Case Studies: Organizational Excellence
Other Case Studies: Revenue
Enhancement | New Market Opportunities | Product
Improvements
These case studies are examples of EastSight Consulting CEO Parmelee
Eastman's experience.
Executive Training Support:
A division of a software company that focused on an emerging markets
needed training on how to assess, approach, and strategize for evolving
markets. In addition, the division president wanted to unify the management
team and deploy a consistent strategy. He felt that a two-day war gaming
exercise taught by a very experienced expert would achieve his goals.
Case books outlining major aspects of each industry participant’s
strategy, tactics, resources, management team, and views of competition
were needed to support the training activity. Cases are carefully crafted
to lead session participants to develop their own conclusions while
strategic profiles contain extensive insight and analysis. Each casebook
contained the same industry information. Supporting material on each
industry participant, including financials, product information, executive
philosophies, and company cultures, were limited to the team assigned
to that organization.
Results: The
management team found the exercise to be invaluable in defining
an amorphous, but expanding market and helping them strategize
despite major uncertainties. The casebooks provided concise and
wide-ranging information, but did not present conclusions that
would impede the team’s learning process.
Best-in-Class Sales and Marketing Activities Benchmarking:
An information provider realized that the rate of change in its market
was accelerating, thus forcing the company to overhaul its sales approach
and marketing programs in order to be competitive. Instead of benchmarking
direct competitors that were just beginning to respond to the new market
conditions, the firm choose to benchmark organizations that were operating
successfully in highly competitive marketplaces. After evaluating leading
firms in multiple industries, the client selected the dominant firms
in the communications infrastructure and interactive media fields.
Comprehensive research into all the significant elements of the sales
and marketing plans of these two diverse companies along with the client's
created a side-by-side comparison examined by the executive team.
Result: The
company could completely re-vamp its sales and marketing structure
to lead ahead of its peers and preempt emerging competitors.
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Success Factors in e-Supply Chain Management:
A large international diversified manufacturing firm wanted to utilize
e-business concepts and technology in revamping its supply chain to
be more cost-effective and more responsive to users. In order to do
so, the firm sought to examine the best practices of leaders in three
different industries to maximize its opportunities for uncovering adoptable
best practices. The research demonstrated that the savings from lowering
transaction costs were real and achievable quickly, but significant
value-add of e-supply chain management (e-SCM) involved changing the
business relationship between a company and its suppliers. In addition,
large expenditures in technology were required to create the communications
infrastructure necessary to change the relationships.
Results: The
leaders of the e-SCM team could set realistic budgets, timeframes,
and goals for this effort.
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Employee Recruiting and Retention in Fast Growing Companies:
A traditional telecommunications firm found that its existing workforce
did not have the skills to compete against fast growing companies for
new communications business. The company decided to benchmark its recruitment
and retention policies and practices against those of four other firms.
One organization was very similar in terms of history, size, and products.
The other three represented three attractive market segments for the
client. Specific topics included how the companies targeted prospective
employees with up-to-date skills, benefits plans, empowerment philosophies,
career and skills development, reward mechanisms, and corporate culture.
The research discovered that the official policies often differed from
the actual practices.
Results: The
comparison showed the executive team the wide range of recruitment
and retention policies existing in successful organizations. However,
certain themes emerged as common to all four firms. The client
used this insight to re-structure its employee recruiting and retention
policies in order to change its global workforce.
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Benchmarking Sales and R&D Organizations:
A large computer systems company decided to assess the organizational
effectiveness of its sales and R&D organizations by examining the
structures at two representative industry participants. The question
set on the sales side included organizational structure, sales channels,
sales regions, training programs, and incentive structures. The R&D
questions focused on organizational structure, patents, budgets, and
proprietary knowledge. While these questions, particularly on R&D,
are quite sensitive, interviews with a wide variety of third parties
and company staff allowed a comprehensive overview to be developed
and submitted to the management team.
Results: The executive team observed
that its sales compensation structure was simplistic compared to
those at its peers and did not support its new corporate goals.
Components of each of the other plans were adopted to address these
issues and allow the company to incent its salespeople more exactly.
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Spending on Information Technology:
A leading provider of Internet infrastructure services sought to re-evaluate
its spending on information technology (IT), including the popular,
but uncertain area of e-business arena. Three other industry participants
were interviewed on their e-business strategy and tactics, including
plans for on-line ordering, customer service, personalization, and
consideration of an ASP model. Other topics covered the type of equipment
used for their mission-critical functions, their security policies
and practices, the degree of integration between their front end and
back end applications, and their knowledge management strategy.
Results: With
this knowledge, the client realized that it was ahead of its peers
in its e-business development, but had neglected core IT issues.
The client promptly revised its IT plans to catch up with these
other companies.
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