Asset management firm Capital SAFI wanted to attract new strategic investors and expand to other countries. Having the right corporate governance in place was critical to achieve this goal.
Multiasistencia, a major Spanish BPO of insurance repairs, is changing the relational contract with its service profesionals from a referral model to a guaranteed workload one.
Multiasistencia, a major Spanish BPO of insurance repairs, is changing the relational contract with its service professionals from a referral model to a guaranteed workload one.
Todovino sells Spanish wines through wine clubs and web sites. Founder-CEO Gonzalo Verdera has partnered with many companies to create cobranded wine clubs, but now he is pondering a joint venture with one of his rivals, a brick-and-mortar wine chain. Todovino would provide the online presence for the chain. Should Verdera help his rival? What are the risks and benefits for Todovino?
Emergia wants to keep its customers happy with its contact center service, but the margins on the help desk contract are dangerously low. Can Miguel Neira, the COO, increase margins while preserving the customer relationship?
Liza Davis, an upscale women's fashion retailer, is reeling from worldwide recession and lower demand. Should the company target the fast growing bargain hunter segment or hold the line on price discounts to preserve its brand image? Customer profitability calculations show that the bargain hunting customer loses money--does that mean the company should ignore this customer in favor of full-price shoppers?
This note presents a simple way to estimate time equations using regression analysis in Excel. The note quickly outlines regression analysis, then presents a real-life case example from the natural gas industry that students can use to gain experience developing and interpreting the results of time equations.
This note presents a simple way to estimate time equations using regression analysis in Excel. The note quickly outlines regression analysis, then presents a real-life case example from the natural gas industry that students can use to gain experience developing and interpreting the results of time equations.
The case describes the formation of Indus Towers, the largest telecom tower company in the world which has a joint venture created to build and manage the passive infrastructure of wireless telecom operators by bringing together three competitors in India's tough telecom market-Bharti AirteI, Vodafone Essar, and Idea Cellular-and merging their tower holdings. It focuses on the issue as to how do you collaborate with your competitors in setting up towers but engage in a brutal competition with them in the market place?
HubSpot, a web marketing startup is under pressure from VCs to rapidly acquire new customers and to maintain a low level of customer churn. In the case, students explore the drivers of customer churn and uncover opportunities to increase customer retention across the customer selection, selling, and training processes. Students assess a metric, CHI (Customer Happiness Index) which HubSpot uses to predict which customers will churn, and suggest alternatives to improve the firm's predictions. Students develop programs to reduce churn post-hoc and then reengineer the company's marketing, selling, and customer relationship management processes to manage churn proactively through market segmentation and targeting, product design, and customer interactions.
Gucci Group's CEO had to decide if his decentralized management style was the most effective philosophy in an economic downturn. The sharing of customer information across units and its use in the creative process are key initiatives analyzed in the case. CEO Robert Polet joined the high-end fashion Gucci Group in 2004, after 26 years at one of the largest consumer goods companies. Since his arrival, the Group had grown both in revenues and profitability. Part of his secret was his decentralized and empowering management style. In 2008, in the midst of the economic downturn following the credit crunch crisis, Polet learned that after four years of growth the Gucci brand-the Group's largest business-would report a slowdown for the year's first semester. He knew that according to his management philosophy he should leave the primary decisions for the Gucci brand to Gucci's CEO. Yet, given the urgency of the situation, Polet wondered if it would be more effective to become directly involved in the brand's decision-making process. To anchor the discussion on Polet's management style, the case discusses how customer information is used in the creative process and whether it would be beneficial for the group to share customer information across stores, regions, and brands.
Commercial Director Prado wonders how to leverage the loyalty card information to prepare the Fall 2008 budget. The case discusses the value of subjective and objective information for profit planning purposes. Spanish children's apparel retailer Neck & Neck uses loyalty card information for tactical purposes, such as promotional campaigns. Its management team is thinking about how to incorporate that information to the budgeting (profit planning) process. From an analytical standpoint the case looks at the surprising results of a mailing campaign that reveals the consequences of inadequate updating of the customer database. Also, the budgeting data in the case may be used to teach regression model selection and R-squared.
The objective of this note is to provide a set of easy, step-by-step guides for some analytical techniques that are useful in the analysis of cases discussed in the course "Competing and Winning through Customer Information" (CWCI). The instructions that follow use datasets from three of the cases in the course: "Slots, Tables, and All That Jazz: Managing Customer Profitability at the MGM Grand Hotel," HBS No. 106-029, "MercadoLibre.com," HBS No. 106-057, and "Bancaja: Developing Customer Intelligence (A)," HBS No. 107-055. These datasets are available upon request from the author.
This case analyzes Infosys' innovative approach to measuring performance in client relations. Infosys' strategy is evolving to build transformational partnerships from its original position as an outsourcer of end-to-end IT projects. A transformational partner helps clients to devise and implement strategies that will allow them to achieve a competitive advantage. The traditional paradigm of service-level agreements (SLAs), while sufficient for Infosys' needs early on, is not able to achieve the level of understanding that transformational partnerships require. Infosys applies the principles of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) to produce a feedback mechanism that allows the partnership to grow to the benefit of both parties.