個案總覽

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.

Laser City was a gaming company with a laser tag facility that provided a variety of fun activities for children, groups, and corporate events. Most services were delivered face-to-face in Edmonton and Calgary locations in Alberta, Canada. To mitigate the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the Alberta Government’s restrictions on in-person services on the business, Laser City’s management team launched an online gaming service called Codo in March 2020. Presented with the new challenges of leading Laser City employees remotely, the company's co-founder needed to design selection tools to better identify and hire engaged remote employees, find innovative ways to foster casual virtual interactions among workers, and identify new methods to support employees through the challenges of remote work.

It was July 2022, and Isaac Morgado, one of the founders of MVMT Strength Inc., wanted to create a comprehensive marketing plan for the fall season. The gym had recently moved to a new location and Morgado wanted to continue growth through promotional campaigns.

此個案透過A餐飲集團分店餐廳的數據分析案例，介紹進行商業數據分析專案與決策的歷程。透過本個案的討論與資料分析，學生將能對商業數據分析專案的規劃歷程有所了解。此外，透過資料分析，使同學了解思考進行數據分析時，如何將公司既有資料庫的文字或數據資料，轉換成可以進行統計分析的資料，選擇合適統計分析、根據分析結果提出實務建議、並且思考數據分析專案的做法。

<p align="justify">Bhagwati Steel Centre, a family-owned trading firm located in Ghaziabad, India, was facing a short-term decline in revenue from its core business, trading iron and steel components, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company’s four partners felt that this was the right time to diversify and expand their business to establish more sources of revenue and income; they were considering diversifying and expanding their business using a business integration strategy and had to choose between two options: backward or forward integration. However, the partners had several financial factors to consider before making the final choice. What factors would influence and determine the better option for the company’s cash flow? What effect would a potential boom or bust in the market have on the two proposed expansion strategies and on cash flow? What financial techniques were available to evaluate the two proposals and which should be the preferred technique? Finally, should the company opt for backward or forward integration?</p>

In January 2021, Girish Hanchate, the vice-president of the industrial distribution segment at SKF India Ltd. (SFK India), located in the Indian city of Pune, was facing a difficult problem. He had to find a way to mitigate the ongoing drop in sales from key industrial customers in India resulting from COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, with many SKF India customers switching to lower-priced competitors. SKF India had been successfully delivering industry-leading, high-value products, services, and knowledge-engineered solutions to its customers for many years. The company was well respected for its outstanding product quality, performance, and unmatched customer-centric approach. However, Hanchate was wondering if he should rethink the company’s business strategy. The drop in customers meant a significant revenue loss for SKF India because the industrial division was a significant profit driver for the company.

In February 2021, the responsible seafood program officer for World Wide Fund for Nature Singapore (WWF-Singapore) was looking to encourage a collective change in the consumption of sustainable seafood. Promoting sustainable seafood in Singapore, however, had not been easy. Due to cultural influences and the nature of seafood trading, driving a change in the sourcing and consumption of seafood among stakeholders required significant effort and creativity. Identified stakeholders were generally either slow in acting or unresponsive. With each party pushing the responsibility to another, the challenge facing the program officer and WWF-Singapore’s market transformation team was how to overcome this deadlock of inertia. WWF-Singapore believed that it was necessary to understand and address each stakeholder separately, as stakeholders required specific communication messages and support to help them make a change. However, with limited resources, WWF-Singapore had to be strategic in deciding who to target and how.

GRW Engineering (Pty) Ltd. (GRW) is a road transport equipment designer, manufacturer, and servicer based in South Africa. With GRW facing increased competition in 2022 when one of GRW’s major suppliers buys out a local competitor, Gerhard Van der Merwe, co-founder of GRW and chief executive officer since its inception in 1996, knows that GRW must now compete directly against a giant multinational and develop an appropriate strategy. Van Der Merwe must decide whether to compete directly with the international firm or to internationalize. If GRW were to internationalize, he will need to determine whether to focus GRW’s energies on Sub-Saharan Africa or to manufacture in Europe.

Concise Industries Private Limited (Concise Industries), a small enterprise operating in the material handling and control equipment sector, manufactured fixed cranes and undertook annual maintenance contracts for its clients scattered across India. In the face of the uncertainty posed by COVID-19, the owner was contemplating whether to stick with the company’s current strategy or to expand to take advantage of the benefits of growth in this industry. As the economy continued to improve, he believed that demand for these goods would rise. He was considering project expansion but was unsure whether this move would bring value to his company. Hence, he was investigating several project expansion proposals and associated expected cash flow projections to make an investment decision.

Planet Milk produced and distributed A2 milk in Bhubaneswar, the capital city of the state of Orissa, in India. Despite the best efforts of its founder, Planet Milk had remained unprofitable since the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March 2020. In January 2022, the founder considered three broad alternatives to revive his milk business. The first was to change the milk’s packaging from glass bottles to Tetra Pak cartons. This change in packaging would increase the milk’s shelf life, allow wider customer reach, and improve revenues. The second alternative was to introduce an online order management option for consumers, which would increase the visibility of demand and thereby increase the operational efficiency of the business, reduce wastage and logistics costs, and increase profits. However, these options also required significant capital investments that would potentially not be recouped if the desired increase in sales did not occur. The third option was to target institutional buyers or retail channel partners, which would potentially increase sales but also decrease margins and increase credit. The founder had three months to implement a revival plan; if it proved unsuccessful, he could sell the business.

Two women entrepreneurs co-founded a profitable direct-to-consumer apparel brand called Suta. In June 2021, as the business owners were planning to increase advertising expenditure and scale up operations, they were confronted with a declining return on advertising spend on social commerce and other digital platforms. The co-founders needed to make use of marketing analytics to examine the effectiveness of their online store in converting visitors into customers and decide whether adopting a conversion rate optimization strategy could help improve performance.

In September 2021, the chief human resources officer of the video intelligence firm Wobot.ai saw a negative review on the online platform Glassdoor, which accused her of being a figurehead who achieved her leadership position only because she was the founder’s wife. Despite her numerous professional achievements, including being recognized as one of the 2019 “Shepreneurs: Women to Watch” by Entrepreneur India magazine, the chief human resources officer was shaken by the demeaning sexist remark in the glaringly public review that threatened her personal brand and the company’s reputation. The review had already deterred one potential applicant from joining the organization. The chief human resources officer considered the review a personal attack and wanted to defend her personal brand identity. She was also eager to call out offensive stereotypical remarks that could create a hostile workplace environment. However, the Wobot.ai leadership team was wondering which response strategy would be the best approach for the organization.

It was September 2022, and, despite a long day at the office, Stephen Price had a lot to consider. He had just finished a meeting with the development and sales team at Graywood Developments (Graywood), during which they had discussed one of the latest developments in Graywood’s pipeline—the Centricity project. With a zoning bylaw amendment (ZBA) in hand, kicking off sales for the project was the next step in the process. However, with a looming recession and an anticipated cooling of the real estate market, Price had to decide whether to proceed with a sales launch in the first quarter of 2023, or shelve the launch until market conditions improved. Graywood could ultimately launch sales in January 2023 in the hope of achieving an average selling price of CA$1,650 per square foot, or it could delay the launch until January 2024 and hopefully sell at $1,700 per square foot or higher—though there was no guarantee that the market would improve. He wondered what impact his decision would have on Graywood’s plans to launch its tenth real estate fund in 2023. This case includes a complex merchant developer Microsoft Excel model, whereby students can adjust inputs and observe how key metrics change.

In May 2022, Rohan Jain, the second-generation entrepreneur of an Indian family-managed carpet design firm, TexCarp Consulting, had to decide whether to enter a new vertical with one of their biggest clients, American Carpets. The opportunity involved using technology and personnel to carry out virtual reality rendering for American Carpets so that the US-based company could showcase its products to clients in virtual space. Jain tried to convince his father to invest. But the technology involved high costs, and Jains’s father was opposed to the idea, since it would involve tying capital to fixed costs. But Jain could also convert the fixed costs into variable costs by either hiring technology or outsourcing the project. Should Jain go ahead with the VR rendering project? And if so, which of the three options should he select: buy, hire, or outsource the required technology and personnel?

In late 2020, Lynn Wilson, a social entrepreneur and chief executive officer of SparqU, Inc., gave himself one year to turn his company around. SparqU, which offered digital literacy training to underserved and underrepresented communities, had been funded by a workforce grant. But when the grant expired, Wilson left his academic teaching position to focus full-time on SparqU and fulfill his passion for helping Colorado’s people of colour, low income, and underserved to become digitally literate and improve their job opportunities. Wilson was all in. But he wondered, would his current promotional strategy targeted towards those needing to build digital literacy skills eventually be profitable ? Or should he consider other segments?

During an Allianz Benelux SA (Allianz) board meeting held in early 2019, Allianz’s chief financier officer (CFO) had a profound discussion with Allianz’s chief data and analytics officer (CDAO) on improving the company’s profit and loss (P&L) statement by targeting problematic cases among disability claims related to Allianz’s life insurance product. It appeared that certain claims had very long durations, leading to recurrent payouts surpassing the total amount of premiums. Consequently, there were too many claims that could translate into future losses. If this phenomenon persisted, Allianz could lose millions of dollars in revenues. Therefore, the CFO contacted the CDAO and his data office and requested that the team identify the client segments in which the most problematic cases of disability claims occurred. Additionally, the CFO wanted the data office to build a predictive model that could estimate the duration of a claim, to adapt the premium coverage to specific customer segments.

Runza National, Inc. (Runza), an iconic Nebraskan quick-service restaurant chain had saturated its home Nebraskan market, with eighty-two stores across the state. A proud, family-run business, the Nebraskan chain was named after a mouth-watering regional specialty: the Runza sandwich. Also known as a bierock, this savoury bread pocket of Russian and German origins was adapted from a family recipe into the flagship offering. To foster further growth, the Runza team sought to expand the chain across the Midwest and beyond, through options such as company-owned stores, franchising, and ghost kitchens. Equally crucial were the areas in which to expand, with possible markets in nearby Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri. Canadian communities also presented opportunities for international expansion. In determining the optimal markets and modes of entry, the company had to consider the effect of local factors on the company’s appeal. Its Nebraskan roots had made it a local icon with a devoted customer base, but the next steps beyond its home state would shape its future. Which states of the United States should they expand into, and was Canadian expansion viable? What market types—larger cities or smaller towns—were the most desirable, and which mode of entry was most feasible?

Marlow is a new menstrual health company that developed the first-ever lubricated tampon for smoother and more comfortable insertion and which aimed to deliver the product through a direct-to-consumer subscription model. During its first year in business, the team of female founders focused on product development, including completing the research and testing required to secure regulatory approval from Health Canada and the US Food and Drug Administration. After successfully raising $500,000 in an angel pre-seed fundraising round, the team was ready to bring its innovative product to market. In preparation for the launch, Marlow needed a comprehensive marketing plan that identified the consumers who would benefit most from the product and who would be willing to purchase it. Key messages and a communications plan had to be finalized highlighting Marlow’s differentiated advantage, and the financial estimate for the first year had be forecast and presented to investors.

Following the Arab Spring of 2011, the centuries-old co-operative movement helped the emancipation and financial independence of women in Morocco. One such woman was Samira Smahri, the founder and president of a co-operative called Attadamoun, which nationally and internationally marketed a unique product native to Morocco now used around the world: argan oil and its derivative products. The co-op, founded in 2014 and located in Sidi Bibi, a small village in Morocco, had experienced steady growth and given women a sense of hope and new-found freedom. However, this was all put on hold with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, Smahri had to decide whether to persevere under extremely unfavourable conditions or to shut down the co-op that meant so much to her and the co-op’s emancipated women employees.

Sheree Evans and Danielle McFarland had spent five years trying to build and launch business management software for the health and wellness industry. After an attempt with Mystro, an online payment gateway, they pivoted to create a new business, Therapair, a multi-sided platform. They had enough funds left for just over three months of operations and needed to decide whether they should continue to invest in their businesses or walk away from them.