envelope stuffing equipment, replacing it or outsourcing the activity entirely.

The founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Teksavvy Solutions Inc. has achieved sales of $18 million in just more than 10 years as an Internet service provider (ISP) across Canada but he must decide whether to distribute his service via cable carriers, telecom carriers or both, or even integrate forward into laying fiber-optic cable in homes and businesses himself. If he invests in last mile connections to homes, he will need a great deal more funds and he will need a healthy uptake by the new customers, most of whom would be located in smaller cities and towns. The added investment for this option would require him to look seriously at bringing in a venture capital company for major investment but he would have to sell it some equity and live under its covenants and guidance until some type of liquidity event would buy out the venture funder.

Kiai Marketing Group is a start-up advertising company providing innovative marketing solutions to businesses in London, Ontario. The company's first undertaking is aimed at reaching the post-secondary student demographic by attaching a business's advertising to laptop computers by means of a laptop "skin." The proprietor needs an overall strategic marketing plan to secure his first client. The proprietor must decide what clients to target, how to reach the student market, what to charge clients and what to pay the team of students displaying the laptop skins.