The Human Resources and Social Development Ministry (HRSD) was one of the largest and most important ministries in Saudi Arabia, with 22,000 employees serving more than 30 million customers and beneficiaries. The ministry consisted of four sectors - labor which served and regulated the private and non-profit sectors; civil service which served government entities and employees; social development which served disadvantaged groups; and shared services which served the three customer-facing sectors. The three customer-facing sectors had been separate ministries until they were merged, and still operated mostly in silos. A new minister appointed in 2018 determined that the ministry had to be transformed to allow it to play its part in meeting Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 roles. He brought in Mohammed Al Jasser in 2019 as Assistant Minister for Shared Services to spearhead the transformation. Customer experience (CX) transformation was a key part of this. The case describes the initial phase of the ministry's CX transformation. It included creating a CX deputyship, putting CX strategy and governance in place, and carrying out pilot projects to address immediate problems and build support within the organization. The next phase of the CX transformation would be scaling up and implementing it across the ministry. The case discusses the challenges the ministry will face in this phase, including initiative fatigue, limited interest in improving CX, policy changes not aligned with CX, and fragmented service ownership. The case ends by mentioning two important issues for a successful CX transformation: Ensuring that the outsourcing of customer-facing activities, which was happening in parallel, supported this; and engineering a mindset and cultural shift among ministry officials. Although the first phase of the CX transformation had been successful, scaling up across the ministry would be challenging. How should Al Jasser and his team proceed to achieve this objective?

Case (A) describes the situation facing John Davison after joining the company in December 2014 as the new CEO. A failing ERP implementation had led to serious operational issues in Singapore (its home base) and the Philippines (its biggest and most profitable market). Affected hospitals and doctors had complained directly to the Zuellig family, who owns the company. The board fired the two Co-CEOs who had been running the company and brought John in to turn it around. The company had lost ground with the ratio of operating profit to Gross Operating Revenue (GOR) dropping from 30% in 2009 to 14% in 2014. Increased competition leading to falling margins had contributed to this, as had a lack of focus on improving productivity. The company's most important clients, such as GSK, were threatening to take their business elsewhere if Zuellig Pharma did not fix its operational problems. The organization was fragmented, with a very small head office, disparate processes across the country operations, and no central leadership of key functions such as operations and quality assurance. The board had lost confidence in the leadership team which, in turn, felt that the board was interfering too much and not giving them the freedom to address the problems at hand. The company had invested in a number of businesses it saw as complementing its main distribution core, but these were sub-scale and (with one exception) loss-making. The leadership team needed to urgently develop a turnaround plan.

Case (B) is set in January 2020 when CEO John Davison decided to step down as CEO by end of June 2020. It describes the specific actions of Zuellig Pharma's transformation and how they resulted in more than doubling the company's net profit between 2015 and 2019 These actions included: (1) driving operational excellence by successfully completing the ERP implementation and taking other steps to fix operational problems; (2) fostering the leadership team through selective changes and aligning it around an integrated regional strategy; (3) increasing head office control while ensuring that country operations had the autonomy needed to operate effectively; (4) resetting the relationship between the management and the board to create more alignment and trust; (5) strengthening relationships with key distribution clients; and (6) growing the solutions businesses which accounted by 2019 for over 20% of GOR and net profit. The case also describes the situation facing Zuellig Pharma as the Covid-19 pandemic began to unfold, and John Davison's initial thoughts on related key issues facing the company.

Case (C) is set in July 2020 when John Graham took over as Zuellig Pharma's new CEO and he needed to decide how to take the company forward. Prior to that, John Graham had effectively led the company's Commercial Solutions business. However, as the new CEO he needed to manage the entire portfolio of new solutions businesses and investments in digital startups. Zuellig Pharma had successfully navigated the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. It had benefited from its earlier efforts to increase the robustness of its supply chain as well as the resilience and dedication of its employees. The COVID-19 crisis had accelerated the roll-out of its new e-commerce platform, which allowed for online ordering and cash collection. At the same time, the company had suffered financially because some costs had significantly increased. Zuellig Pharma faced an even more difficult environment with new stakeholders (like patient groups and Ministries of Health) playing a more important role. Given these challenges, its leadership needed to decide how to take the company forward and ensure that it continues to thrive in the future.

By 2020, Umesh Shah could rightly be proud of what he and his team had accomplished over the last eight years to capture white space consumers, i.e. those consumers that Unilever operating units had progressively labelled non-core or new groups created by emerging megatrends, such as globalization and digitalization. Unilever International UI was created with the mandate to create the capabilities to reach out to these consumers and re capture them for the Group. It quickly proved its case when it doubled the turnover it had inherited in less than four years. In a second phase, it doubled it again, reaching a turnover of €1 billion in 2019, ahead of plans. UI's strong performance was acknowledged within Unilever when it won the prestigious Unilever Global Compass Award in 2019. UI was now preparing to embark on the next phase of its journey, labelled UI 3.0, with the goal of again doubling its turnover to €2 billion. Three areas were singled out for attention:(1)making a strong business case for the market potential;(2)building the capabilities to scale by investing further in digital marketing and the partner network; and(3)maintaining and even enhancing the unit's entrepreneurial culture, ensuring motivation and proper compensation for its intrapreneurs. Getting to €1 billion in sales had not been easy but doubling it again would increase UI's complexity by an order of magnitude. How could UI keep pace and remain entrepreneurial while at the same time maintaining its strong governance and control systems? intaining double digit annual growth would require focusing on ever-larger opportunities and their inherent complexities, and placing larger bets, some of which would definitely fail. Was UI ready to cope with larger failures? And what about the Unilever mothership? It relished the unit's success, but would it still be there in difficult times? Umesh knew that UI's past achievements only earned it additional runway; he and his colleagues could not be

SINGAPORE, SEPTEMBER 2018. A Unilever internal venturing effort, UI was started in Singapore by Unilever veterans to substitute the rather inefficient operating companies' (OpCos) export units with a dedicated group focused on exploiting the group's "white spaces" - non-core brands, consumer segments (such as diasporas and religious sub-groups), new channels (such as airports and cruises) and geographies - not big enough to merit attention from the Unilever OpCos. The group proved quickly its value proposition, doubling the turnover it inherited in less than four years, with higher margins and growth rates than the mother company. By 2016, Aseem was entrusted with organizing the marketing function, setting up a 15-person team based at HQ. The team managed 10,000+ brand/country cells remotely and had to rely heavily on digital marketing, using 3rd party resources, including open talent platforms, to gain leverage, cut costs and grow faster. It conducted 250 launches in the previous 18 months, while reducing advertising and promotion costs by 20%. Now Aseem had to take digital marketing to the next level. Should he increase spending limits per brand/country?

Kaan Terzioglu, Turkcell's CEO, was in a pensive mood on his fifth day on the job. He had just received his first WhatsApp call, which highlighted the challenge his company - Turkey's largest mobile telecommunications provider - was facing from over-the-top (OTT) service providers. Of Turkcell's 35 million mobile subscribers, 10 million were WhatsApp users. The 4.5G spectrum auctions, where the company would be competing against Vodafone and Turk Telekom, were approaching in August 2015. Turkcell needed to decide whether to bid aggressively to maintain its market leading position or to bid less aggressively to acknowledge a more competitive and less profitable future. Turkcell had remained solidly profitable and its revenues in Turkey had increased by 10% from the first quarter of 2014 to early 2015. Voice revenues in Turkey had dropped by 4%, though an increase in data revenues of 46% had more than counterbalanced this. Intense competition with Vodafone and Turk Telekom made it difficult to increase prices. Turkcell faced significant internal challenges. Mobile and fixed-line communications were run by separate subsidiaries, which made it difficult for Turkcell to present one face to the consumer and react effectively to the converging telecom market. The organization was top-heavy with too many managers at all levels. Despite all this, the feeling within the company was that there was no compelling need for change because it was number one among mobile telecom operators and profitable. Turkcell's international operations had been hit by currency devaluations in Ukraine and Belarus. They were a mixed bag including both subsidiaries and minority stakes. As the new CEO, Kaan Terzioglu knew that he had a window of opportunity to make significant changes. He wondered where he should start.

Supplement to case IMD972 Kaan Terzioglu, Turkcell's CEO, and his top team had spent Capital Markets Day with global investment analysts celebrating the firm's achievements. Over the last three years, the company had transformed itself from a network operator selling undifferentiated data and voice services in Turkey into an experience provider that offered messaging, music, TV, search and other services to its customers. This had culminated in the launch of its Lifecell digital brand in Turkey in September 2017. This had turbocharged its revenue growth, which reached 23% in 2017. While there was room for Turkcell to grow its core consumer business in Turkey, it would also rely on opportunities in digital services, the corporate market and in new business areas including energy, finance, healthcare and automotive to sustain future growth. Turkcell had rationalized its international portfolio, taken steps to make its subsidiaries in Ukraine, Belarus and Northern Cyprus financially stable and was moving forward with the same digital operator strategy as in Turkey. The company planned to grow internationally by franchising the digital operator model it had pioneered in Turkey to telecom operators worldwide. Kaan Terzioglu felt this would increase the company's valuation given the valuation of global over-the-top (OTT) companies. Turkcell's growth plan raised questions. Did the firm have the management bandwidth to move into so many new business areas in Turkey? Would it be able to grow internationally using the franchise model? The answers were not clear.

This case series examines the two stage transformation of DBS 2009- 2017. In both stages the bank places the customer as the centre of its thinking about how to structure, resource and play in the market. In 2009 DBS was an underperforming national bank with overseas branches, losing traction and lacking a compelling strategy. Under new leadership the A case describes the initial implementation of its turnaround strategy with the objective of creating a competitive world class multi national bank. DBS must decide which overseas market to focus on and how to enter. It raises the issue of the role of the fintechs in shaping the future of banking and its likely impact on the bank's strategy. The B case describes DBS's digital pure-play entry into the Indian market, its strategic reset now with an ambition to be like a 22,000 person start up prompted by its assessment of what the fintech landscape populated by the likes of Alibaba/ant financial. The case describes significant progress but asks whether this is sufficient given how the industry is evolving. The C case describes the company's progress up to 2017 and highlights why Euromoney named DBS as the World's Best Digital bank. It asks whether this progress is sufficient in given the amount of sectoral change. Learning objective: This case series allows students to examine the implementation of a customer-led strategy in an industry undergoing disruption. More specifically students learn how to implement a customer-led strategy, how to enhance an organisation's agility, how to embed an innovative culture.

Thai Union had come a long way from its humble beginnings in 1977 as a Thai private label supplier of canned tuna to US importers. In four short decades it had become one of the leading seafood companies in the world with a turnover in 2016 of US$3.8 billion. Thiraphong Chansiri, the CEO, had led Thai Union brilliantly to make it a true multinational company operating in three continents, delivering value added branded products covering multiple fish species and distributing these under ambient, chilled and frozen temperature conditions. The company planned to more than double its turnover by 2020 to $8 billion while also raising its gross margin from 15.6% to 20%. It sought to do this by growing its existing business; launching innovative, high-margin products; expanding its presence in the food service sector; building a significant emerging market presence; and making more acquisitions. In October 2016, Thai Union announced that it had effectively acquired a 49% ownership stake in Red Lobster, the leading seafood restaurant chain in the United States. This diversification was viewed as an important growth opportunity for the company. The question for Thai Union's leadership team was whether diversification and growth were still the right mantras for the company in 2017, when it had already become the industry leader? A related challenge was in building a global organization that could effectively manage the company's growing and diverse international footprint.

This case series examines the two stage transformation of DBS 2009- 2017. In both stages the bank places the customer as the centre of its thinking about how to structure, resource and play in the market. In 2009 DBS was an underperforming national bank with overseas branches, losing traction and lacking a compelling strategy. Under new leadership the A case describes the initial implementation of its turnaround strategy with the objective of creating a competitive world class multi national bank. DBS must decide which overseas market to focus on and how to enter. It raises the issue of the role of the fintechs in shaping the future of banking and its likely impact on the bank's strategy. The B case describes DBS's digital pure-play entry into the Indian market, its strategic reset now with an ambition to be like a 22,000 person start up prompted by its assessment of what the fintech landscape populated by the likes of Alibaba/ant financial. The case describes significant progress but asks whether this is sufficient given how the industry is evolving. The C case describes the company's progress up to 2017 and highlights why Euromoney named DBS as the World's Best Digital bank. It asks whether this progress is sufficient in given the amount of sectoral change. Learning objective: This case series allows students to examine the implementation of a customer-led strategy in an industry undergoing disruption. More specifically students learn how to implement a customer-led strategy, how to enhance an organisation's agility, how to embed an innovative culture.

This case series examines the two stage transformation of DBS 2009- 2017. In both stages the bank places the customer as the centre of its thinking about how to structure, resource and play in the market. In 2009 DBS was an underperforming national bank with overseas branches, losing traction and lacking a compelling strategy. Under new leadership the A case describes the initial implementation of its turnaround strategy with the objective of creating a competitive world class multi national bank. DBS must decide which overseas market to focus on and how to enter. It raises the issue of the role of the fintechs in shaping the future of banking and its likely impact on the bank's strategy. The B case describes DBS's digital pure-play entry into the Indian market, its strategic reset now with an ambition to be like a 22,000 person start up prompted by its assessment of what the fintech landscape populated by the likes of Alibaba/ant financial. The case describes significant progress but asks whether this is sufficient given how the industry is evolving. The C case describes the company's progress up to 2017 and highlights why Euromoney named DBS as the World's Best Digital bank. It asks whether this progress is sufficient in given the amount of sectoral change. Learning objective: This case series allows students to examine the implementation of a customer-led strategy in an industry undergoing disruption. More specifically students learn how to implement a customer-led strategy, how to enhance an organisation's agility, how to embed an innovative culture.

May 2016, Singapore. Umesh Shah, the head of Unilever International (UI), was pleased with what his team had been able to achieve since the business unit was created at the beginning of 2012 by merging the operating companies' export units with the purpose to better exploit the "white spaces," i.e. business opportunities created by new global trends and marginal areas not given proper focus and support by Unilever operating companies (OpCos) because they did not belong to key core brands, consumers, channels and geographies. By late 2015 UI had grown into a very profitable business, doubling the turnover it had inherited in 2012, by pushing the envelope of Unilever sales and filling some cracks within its existing markets and channels. This included, for example, growing Unilever's presence in smaller markets like the Pacific Islands, increasing the sales of non-core brands in fringe markets, targeting original subgroups of consumers (such as immigrants, religious and other ethnic categories) in traditional markets or focusing on non-traditional channels such as airports and tax-free outfits. UI faced strong resistance from the OpCos initially, but gradually won them over. He still faced critical questions about UI's future. Would its ambition to almost double turnover by 2020 require making bigger bets and accepting more risk? What was the optimal scale of UI business in the long term? Should it review the working arrangements with the OpCos to remain mutually beneficial? Would the next generation of UI leaders come from within or outside the business? Were changes in the way staff were evaluated and compensated required? Learnong objective: Developing a white space organization, nurturing the internal entrepreneurs, managing fast growth, new business models, intrapreneurship, managing incentive programs, managing brands on the margin, niche marketing, expansion strategies on the fringe.

CapitaLand was Singapore's leading property developer. It was formed in 2000 though a merger between DBS Land (the property unit of Singapore's leading bank, DBS) and Pidemco Land, a Singapore government linked company. The Singapore government through Temasek Holdings (one of its sovereign wealth funds) held an equity stake of 40% at end-2011. Liew Mun Leong was the firm's first CEO from 2000 to 2012. CapitaLand decided to expand internationally because it felt that the Singapore market was saturated with limited growth opportunities. CapitaLand's initial focus was on a number of gateway cities, where it aimed to achieve critical mass. This strategy changed quickly with the new focus being on three core markets - Singapore, China and Australia. In expanding into new markets, CapitaLand began by sending out a high quality executive, who understood the firm and the way it operated, from headquarters to start the new unit up. The firm's objective was to transfer operational responsibility to local executives when this was possible. While it had made some progress in this regard, most senior executives - corporate officers and senior executives of business units - were still Singapore nationals.

This case is about Sabina, one of the leaders in the Thai lingerie market, and its proactive adaptation to changes in its business environment over two decades. The firm first took advantage of the depreciation of the Thai baht in the late 1990s to ramp up its export business and become a trusted OEM supplier to major European and US brands. The OEM business accounted for 60% of the firm's turnover by 2006. Bunchai Punturaumporn was appointed the firm's managing director in 2007. The Thai baht had started to appreciate, so the firm de-emphasized the OEM business and built a successful Thai branded business. This required innovating in the marketing area, broadening distribution, achieving excellence in production, and adapting the firm's organization structure over time. In 2012, the OEM business accounted for only 9% of sales. Sabina also coped successfully with other challenges, including rising labor costs in Thailand, and cheap imports from China. Bunchai was preparing the company in 2013 to go regional and take advantage of the opportunities arising from the launch of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015. Learning objectives: Show how SMEs can successfully adapt to drastic changes in their business environment through proactive shifts in their strategy and organization.