個案總覽

Supplements the (A) case.

On a clear day in August 1999 in the new headquarters of drugstore.com, against a backdrop of the Blue Angels flying in formation over Lake Washington practicing for their hydroplane Seafare Cup performance, Peter Neupert was pleased with his company's IPO performance. Just last month, on July 28, 1999, drugstore.com had burst to life as a public company. Shares priced at $18 had soared as high as $69 on the first day of trading, providing a total valuation for drugstore.com of more than $2.9 billion--and a record: drugstore.com was the fastest company ever to reach a valuation of $1 billion. The team had built a virtual drugstore on the Web. During the first six months of its existence more than 160,000 customers had come to shop for more than 17,000 drugstore products and prescription drugs. Customer orders were electronically sent to distribution centers run by Walsh Distribution and RxAmerica, both located in Texas. Drugstore.com had entered into outsourcing agreements/partnerships for fulfilling the orders with these two firms. For six months ending July 4, 1999, drugstore.com sold products to approximately 168,000 customers, and had net sales of $4.2 million with an operating loss of $30 million. In June of 1999, drugstore.com had 980,000 unique visits to its Web site compared to 560,000 unique visits of its competitor PlanetRx.

Catches the situation facing Charles Schwab Corp. in late August 1999 in the dramatically changing brokerage industry. Their bold moves in January 1998 have created a new industry competitive pattern and provoked aggressive response by companies like Merrill Lynch.

A look at the industrial restructuring in the brokerage industry made possible by e-commerce. Focuses the student's attention on the decision alternatives facing Charles Schwab, one of the industry leaders in January 1998. In a word, the challenge is "Do they slash prices to meet competition from companies like E-Trade or do they stand still?"

Software applications are now a mission-critical source of competitive advantage for most companies. They are also a source of great risk, as the Y2K bug has made clear. Yet many line managers still haven't confronted software issues--partly because they aren't sure how best to define the quality of the applications in their IT infrastructures. Some companies such as Wal-Mart and the Gap have successfully integrated the software in their networks, but most have accumulated an unwieldy number of incompatible applications--all designed to perform the same tasks. The authors provide a framework for measuring the performance of software in a company's IT portfolio. Quality traditionally has been measured according to a product's ability to meet certain specifications; other views of quality have emerged that measure a product's adaptability to customers' needs and a product's ability to encourage innovation. To judge software quality properly, argue the authors, managers must measure applications against all three approaches. Understanding the domain of a software application is an important part of that process. The domain is the body of knowledge about a user's needs and expectations for a product. Software domains change frequently based on how a consumer chooses to use, for example, Microsoft Word or a spreadsheet application. The domain can also be influenced by general changes in technology, such as the development of a new software platform. Thus, applications can't be judged only according to whether they conform to specifications. The authors discuss how to identify domain characteristics and software risks and suggest ways to reduce the variability of software domains.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 600-006.

Describes Harley-Davidson's decision process for defining and selecting an enterprise-wide procurement software package and the institutional changes introduced as part of this process. Tells the story of Harley-Davidson's approach in developing integrated business processes and information systems to meet the needs of a visionary procurement strategy. Central to this activity was the evaluation and selection of an enterprise software package and implementation partner to support the strategy. Describes managerial reasoning and tactics to introduce significant organizational change into a setting where team-based responsibility and a culture of autonomy are prominent.

The Euro-Arab Management School is an academic institution established by the European Union and the Arab League. The school is a "virtual organization": it does not operate bricks and mortar classrooms. Instead, programs are offered in an innovative manner that combines web-based learning with local tutoring. The case deals with the concept of management of a virtual organization, and introduces some of the benefits and challenges of virtual organizations. Also deals with issues of the future of education in the age of the Internet.

The sales director of Xerox (Hong Kong) has a vision to transform sales force management processes that would require radical changes to both the organization and the information technology infrastructure. The design includes a companywide database to be available to the sales force by remote access through Intranet/Internet. From this database the sales force could manage their territory using notebook computers while traveling, working at client sites, sitting in meetings, or talking on the phone. At the time of sale, they could check inventory, quote prices, notify delivery or service schedules, and make billing arrangements. Successful implementation of the plan requires the sales director to overcome financial constraints, ingrained habits, traditional cultural values, an inadequate information technology infrastructure, and the effects of the change beyond the sales organization.

In the fall of 1991, Signet was just recovering from the downturn in the real estate market of the late 1980s. In an effort to improve business efficiency in the handling of the vast amounts of information Signet was maintaining, especially in light of its new credit card business, Signet decided to out source all commodity type information activities. Signet's goal was to establish a standardized, reliable, outsourced corporate-wide processing system. Given the amount of this style of work which ABC Information Systems was already doing for much larger banking institutions, Signet believed they would be the perfect match to capture the technology of an organization already far down the learning curve.

In 1997, retail sales begain to slump for the Dairy Farm Group of Companies (DFG), a major food retailer based in Hong Kong with operations in many major cities in Asia Pacific. The Asian economic crisis of 1997 was one cause. However, another major cause was increasing competition from aggressive European and U.S. retail chains that were preparing to gain a foothold in the growing Asian market. DFG realized that to combat competition and retain its dominant position in Asia Pacific, it had to change its business strategy from that of "buying and selling" to "sensing and responding." The case investigates DFG's existing business systems and processes and looks at the possibilities of gaining competitive advantage, either by acquiring state of the art systems and technical infrastructure or through radical redesign of its critical business processes supported by technology.

Mondex is a "smart card" application that can be used as a payment mechanism--much like cash, or debit/credit cards--to pay for small, everyday items. This case describes the development and implementation of the Mondex stored-value payment system. The Mondex Canada consortium includes the major Canadian financial institutions, led by Royal Bank and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. Mondex has been undergoing a lengthy trial in the city of Guelph, Ontario. The director of marketing for Mondex Canada is faced with a rather large implementation challenge: planning and managing the roll-out of Mondex to the rest of the country.

A proposal to give all pharmacists computer database access to the prescription histories of all British Columbians was meeting stiff media criticism over privacy issues. While the Ministry of Health foresaw many benefits of the proposed Pharmanet to consumers, pharmacists, and government regulators, many others felt access to so much information would lead to misuse or abuse. With provincewide implementation only two months away, the Pharmanet project director had to decide what, if any, additional changes to the database system had to be made to ensure public support.

Sheldon Elman, founder and CEO of Medisys Health Group, Inc., a corporate health care services provider, has decided the company needs a web presence. France Mailhot, the vice president of operations, has been given the task of carrying out this idea. In order to do so, she must determine the company's needs with respect to a web site, set achievable, measurable performance objectives, and otherwise see to the implementation and administration of the site. She faces two main challenges: obtaining the necessary information and creating consensus in the organization. The case forces readers to consider the role of the Internet in a service organization's marketing strategy, and the possible impediments that need to be overcome in order to be successful.

Reviews Cisco System's approach to implementing Oracle's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software product. This case chronologically reviews the diverse, critical success factors and obstacles facing Cisco during its implementation. Cisco faced the need for information systems replacement based on its significant growth potential and its reliance on failing legacy systems. The discussion focuses on where management was particularly savvy in contrast to where it was the beneficiary of good fortune.

Sun Microsystems is a pioneer in networking computing. Sun's servers maintain a large market share and are considered highly scaleable. The case describes the n-tier architecture for building and managing large networks in which thousands of workers and customers are connected to enterprise servers.

Intended to introduce individuals to search engines and databases on the Internet, in particular those that are available to HBS.

Supplements the case.

In a comparative study, authors M. Bensaou from INSEAD and Michael Earl from the London Business School found fundamental differences in how Japanese and Western managers think about technology. Too many managers in the West are intimidated by the task of managing technology. They tiptoe around it, supposing that it needs special tools, special strategies, and a special mind-set. Well, it doesn't, the authors say. Technology should be managed--controlled, even--like any other competitive weapon in a manager's arsenal. The authors came to this conclusion in a surprising way. Having set out to compare Western and Japanese IT-management practices, they were startled to discover that Japanese companies rarely experience the IT problems so common in the United States and Europe. In fact, their senior executives didn't even recognize the problems that the authors described. When they dug deeper into 20 leading companies that the Japanese themselves consider exemplary IT users, they found that the Japanese see IT as just one competitive lever among many. Its purpose, very simply, is to help the organization achieve its operational goals. The authors found five principles of IT management in Japan that, they believe, are not only powerful but also universal. They contrast these principles against the practices commonly found in Western companies. While acknowledging that Japan has its own weaknesses with technology, particularly in white-collar office settings, they nevertheless urge senior managers in the West to consider the solid foundation on which Japanese IT management rests.

Signs of prosperity abound in the United States, fueling optimism that the economy has finally risen out of a long productivity slump. But Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, takes a skeptical look at current conditions in reviewing two books in the optimist's camp. In Prosperity, Wall Street Journal reporters Bob Davis and David Wessel argue that information technology is sparking a productivity breakthrough that will sustain prolonged prosperity. The authors foresee a powerful collaboration between industry and community colleges, working together to produce skilled workers. In The Productive Edge, MIT Professor Richard Lester pins his hopes on recent turnarounds in the U.S. industry in response to innovation, globalization, and deregulation--and concludes that these forces can drive an economywide productivity revival. Roach agrees that the books provide impressive anecdotes, but he points out that industry-based gains may stem from cost-shifting and rampant outsourcing. Long-lasting improvements in productivity, by contrast, would depend on boosting capital and educational endowments--and here the news is sobering. Despite the enormous corporate gamble on IT, the net stock of capital per worker has stayed constant because of frequent upgrading. "Human capital," as reflected in aptitude tests, also remains at low levels. Accordingly, Roach finds no hint in national data that productivity is emerging from its subpar trend. In fact, hours worked--a key factor in productivity calculations--may actually be rising. White-collar work, which depends more on mental acuity and creativity than on computers, just may not be capable of the sort of productivity advances seen on farms and in factories.