個案總覽

BY-HEALTH Co., Ltd. (BY-HEALTH), a Chinese dietary supplement company founded in 1995, had a first-mover advantage as a contemporary health supplement provider in Mainland China. It had successfully utilized this advantage to conquer a significant portion of the market. However, by early 2017, maintaining this leadership position in the market had become increasingly difficult, largely due to deteriorating public perception of consumables originating in China. BY-HEALTH had sought to differentiate itself by actively making its sourcing and production processes fully transparent to stakeholders, most notably by opening a transparent factory in Guangdong Province.<br><br>While BY-HEALTH’s transparent factory and corporate social responsibility activities developed consumer trust and positively contributed to the environment within which the company operated, they were also prohibitively expensive to maintain. It was also difficult to determine how they affected the company’s bottom line. As he prepared for a company shareholders’ meeting in January 2017, the company’s chief operating officer was faced with difficult questions. What programs should the company continue to invest in for the future? Should some of these initiatives have an end date? If they were ended, what effect would this have on the community? How could he communicate the value of the transparent factory to consumers and shareholders?

In late 2014, Dropbox, the San Francisco-based pioneering cloud-based file storage service, was at an important stage of its growth. Its user base had expanded into hundreds of millions of users globally, and the company was expanding its service offerings to organizations. At the heart of this expansion was the ever-increasing acquisition of customers in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. As Dropbox targeted larger customers, it needed to carefully allocate its limited resources and continually evaluate the appropriate sales approach because of the highly competitive nature of the cloud storage market. The head of the Strategic Finance team needed to recommend how Dropbox could most effectively invest its limited resources. Should it invest in the self-serve, inbound approach, or opt for the more proactive and costlier outbound approach?

In early 2017, the directors at Protospace, a makerspace in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, faced some challenges. The nine-year-old member-run organization operated as a “do-ocracy,” with a minimum of official oversight. However, the directors and some of the membership wondered whether Protospace could and should scale its growth by recruiting and accepting new members. Would a larger membership help or hinder the membership-driven makerspace? Should the organization hire a staff member so that members would have more time to work on their projects? What would be the implications of a having larger membership and a paid staff member?

In January 2016, two entrepreneurial brothers attended an academic conference on small business and entrepreneurship to sell their product, the Online Venture Challenge, a web-based software-as-a-service retail simulation system. The brothers also hoped to demonstrate their second product idea, Launchboard, an interactive product that enabled users to make development plans and record their progress. Both products were intended as tools for entrepreneurship educators. The brothers did not have much success selling their first product during the conference, but two professors wanted to use Launchboard that semester. The brothers needed to decide how to position their product line. Should the Online Venture Challenge be promoted as one primary product that offered multiple complementary features? Or should their two products be positioned as two separate but complementary products? Or was it better to have two stand-alone products and two corresponding businesses? The brothers needed to better understand their own business ideas to determine the approach they should take. Fittingly, Launchboard, the new tool they had created, might actually help them to do just that.

Impex, a division of the South Indian firm KCM Appliances, dealt with kitchen, household, and home entertainment appliances. KCM’s managing director needed to decide on a year-end sales promotion for Impex. One option was direct-response advertising in the Times of India newspaper, which could potentially help Impex expand its reach in India. This option was in contrast to the previous year’s promotion, which involved collaboration with distributors and retailers in the Kerala region of South India. Deciding between the two options required a quantitative analysis to estimate the incremental volume and sales revenue gained from the previous year’s promotion. Those gains could then be compared with the break-even volumes required to cover the costs of the promotion with the Times of India. Impex also needed to consider a qualitative analysis by examining the tensions created by the two options, including channel relations versus brand awareness, an existing market focus versus a future market focus, and product management versus sales management. Should Impex repeat the previous year’s tried-and-tested promotion, or pursue the Times of India offer, whereby it could sidestep its local channel partners and directly sell to consumers?

In May 2015, the new director at Schneider Electric’s plant in Rudrapur, India, faced a challenging situation. The company had an ongoing struggle with quality issues and consistently missed its production targets. From a human relations perspective, employee engagement and morale were low and the shop-floor workers had very little respect for the plant’s management team. The new director quickly launched a program of human resource initiatives aimed to turn the plant around, but in the midst of his efforts, a sister plant submitted a high-volume order that seemed well beyond Rudrapur’s production capabilities. Against the advice of his superiors, and in the face of some resistance from his staff at the plant, the plant director accepted the order and used an adaptive leadership approach to implement several plant-level changes in the production processes at Rudrapur. While the team had made a lot of progress in improving the overall function of the Rudrapur plant, there was still a long way to go and a huge production hurdle to be crossed. Were the director’s interventions likely to succeed? Should he adopt a different approach to meet the challenges?

Audio Advice was a brick-and-mortar audio specialty retailer with two stores in North Carolina. Traditionally, audiophile components were only sold through specialty stores. However, this practice was shifting, with a growing portion of sales occurring online. Audio Advice wanted to capture a portion of this growing channel, so started online as an Amazon Marketplace seller. Though this channel resulted in quick revenue growth without a great deal of initial investment, it was not suitable long term. Audio Advice’s management had a bigger vision. In planning their transition to their own e-commerce site, Audio Advice needed to consider branding: should they extend their existing brand, use a sub-brand, or develop a new one? How would each option affect in-store sales, Audio Advice’s reputation, and the willingness of audiophile brands to allow online sales of their products?

In late 2015, Apigee, a fast-growing technology firm, faced competitive pressures. It needed to scale up rapidly, which included hiring additional staff. At the regional office in India, some members of the senior leadership team wondered whether the company would need to modify its human resources practices. The firm had been operating in a unique organizational culture that encouraged employees’ openness and freedom, in keeping with its core values of passion, a bias for action, and respect. How could Apigee integrate its unique culture with the organization’s growth plans? The senior leadership team needed to decide how Apigee could retain its personalized approach, culture of freedom, and high levels of employee empowerment, as the company expanded both in size and scope.

In March 2016, the senior director of logistics and fulfillment at ShopClues.com, a leading online marketplace headquartered in Gurgaon, India, reflected on the positive turnaround in the company’s logistics strategy. Until 2014, the company had depended on air transport for shipment delivery, which limited it to Tier 1, Tier 2, and a few Tier 3 cities. It had relied entirely on the few national courier services available. These services had high logistics costs and could not reach customers in some tier 3 and tier 4 cities, preventing these customers from placing orders and leading to dissatisfaction. ShopClues.com switched to surface transport and a network of third-party logistics service providers to meet its requirements in a cost-effective manner. With evolving customer expectations for online retail sales and fierce competition in the e-commerce market, could ShopClues.com become the first profitable e-commerce company with third-party logistics partnerships as the key enabler?

In October 2015, three senior managers at BNP Paribas Fortis, the leader in retail banking in Belgium and a subsidiary of the BNP Paribas Group, were discussing how to take the bank’s latest service, “James,” to the next level and grow its customer base fivefold by the end of 2016. Launched in 2009, James was a unique investment portfolio advice service that substituted web conferencing technology for face-to-face interaction between advisors and affluent banking customers. An important feature of the James banking experience was that each customer mainly interacted with the same advisor, and was able to do so from virtually any location, outside regular office hours. The use of technology to build strong customer relationships from a distance proved beneficial for both the customers and the bank. Now the BNP Paribas Fortis managers had to decide how to expand James’ customer base, outpace the competition, and organize for growth. How could they grow the country’s current base of nearly 20,000 James customers to 100,000 in just one year?

<h4>bKash: Financial Technology Innovation for Emerging Markets Case Study Description:</h4><p>The founder of bKash Limited (bKash), a successful mobile financial services (MFS) model pioneered in Bangladesh, built the company from scratch, targeting services at the lower socioeconomic segment of society and eventually acquiring 26 million customers. bKash has had a positive impact on the lives of countless poor people and has gained worldwide recognition for its innovative business model. The model required close collaboration with telecommunications operators, banks, non-governmental organizations, and regulators. In particular, the Bangladesh central bank supported the venture, allowing experimentation in MFS to address poverty through financial inclusion. By the end of 2016, the founder was concerned about future regulations and looking to strengthen the foundation of his disruptive business to make it more robust. This bKash case study asks: How could the company continue to grow while maintaining its financial inclusion objective?</p>

The owner and operator of two stores that sold organic groceries and fair-trade goods in Edmonton, Alberta was proud of what he had built; however he was worried about the financial sustainability of his downtown location. Since its opening in 2014, the downtown store had constantly struggled to remain profitable in the face of extremely high overhead costs. The original Whyte Avenue location of Earth’s General Store, highly popular with its loyal patrons, had been subsidizing the downtown store just to keep its doors open. This practice was certainly not a long-term solution, and in early 2016, the owner needed to create a new business strategy that would balance his company’s financial needs with its social and environmental missions.

Finolex Industries Limited was India’s largest rigid PVC pipes and fittings manufacturer and the second largest PVC resin manufacturer. It was a family-led enterprise with a long history of philanthropy. The Mukul Madhav Foundation was the charitable arm of the company, and it’s functioning needed to be streamlined while considering the resources, timelines, and strategies required to meet its obligations. A strategic framework had to be applied so that Finolex Industries Limited and the Mukul Madhav Foundation could work together on a long-term basis on projects that benefitted the society as well as the organization.

In 2016, the founder of Enigma Escape Rooms Ltd. (Enigma) was investigating an opportunity to expand his business to a second location. A new location would offer three additional escape rooms, and Enigma would enter the horror-based genre of the market. Enigma had strong demand for its adventure-themed escape rooms during its first year of operations. With escape room popularity at an all-time high and new competitors in or entering the market, the owner wondered if this was the best time to grow his business. He planned to complete a business size-up, assess the competition, and then project the costs and benefits of opening a second location before making a final decision.

In 2014, Jiangsu Huabo Industrial Group Co. Ltd. brought together offline logistics services and an online platform to create Jiangsu PhoneWin Logistics Management Co. Ltd. (PhoneWin). PhoneWin’s purpose was to exploit e-commerce opportunities for phones and related services in small towns and villages in China. Although competition was fierce from several large e-commerce companies in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, PhoneWin achieved some success. By November 2015, it had expanded into 13 provinces across China and built partnerships with over 300 suppliers. However, two Chinese e-business giants had started to expand their penetration in rural markets, becoming an inevitable threat to PhoneWin. As an early entrant in this market, how could PhoneWin compete against such powerful giants? Could it sustain its revenue and profit growth in the coming years?

In 2010, three friends created Fruits of Sherbrooke as a way to rescue local fruit that would otherwise be wasted. The founders knew their efforts would be beneficial for the environment and for people in need of food. In February 2016, having grown their business into a successful social enterprise entirely through the help of volunteers, they faced important decisions. Realistically, they would not always be able to run the organization, which meant facing issues of succession. Additionally, they needed to decide how to balance growth strategies with their commitment to the social good. Should the organization focus on maximizing profitability or should decisions for growth be based only on providing the greatest benefit possible to the community and environment?

Sushma Industries Private Limited (SIPL) wanted to accelerate its growth after two decades as a small enterprise. Enabling growth required having the right talent in place, by first attracting these employees, and then evaluating and appropriately rewarding their performance. The new chief executive officer hired a human resources specialist to design and implement a compensation structure to recognize the changing competitive environment and to align SIPL's human capital strategy with the organization’s strategic goals. The human resources specialist faced the challenges of establishing a new compensation structure in a growing organization, timing the change appropriately in the organization's growth journey, and aligning and positioning it to fit within the current organizational and industry context.

On January 23, 2015, DXSD India received an opportunity to add a complex new line of business to the company’s value chain. The head of DXSD India, a shared service division of a U.K. bank, was concerned about his company’s ability to take on more complex work. Gaps had been identified in the existing process migration framework, so a new framework was proposed to fix the gaps. The new framework was not tested and did not yet have approval from the onshore project management office. DXSD India had two days to decide whether to use the existing way of working or pursue the proposed new framework. Would simple repairs of gaps within the current framework be sufficient to transform migrations or should a new framework be developed?

The customer relationship manager at JSW Steel Ltd., a large steel manufacturer in India, needed to analyze his available transportation and logistics options to meet an urgent order for a long-time and valued client. The manager needed to decide whether to send the shipment through the customary rail route or, instead, to use the new sea route that his company had recently developed. His dual objective was to meet the customer's requirements in time, while also delivering some financial benefit to boost his company’s quarterly results.

In May 2016, a business student from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was considering expanding his print advertising business, which he had been operating out of his home for the past five years. He was about to graduate from the School of Commerce at Addis Ababa University, and he needed to put together an action plan for his company’s potential expansion. His options were: (1) continue operating his business as is; (2) invest in an office location and move the business out of his home; and (3) invest in new machines that would allow him to bring banner printing operations in-house. Now it was time to consider the pros and cons of these options and prepare an action plan, including how to obtain the financing for fixed asset investments.