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During the summer of 2021, Sumana G., Chief Technology Officer of South Central Railway, was reviewing the annual productivity reports of field employees. This was an annual exercise that was crucial to central planning as it helped identify potential weaknesses and possibilities for improvement. Sumana knew that evaluating the productivity of store personnel would be the most challenging task because Indian Railways (IR) managed over 280,000 items stocked in 215 depots across the country. While reviewing the time sheets, Sumana quickly realized that field officers were spending a significant time amount of time on materials purchase, especially items purchased locally by field offices. On further inquiry, field officers revealed that retrieving data from the stores database based on item descriptions posed considerable challenges, and in most cases, the search results were not very useful. Sumana was quick to realize that an artificial intelligence (AI)-based search engine could solve this problem.

Spreadsheet supplement for case ISB365.

The case opens in August 2022, as Ahmed Galal Ismail, CEO of Majid Al Futtaim Properties and Fatima Zada, digital and omnichannel director at Majid Al Futtaim Shopping Malls, go over the plans to roll out the omnichannel mall offering for the Mall of the Emirates they have been piloting for the past six months. The Mall's omnichannel transformation had been propelled by the COVID-19 pandemic and aimed at enabling customers to shop both online and offline, while redefining the mall's value proposition and its business model. The case takes the reader back to the founding story of the Majid Al Futtaim Group, its culture and vision. The case also provides an overview of the Group's successful digital transformation journey as well as its omnichannel transformation of its retail business. The case also provides a detailed overview of changing customer habits and shopping preferences, the different kinds of players competing for customers' share of wallet, and the evolution of the role of the physical shop from a point of sale to a point of experience. The case puts the reader in Ismail and Zada's shoes, who have been trying to physically, digitally, and commercially to better serve both the customers and the mall tenants. The pandemic had forced even the most digitally conservative tenants to reconsider the extent of their digital offering, thus creating the perfect backdrop for an omnichannel transformation. Ismail and Zada knew that they needed to transform the value proposition to update the business model for the malls to survive in the digital area. They needed the figure out a sustainable and profitable way to do it.

In this case, set in June 2019 in Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Deepa Bachu of Pensaar Design and her team work with client ITC Ltd. to use design thinking and behavioral experiments to improve workplace safety and strive toward the company's zero-accident goal. The case contains information on the conglomerate ITC and its subsidiary, ITC Paperboard and Specialty Papers (PSPD), along with background on worker safety trends in India. During Pensaar's engagement, its team embedded at one of ITC PSPD's sites, conducting observations and qualitative interviews with employees. Next, Pensaar's team collaborated with ITC employees at different levels of the organization to design and implement a variety of safety interventions to better understand how to improve safety at the plant.

In this case, set in June 2019 in Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Deepa Bachu of Pensaar Design and her team work with client ITC Ltd. to use design thinking and behavioral experiments to improve workplace safety and strive toward the company's zero-accident goal. The case contains information on the conglomerate ITC and its subsidiary, ITC Paperboard and Specialty Papers (PSPD), along with background on worker safety trends in India. During Pensaar's engagement, its team embedded at one of ITC PSPD's sites, conducting observations and qualitative interviews with employees. Next, Pensaar's team collaborated with ITC employees at different levels of the organization to design and implement a variety of safety interventions to better understand how to improve safety at the plant.

Priya Shah, a new consultant, had just begun a project with Biko Taylor, chief procurement officer for the City of Portland, Oregon. A few weeks before, on April 20, 2022, the Portland City Council had passed ordinance 276, authorizing Taylor to pilot inclusive contracting policies designed to attract small diverse businesses (SDBs). Taylor hoped this pilot would help foster wealth creation for marginalized demographic groups by providing more economic opportunities through government contracts. He wanted to identify policies and practices that his division could adopt to achieve the goal of awarding more city government contracts to SDBs. Shah wondered if she could bring her private-sector-sourcing expertise to help Taylor's division improve its sourcing processes and mitigate the challenges in contracting with SDBs. What were some levers the city could use to increase representation of SDBs and incubate them as key suppliers? Were regulations and policies helping or hurting the city's inclusive contracting goals? This field-based case details Portland's procurement process, explores key stakeholders, and focuses on opportunities and challenges to increasing representation of SDBs in city projects. It is suitable for undergraduate and graduate-level operations management courses, in addition to Executive Education programs. This case has been successfully taught at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business in "Strategic Sourcing," a second-year elective course in the MBA program.

Manuel Hernandez, mill manager at Duoro Mine (Duoro), located near Arequipa, Peru, was considering options for increasing output to take advantage of a recent spike in commodity prices. It was Wednesday, January 25, 2023, and prices for copper and gold, the main products of Duoro, were trading at historical highs compared to their five-year average. The mine manager had asked Hernandez to make recommendations about increasing production, and Hernandez had identified three options. Students are expected to evaluate each option and decide which, if any, would address Diaz’s objectives of increasing output and minimizing financial risks.

Tire-building machinery producer Safe-Run Group (Safe-Run) was a second-tier supplier in the automotive industry. Responding to “green supply chain” initiatives in the industry, including by Safe-Run’s major clients, the company started working on a new environmentally friendly meridian machine. The results of a pilot test led by Zhijun Li, vice-president and head of research and development at Safe-Run, proved very promising both in terms of energy consumption and productivity, yet senior management remained skeptical. In a meeting with Li, senior executives expressed concerns about the higher production costs and the reaction of Safe-Run’s main customers. Li needed to build a better business case for the new machine.

This case is about designing and scaling up an innovative business model that leverages technology to solve the age-old Indian problem of expensive, unreliable, and unresponsive rural distribution of consumer goods. It explores an important decision concerning the growth path of a digital native, unicorn organization, ElasticRun, via exploit-led or explore-led strategy. The case is an inspiration to managers to take on yet-unsolved problems by leveraging the potential of crowdsourcing and technology.

Spreadsheet to accompany product W32505.

Amy Soler, senior director of direct fulfillment at DonorsChoose, the leading nonprofit crowdfunding platform for public school teachers in the United States, was preparing for the last board meeting of the 2022-23 school year. Soler led the DonorsChoose direct fulfillment team, which had been piloted two years earlier to enable DonorsChoose to integrate more small diverse businesses in its supply chain. Increasing the representation of these businesses in the DonorsChoose supply chain was crucial: it had become a core part of the company's equity mission. However, sourcing from small diverse businesses could be effort intensive, and Soler needed to figure out how to make this process financially sustainable and scalable in the long term. In preparation for the upcoming DonorsChoose board meeting, Soler considered several questions: First, how could her team partner with more small diverse businesses? Were there any technologies that could help the team explore the growing list of potential small diverse businesses? The manual work that her team was doing to identify and onboard them as suppliers was not sustainable for the long term. Second, how much inventory would DonorsChoose need to buy from the small diverse businesses and stock in advance at its warehouses in Pennsylvania and Arizona? How could Soler and her team get better at inventory forecasting? Third, who was the right partner for third-party logistics? Soler and her team had faced some operational challenges with their current provider and were implementing short-term solutions. Was there a different third-party logistics company, or a combination of companies, with which the DonorsChoose team members could work as they continued to source more classroom supplies from small diverse businesses? This field-based case has been successfully taught at the Darden School of Business in the second-year MBA elective on strategic sourcing. This teaching plan assumes an 85-minute case discussion suitable for undergraduate- and graduate-level supply chain management courses, in addition to Executive Education programs. It would also be suitable in a first-year MBA or undergraduate course on strategic sourcing, with an emphasis on integrating SDBs in the supply chain.

Tire-building machinery producer Safe-Run Group (Safe-Run) was a second-tier supplier in the automotive industry. Responding to "green supply chain" initiatives in the industry, including by Safe-Run's major clients, the company started working on a new environmentally friendly meridian machine. The results of a pilot test led by Zhijun Li, vice-president and head of research and development at Safe-Run, proved very promising both in terms of energy consumption and productivity, yet senior management remained skeptical. In a meeting with Li, senior executives expressed concerns about the higher production costs and the reaction of Safe-Run's main customers. Li needed to build a better business case for the new machine.

In 2021, the US grocery industry had been undergoing several changes. The competitive landscape had changed significantly since the first decade of the twenty-first century. Walmart Inc. (Walmart) had emerged as the dominant retailer in all markets leading to bankruptcies and mergers with erstwhile market leaders. However, mistakes made by Walmart in that same period allowed ALDI SÜD Dienstleistungs-SE & Co. (Aldi) to make its presence felt with Walmart’s customers. Aldi was gaining its advantage through rapid expansion, with an increasingly broader assortment of products meant to attract upscale customers. Walmart initially tried to respond by opening small-format stores. Walmart had to decide whether this was the right approach to use to fight Aldi, or whether it was even a worthwhile fight. On the other hand, Aldi needed to be careful with how fast and far it should deviate from the core business model that had been instrumental in its success. Finally, the grocery business model had a growing online component that became more prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, Aldi and Walmart also had essential decisions to incorporate these online aspects into their respective business models.

As companies increasingly rely on data and analytics to make decisions and improve their operations, it becomes clear that data quality can be a major issue. The insights gleaned from data analytics are useful only if the data is of high quality. This note summarizes some common issues that can result in low-quality data and explores the crucial task of data engineering. This note is taught at Darden in the second-year elective, "Digital Operations." It would also be suitable in a course or module covering data analytics.

White lies (inflated claims) cost the insurance industry billions of dollars every year. After investing heavily to automate workflows (from policy subscription to claims processing), digitization has ironically made fraud easier to commit and harder to catch. To an industry drowning in data and paying out millions per day for fraudulent claims, artificial intelligence and machine learning offer new hope. The case introduces what it calls "explainable AI" seen through the eyes of a senior operations executive at Shift, an insurtech unicorn company whose algorithm is used by global insurers such as Generali France and Mitsui Sumitomo to fight fraudulent claims. The focus is on strategy making (following a private equity funding round) and algorithm-level decisions. With an anonymized dataset of more than 10,000 claims and a guided coding exercise in statistical computing softwares R and Python, students are able to backtest their strategies on historical data. Beyond the exercise there is ample material to drive case discussion. https://publishing.insead.edu/case/to-catch-a-thief

White lies (inflated claims) cost the insurance industry billions of dollars every year. After investing heavily to automate workflows (from policy subscription to claims processing), digitization has ironically made fraud easier to commit and harder to catch. To an industry drowning in data and paying out millions per day for fraudulent claims, artificial intelligence and machine learning offer new hope. The case introduces what it calls "explainable AI" seen through the eyes of a senior operations executive at Shift, an insurtech unicorn company whose algorithm is used by global insurers such as Generali France and Mitsui Sumitomo to fight fraudulent claims. The focus is on strategy making (following a private equity funding round) and algorithm-level decisions. With an anonymized dataset of more than 10,000 claims and a guided coding exercise in statistical computing softwares R and Python, students are able to backtest their strategies on historical data. Beyond the exercise there is ample material to drive case discussion. https://publishing.insead.edu/case/to-catch-a-thief

The case is centered around the 2021 Telangana Member of the Legislative Council (MLC) elections, held against the backdrop of a known unknown: the COVID-19 pandemic. While the project planning was diligent, the team faced several unknown unknowns during the execution of the project. The case study enables readers to create a framework for risk management and associated strategies within the project management context.

This technical note provides a general overview of cloud computing and how businesses are using it to achieve their digital goals. Specifically, this note outlines the different service models that cloud computing supports, including Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, and Software-as-a-Service. The note also details some of the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing, and it reviews the cloud computing industry and some of its top players.

This technical note details virtual and augmented reality and how these immersive technologies can be used in business. Specifically, this note highlights several business applications of both virtual and augmented reality-describing each technology's advantages and disadvantages. Various companies have uncovered new and interesting applications using these technologies, ranging from assisting distribution-center workers to improving learning and development. This note is taught at Darden in the second-year course, "Digital Operations." It would also be suitable in a course focused on technology strategy covering virtual and augmented reality or a module on the metaverse.