Management Case Studies: Writing a good Case Study

Management Case Studies: Writing a good Case Study

A Plain English handbook by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in the late 90’s to help companies draft clear SEC disclosure documents emphasize the need for writing clear informative text. As Warren Buffett mentions in the preface, it is quite difficult to understand what the companies are actually saying.

Writing clear, informative text is vital for a case study. Those who master the technique can boost their case studies value with readers. Clear writing is becoming more and more important.
Readers of a case study will have very different backgrounds and knowledge levels. Some students may be from finance backgrounds who understand balance sheets. A majority will not.

Case studies should be written in a manner that students and educators can assess their level. There needs to be sufficient introductory level subject matter for those with relatively less financial or business knowledge, and more advanced information for those who do. It’s easy to do that on the web with hyperlinks but difficult to do in a hard copy case study.

Case Study – A student’s perspective

With management and business case studies, Yamini, a MBA student with Maharishi Institute of Management Education likes to see a summary at the beginning. She opines that having key facts up front will be very useful.

Case study writers who use acronyms and do not define them develop an incomplete case study. It is absolutely wrong to assume that a case study reader knows what acronyms mean. Most readers are particularly interested in hard facts. Most students read the case study from the back. As Ishleen says, “I am not interested in the fancy stuff in a business or management case study.”

Good-quality writing does get case studies credit. One case study writer with a business management education provider says, “We get feedback from the students and case study corporate trainers. These people are the actual users of the case studies so they know if they have understood the case study or case studies correctly, but we sometimes have to modify the case studies for the students or corporate trainers. The language in our case studies tends to be straight to the point and simple. We try not to make it too formal and complicated with management or business jargon. In cases where we write about management subjects like business ethics and corporate governance, the text in the case study needs to be more formal. It depends on which management or business area we write.”

The skill lies in not just writing correctly, but in being able to interpret and explain potentially complex business situations in clear-cut ways.

Apple Computers Channel Conflict Case Study

Apple Computers Channel Conflict

In 2003, an Apple reseller, Tom Santos, filed a lawsuit against Apple Computers Inc. . The court case alleged Apple of showing undue preference to its own Apple retail and online stores. The lawsuit claimed that Apple Computers was neglecting Apple reseller stores while shipping new goods. Many believed the suit was a result of Apple’s deteriorating relationship with some of its dealers

Apple was also accused for adopting unethical business practices. The legal battle criticized Apple’s intention to divert sales to its own stores. Dealers claimed that Apple used discriminatory pricing to undercut dealers, selling products below cost in order to get customers away from independent stores. Many other resellers joined the legal proceedings. Till June 2005, the plaintiffs awaited the allotting of a trial date at the Superior Court of the county of Santa Clara, California. Over the years Apple has succeeded not because of its first-to-market strategy but because it has been able to reach customers with clever products, clever marketing, and smart distribution. Apple though claims that its intent with its retail stores program is to make the market bigger, rather limit its existing channel.

Case Study Keywords:

Apple Computers Inc, Apple, Macintosh (Mac), handling channel conflicts, Apple iPod, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Reseller, Online Store, Retail Store, Class Action Lawsuit , Hybrid channel system, channel functions, channel integration, channel leader, channel members, channel strategies, dealers, channel partners, Apple resellers association

Management Issues:
Channel Conflict and resolution
Channel Strategies and Management
Reseller Management Issues
Channel Conflict vs. Channel Cooperation
Developing flexible and hybrid distribution strategies to minimize channel conflict

About Apple Computers Inc. (Nasdaq listing: AAPL)

Apple Computer, Inc. is a Silicon Valley company based in California. Apple’s main business is computer technologies. Apple is known for its pioneering, efficiently designed hardware like the iPod and iMac. Apple’s innovations in the software segment like the iTunes part of iLife suite and Mac OS X, its operating system are noteworthy.

Apple Computers Facts and Figures:

Apple Computers was founded on April 1, 1976
Apple was founded by Steve Paul Jobs (Jobs) and Steve Wozniak (Wozniak)
Apple was founded in Jobs’ garage.
Apple opened its first retail store in May 2001
Apple’s first store was opened in a suburb of Washington D.C.
Apple helped begin the personal computer revolution in the 1970s

Related Reading:
Resellers, Consumers File Suit Against Apple
http://www.thechannelinsider.com/article2/0,1895,1768399,00.asp

Microsoft’s Channel Focus Appeals to ISVs
http://www.thechannelinsider.com/article2/0,1895,1833854,00.asp

Channel Conflict and Coordination in the eCommerce Age
http://omis.scu.edu/pdf/POMS-channels-2003-0402.pdf

Best Practices for Channel Management
http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/tln/newsletter/2002/september/part1.html

GlaxoSmithKline – Supply Chain Challenges

GlaxoSmithKline – Supply Chain Challenges – Part 1

Supply chains have improved drastically in the past ten to fifteen years. The revolution can be attributed to companies’ shift in focus to efficiency. This applies both to the supply and manufacturing operations. GlaxoSmithKline is an example in case. Its efforts in improving production processes and packaging and enhanced supply to meet demand better are proof enough. This article highlights some of the challenges GlaxoSmithKline faced and how it overcame them.

GlaxoSmithKline – The Company

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is the world’s second largest pharmaceutical, biologicals and healthcare company (as per 2004 figures). Its sales touched GBP 20 billion yielding a profit of GBP 6 billion approximately. It employs around 100,000 people worldwide, with over 40,000 in the sales and marketing teams. Primarily headquartered in London, with dual US headquarters in Philadelphia and Research Triangle Park. GSK’s prime activities include creation, discovery, development, manufacture, and marketing pharmaceutical and consumer health-related products the world over.

GSK operates largely in two segments, Pharmaceuticals and Consumer Healthcare. GSK has more than 36,000 SKU’s manufactured across over 80 manufacturing plants worldwide. GSK has a market share of seven percent in the pharmaceutical business.

Year Merger/Acquisition New Company Name
1989
Beecham merged with SmithKline Beckman SmithKline Beecham
1995
Glaxo acquires Burroughs Wellcome & Co. Glaxo Wellcome
2000
Glaxo Wellcome merged with SmithKline Beecham GlaxoSmithKline
2001 GlaxoSmithKline acquires consumer health care company Block Drug Co. GlaxoSmithKline
Exhibit 1: Merger and Acquisition activity at GSK

The Challenges

Post merger Integration Issues
With the spate of mergers and acquisitions, GSK faces three major integration challenges:

* Integrating the separate identities
* Integrating different strategies and
* Integrating the packaging and manufacturing operations of Glaxo, Burroughs Wellcome, Beecham, SmithKline Beckman and Block Drug Co.

Complex product portfolio
Market dynamics and short life expectancy of patients have tilted the demand in favour of specialised drugs. GSK, like its competitors has to combat the need for specialised drugs continuously and reaping quick rewards. Such market forces alongside a changing industry make creative marketing and innovative products crucial.

Multi faceted US Markets
The US market mainly comprises of chain pharmacy stores, more traditional mom and pop stores and high-end deliveries. Such diverse markets have diverse needs. Catering to different customers brings forth the challenge of managing small volumes of niche packages.

Regulatory and operational challenges
Frequent merger and acquisition activity implies complicated paper work (re-registration and labelling) compliance with regulatory frameworks of different countries. With over 250 legal entities across the world, printing and other associated challenges emerge with different names that have to appear on different products distributed in different countries. The complexity increased manifold with the mergers owing to labelling changes. Moreover, different markets have different schedules on when GSK must incorporate the labelling changes.

Different departments could always make different packaging design changes. Communicating packaging specifications, graphics and artwork changes across the entire pharmaceutical organization was challenging if not an insurmountable task.

Outsourcing/supplier challenges
One of GSK’s products, Aquafresh Floss‘N’Cap (AFNC) is symbolic of the typical outsourcing challenges. AFNC has a flip top containing dental floss and toothpaste in the tube. AFNC had three custom designed sub assemblies outsourced to three different suppliers. The suppliers worked in sequence on the custom designed cap. Once the package reaches GSK, only filling of the tube with toothpaste remained. Coordinating with these three cross Atlantic suppliers, especially outside GSK’s manufacturing facilities was a challenging task.

Finding alternate/multiple suppliers
GSK had a bad experience early on with supply disruptions from a single source supplier. Almost a decade ago, one of its sole resin supplier’s plants exploded. It had no alternate suppliers and consequently had to lose market share not to mention customer goodwill, as customers have to do without critical drugs or life saving devices. GSK wanted to eliminate such situations. The challenge was not only to find alternate suppliers but ones who complied with the FDA regulations and supplied in time.

On the major machinery and equipment side, GSK’s goals were different though. It wanted to limit the number of machinery suppliers to better familiarise with the manufacturer’s equipment and establish partnerships with machine suppliers who offered total packages when compared to independent system integrators.

Operational/production challenges
The foremost challenge in production operations was synchronising with different manufacturing locations and multiple suppliers. With different packaging and assembly lines, implementing automation and advanced technology or process improvement programmes was a huge challenge. Other considerations were quick machine setup, minimum production stoppages, better equipment availability and flexibility besides handling innumerable design changes.

Technological Challenges
Technologies, for example RFID in anti-counterfeiting are largely untested or simply not the best. GSK has RFID supply chain projects planned but faces a tough test with respect to being the first mover in investing huge sums into the technology or adopt a wait and watch policy. GSK may lose out in both cases owing to failure of the relatively new technology or lose out to competitors who can gain significantly by adopting the technology faster

* Originally published by me in TMM

Glaxo Smithkline (GSK) spends about GBP 800 million to develop a drug. Its efforts and money will go waste unless its customers get the product in time without any defects and have no difficulty in handling the package. In other words, every facet of GSK’s supply chain should be up to the mark. This article (Glaxo Smithkline Supply Chain Challenges –Part I) highlighted some of the supply chain challenges GSK faces. Part II of this article (Glaxo Smithkline Supply Chain Challenges –Part II)illustrates GSK’s response to those supply chain challenges.

GE and Jack Welch Leadership Case Study

GE and Jack Welch Leadership and Entrepreneurship Case Study

John Francis Welch Jr. better known as Jack Welch needs no introduction as a successful entrepreneur and leader. Jack Welch took a company and transformed it into a world-class performer and the most admired one too. Jack Welch was the the CEO from 1981 to September 2001 of General Electric Corporation (GE) . When Jack Welch handed over control of GE, GE was operating in over 100 countries with about 340,000 employees and $130 billion in annual revenues.

GE entered into diversified businesses ranging from aircraft engines to medical diagnostics, from lighting to appliances, from nuclear power to broadcasting (GE owns NBC) and from plastics to financial services. Most of these businesses were added to GE through almost 1000 odd acquisitions made when Jack Welch was its CEO.

More on Jack Welch’s Principles follows….

Anti-Bureaucracy

“If you’re not No. 1 or 2 in your field, get out.” This statement by Jack Welch sums up his business philosophy. Jack made GE follow this principle by operating it like a small business in spite of its size. …to be continued.

What is a case study?

Managing a Global Organization : Merger and Consolidation

Managing a Global Organization during Merger and Consolidation

The foremost challenge for IT management teams as they develop and manage a global organization via merger and consolidation is to make certain the production teams of the merged entities keep up their present business at standard service levels.

Typically, when mergers occur the operations/production teams find it difficult to match customer defined service level agreements all through standard business conditions. The disruptions related to merger and consolidation actions imply that IT managers will find they are now faced with managing issues such as degrading productivity arising out of organizational differences, employee fears, differing cultures, time zones and challenging timelines for combining the merged entities into a single global operations entity.

It is critical for IT managers to guarantee they maintain focus on their customers’ needs, while establishing good relationships/partnerships with the freshly merged operations’ entities. Success comes from the top management and other management teams striving right away to reach out to employees of the combined merged organization to correspond to them their value to the team and the overall single global entity.

Employees within the combined IT organizations must recognize their value and role in building the new IT organization. Knowledge of how the employees will add value to the final organization will supply the buy-in they need to focus on matching their customers’ expectations, while aiding a better IT organization utilizing the best practices from the two merged IT companies.

HR Practices – Human Capital Index Study

HR Practices – Human Capital Index Study

A Human Capital Index study was conducted twice (1999 and 2001) by Watson Wyatt, a global human-capital consulting firm to understand the correlation between how organisations manage their human capital and its effect on their financial performance. The Human Capital Index study included analysing HR practices and financial performance of 750 companies across Canada, Europe and US. The Human Capital Index research was done twice to correlate the results.

Human Capital Index research involved evaluating HR practices and financial performance of 750 companies across Canada, Europe and US.

Key findings of the study:

$ Three times higher share holder returns for organisations with superior HR practices
$ Good HR practices result in positive financial performance to a much great extent as compared to what good financial performance do to effective HR practices
$ Certain traditional HR practices like 360-degree appraisal or developmental training if not conducted well can harmfully change an organisation’s financial performance

HR practices that in fact steer financial performance based on data from 51 companies surveyed included:

Total 43 HR practices were mostly divided into 6 general groups

Five groups of HR practices in which a significant improvement can lead to as much as 47% increase in market value. The sixth group that can reduce stakeholder value.

The Human Capital Index study clearly showed that better HR practices are no more a sanitation factor. HR practices are vital factors that decide an organisation’s performance.

Additional Reading:

1. “Human Capital Index: Human Capital As a lead Indicator of Shareholder Value”, Watson Wyatt Publication.
2. “The Hidden Human resources: Shareholder Value”, by Pfau B., Kay I., Optimize Magazine June 2002.
3. “How HR Drives Profits”, by Caudron S., Workforce Magazine.

Oprah Winfrey – Leadership and Entrepreneurship Case Study

Oprah Winfrey – Leadership and Entrepreneurship Case Study

Oprah Winfrey’s skills as an entrepreneur are noteworthy. Oprah Winfrey is the Chairman of the Harpo group of companies. Oprah is a top television talk show host. How Oprah became one of the richest women and a successful entrpreneur in the world along with leadership qualities. Oprah’s Harpo group entrered into various businesses and Oprah’s role in each of them was excellent. Oprah’s philanthropic ventures are varied and liked by many.

Facts about Oprah Winfrey
Oprah’s original name was Orpah Gail Winfrey.
Orpah Gail Winfrey is named after the Moabite woman in the Book of Ruth in the Bible
She became Oprah after Orpah was misspelt in her school records.
Oprah parents: Vernon Winfrey and Vernita Lee
Oprah was born on January 29, 1954.
Oprah was born in Kosciusko (Mississippi, US)
Oprah is ranked as the most powerful celebrity by Forbes magazine
Oprah is the ninth most powerful woman in the world.
Oprah Winfrey is believed to be worth over $1.3 billion.
Talk Show queen, Oprah Winfreys Web site is Oprah.com
Oprah publishes the O magazine

Oprah’s public speaking and leadership skills were evident in Oprah right from her early days. Oprah recited sermons from the Bible at her local church when she was less than four years old.

In 2002 Oprah formed a partnership with South Africa’s Ministry of Education to build the “Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls”

Oprah’s Angel Network donated $1 million to help tsunami efforts. The Angel Network’s funds are pooled for emergency relief, such as that required by tsunami. Oprah also likes to use these funds to enhance other countries by focusing efforts on education, women and children.

Also read leadership case study on Warren Buffet

Six Sigma Implementation Strategies

Six Sigma Implementation Strategies

  1. Begin with Lean Sigma: Begin with Lean Sigma if company requires quick implementation because most successful companies grow out of Six Sigma or Lean in parallel.
  2. Begin small: The best way to exhibit the value of implementing Six Sigma formally is to begin with a few small projects and uphold their success.
  3. Using Six Sigma consultants to implement Six Sigma or provide Six Sigma training depends on the costs and how well the consultants understand the company before trying to implement Six Sigma.
  4. DMAIC (Design, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) must be used to give Six Sigma projects the go ahead and prompt early enthusiasm and success.
  5. Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) and Define Measure Analyze Design Verify (DMADV) must be used when a total revamp or restructuring is required for a failed or nonexistent process. DFSS and DMADV are best for future state designs without considering what is happening today.

Supply Chain Strategies to save costs

Supply Chain Strategies to save costs

Outsourcing supply chain functions can enhance:

• Cost reduction (10-20%)
• Efficiency
• Customer satisfaction
• Revenues and
• Competitiveness.

One manufacturer was able to reduce its inventories by USD 1 billion, cut down on inventory holding costs by USD 124 million and reduce delivery times to dealers by 26%.

Major areas where supply chain costs need to be reduced are:

• Order management costs: By combining order management and parcel traceable programs
• Material purchasing costs: Reverse Auctions
• Inventory holding costs: Less than 10 percent of total supply chain costs
• Overall supply chain costs including Supply chain planning costs, and supply chain IT savings

Poka Yoke – Mistake proofing

What is Poka Yoke?

Poka Yoke is Japanese methodology for “mistake proofing” to avoid non-conformities from entering into processes. It allows defect detection and elimination at the source. It can also be used as a continuous improvement tool.

In short, Poka Yoke is a methodology that ensures that Quality Management Systems (QMS) perform efficiently.

Poka Yoke – History

Mr Shigeo Shingo devised the concept of Poka Yoke in the 1980s. He was one of the pioneers in the development of the Toyota production system. This apart, he also initiated developments in many Japanese organisations.

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