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Marketing management – services marketing specialization.

MBA/PGDM senior students studying services marketing as a specialization course.

US Technology Private Ltd (UST) is a major software services company in India. It was started in 1999 with a few employees at an offshore development centre in Trivandrum. Now in 2010, renamed UST Global, the company has over 7,000 employees worldwide. Phenomenal success of such a software company, in the left-oriented party dominated state of Kerala, has invited the attention of many people in the industry. The company earned valuable foreign exchange through software exports for the country and the state over the last ten years. The company has created innovative service differentiators, to impress on its clients, on the advantage of doing business with the company. The cementing customer satisfaction and derived customer delight that the company has created in their clients, has secured stable customer relationship management and customer loyalty. This reinforces the trust they have shown in the services management philosophy adopted by the company. The company's unique hybrid delivery model has worked well with its clients. Its unique selling proposition of “few clients and more focus” has resulted in delight of its customers, as they see it as a value addition for their money's worth. The leadership team attributes the success of the company to its fundamental core values and twin strategy of customer centricity and employee focus.

These are: customer perception of service; purpose of customer relationship management; service differentiators; and employees' role in delivering successful software service solutions to the customer, etc.

Teaching notes.

Public Sector Management and Strategy

This case will be useful for courses in information technology (IT) innovation, public–private partnership (PPP) and strategic management. However, the use of the case will differ on the basis of the target audience who could be students of master's course or executive development course. Detailed discussion can be done on co-innovation strategy followed in a public–private partnership and to understand how a PPP can be successful in enterprise solutions. Further, the understanding on how e-procurement and e-tendering solutions work can be gained through this case. This case should be positioned when the discussion for the planning strategy of IT innovation takes place.

SAP was a market leader in enterprise application software and empowered people across the globe to work more efficiently. The e-procurement solution for OILGIAN was managed by SAP LABS India. OILGIAN entrusted SAP with the task to design and implement the e-tendering solution. SAP appointed Ramakrishna Potluri, Lead Consultant, SAP, to manage the design and implementation of the e-tendering module as a part of e-procurement solution for the public sector. The reporting and the security concerns were stated by OILGIAN, and Potluri reassured that his competent team would comply with the needs. The main predicaments that he was going through were that how best he could take the proposition forward. Should he create the innovative solutions in-house or co-create with the customers? Which business models should he follow for this public–private co-innovation to be a predecessor of successful projects?

The case illustrates the following objectives: to discuss the co-innovation strategy followed in a public–private partnership; to understand how a public–private partnership can be successful in enterprise solutions; and to understand how e-procurement and e-tendering solutions work.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

The learning outcomes of this study include: recognizing the strategic inflexion points and related business and strategic perspectives in the life of an organization; understanding sources of sustained competitive advantage and connect it with resource-based view for internal analysis; applying dynamic capability theory to identify capabilities that help an IT company stay relevant in an IT sector characterized by VUCA (an acronym for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) environment; analyzing the multi-dimensional and multi-contextual challenge an organization faces, or is likely to face, in the foreseeable future and the possible ways it addresses or should address them; evaluating strategies adopted at various points of an organization’s journey for their effectiveness; and helping a company co-create value for its customers.

This case of Nitor Infotech Private Limited (Nitor), a mid-sized software product outsourcing company, outlines its decade-long journey, highlighting its achievements. While the company has consistently grown by leveraging its expertise in software product engineering and its domain knowledge in the healthcare segment, it entered into a stage of its life cycle where it had to develop a long-term strategy to effectively compete in the product engineering market. Nitor’s strategy was built around product engineering and outsourced product development. The two major choices for a software company were either to develop its own product and thereby own the intellectual property (IP) or to develop modules which would be part of a product that would be owned by a client. In the latter case, the IP would be held by the client. So far Nitor chose to follow the second option by developing components for its client’s products. Although this strategy allowed it to develop expertise in a particular domain, and serve different customers in a particular market, the chances of a competitor attacking its position was high. On the other hand, if it developed its own product, it can create its own brand name and can sell packaged software to several different customers. However, the challenge with the latter is that the cost of marketing could be very high. The choice for the company in the future is to decide on selecting a specific strategy to expand its international business.

This case is appropriate for an undergraduate and postgraduate management course in the area of strategic management. The level of difficulty can be from medium to high depending on the learning level. Knowledge of management fundamentals is not a prerequisite but is desirable for case analysis.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 11: Strategy

Upon completion of the case study, students should be able to understand how changes in a macro environment affect the competitive landscape in an emerging market; acquire a granular understanding about the logistics industry in an emerging market and the various business models developed to service customer needs; determine the attractiveness and challenges of doing business in a fragmented but sunrise industry in an emerging market; and identify the drivers for growth and profitability in the logistics business.

Manisha Sharaf (she/her) and her co-founders conceived the idea of Truck Hall in 2011 to ride with the tide created by booming public investments in the infrastructure and transportation sector. Truck Hall aimed to improve the efficiency of the logistics industry in India by extensively using technology. However, the market research showed that technology-driven services in logistics faced many challenges owing to low internet penetration in the country, weak network connectivity during transportation and the low literacy rates of the truck drivers who were central to this industry. Between 2015 and 2018, Truck Hall experimented with several business models including load board, brokerage and integrated transporter with the sole purpose of achieving profitable growth in a highly fragmented industry with razor-thin margins. This case documented the dilemma faced by a startup in a high-growth but largely unorganized and unregulated industry in a developing economy. Should Truck Hall continue with the current business model of being a niche player or should it vertically integrate and control major segments of the value chain? Should it compromise on growth to become profitable or first scale up?

This case study can be used at the undergraduate, graduate and executive levels.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Discussion of the case will enable students to identify the cornerstones of industry development using simple frameworks like PESTLE and five forces that shape strategy. They will be able to identify critical success factors and evaluate how a firm gets competitive advantage. They will also be able to assess whether the advantage is sustainable for the firms and along which dimensions they have only competitive parity. The issues of contemporary firms growing through the use of network strategies is also highlighted and students will learn to appreciate the role of platforms and connectivity for gaining sustainable advantage.

This case describes the growth strategy of NoPaperForms, a start-up in the domain of enrolment automation for higher education in India. Naveen Goyal, the founder CEO sensed an opportunity in this growing industry segment and acquired it from the founder, Vishal Shah in 2017. The ultimate objective of an educational institute was to attract talent, Goyal evolved a comprehensive enrolment solution starting with the time a prospective student made an inquiry for enrolment till the time he/she paid for enrolment. It was a complete panel, bundled and packaged in a single system taking care of lead management, lead nurturing, application management, fee payment, post-application management and enrolment. He developed it into a unique blend of a customer relationship management (CRM), which was unique in the country. At this juncture, Goyal was exploring growth avenues. On the client side, he had the alternatives of focusing on the B2C segment or diversifying from B2B to B2C. Geographically, he had the options of expanding to tier II and tier III cities, which were the next growth hubs. The option of growing internationally was also on the cards. The purpose of the case is to analyse the opportunities in the education technology sector, specific to student enrolment and leverage the competencies of the firm to detail the future strategy of the firm.

The case can be used in a MBA program for a course in Strategic Management in the module of strategy formulation after fundamental concepts and theories of Strategic Management have been discussed.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

This case consists of conversations with six prominent venture capital investors in the United States. The topics covered include investment strategies and relationships with entrepreneurs in the United States and around the world.

International business and strategy, strategies in emerging markets.

This case can be used in undergraduate, graduate and executive education courses in international business, strategy management and strategies in emerging markets. Further, the case may also be useful to teach sub-topics such as fit between external opportunities and internal strengths (resources and capabilities) and new business model challenges.

Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions (hereafter referred as RBEI) had been chosen by the Management of Bosch in India to engage in the Government of India (GoI) Smart City Business Opportunity. Dhiraj Wali, Vice President RBEI and the present head of RBEI Smart City Projects (RBEI/SCP) over the past few years had been prospecting the non-Bosch clients especially the GoI clients for RBEI. He understood the implications of this big-ticket business opportunity for RBEI. At the same time, he was worried about the complications involved in such large projects, how should RBEI position itself to make the most of this significant business opportunity?

The dynamics and internal challenges of an established captive division of a multinational (i.e. Bosch) venturing into business transactions with non-captive (i.e. non-Bosch) especially government sector clients. The new business opportunities facing a multinational in emerging markets such as India. Understanding the GoI Smart City Mission and its big-ticket business opportunity. To show how the captive units of MNC evolve over the years of operation leveraging, the competencies gained to succeed in the marketplace. The reasons for this range from internal needs to increase the gains from the past investments to exploiting the external business prospects available resulting in both new opportunities for specialization and customers.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 5: International Business.

Rendering digital services have taken centerstage in the current ICT for development discourse. E-Government services are mostly under this discourse with the aim to provide citizen centric services in the public domain. Business and development organizations alike are also investing in developing their own digital infrastructure for rendering services to its stakeholders. This case describes scenario in which a cooperative organization wishes to use digital infrastructure and provide digital services to its farmer members. The cooperative continued investing in ICT since the last couple of decades and constantly upgraded it to ease the transaction and bring efficiency and reduce information asymmetry. This had greatly benefitted the members. However, the cooperative is aware that its communication network built on the wireless medium has its own limitations in introducing new services and integrating its databases and applications. The cooperative took note of “Digital India (DI)” initiatives to provide digital services to rural areas and build an ecosystem to empower the citizens in its governance set up. This DI policy has implicit provisions of better networking protocols with improved bandwidth. The organization has a dilemma to continue with investing its own resources or explore possibility of piggybacking on the DI initiative. The cooperative wished to examine the total cost of ownership in either case and assess the feasibility of converging with the infrastructure created by the government.

The Government Information Technology Policies are increasingly favouring citizens and in favour of shared infrastructure and services. It is worth the examination to evaluate strategies to deploy IT infrastructure and services with optimized cost and better returns in an enterprise. This is far more important for a social enterprise like AMALSAD cooperative (user-owned firm) that has deployed its own IT infrastructure and ITeS. AMALSAD cooperative deployed its IT assets long back and in the meanwhile, the Government policy is in favour of providing services over the internet.

The case serves to help students to understand the theoretical concept of Enterprise information systems infrastructure and services. It brings to the students understanding: the drivers of IT infrastructure to provide digital services; challenges that would make the social enterprise (in this case user-owned firm) to understand the opportunities and challenges of deploying the right digital infrastructure and get services on demand. The case presents the scenarios for the students to deliberate and find answers to the right approach for estimating the total cost of ownership (TCO).

The case situation presents a scenario for digital government services. Most of the customer-facing enterprises including social enterprises are also providing digital services. It is important that such services converge at an optimized TCO.

Masters in Business Administration with a concentration in Information Systems.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 7: Management Science.

The case traces the genesis of NASSCOM and presents a decision situation faced by the new president who has to formulate a road map in the light of changed circumstances. NASSCOM has been an exemplary trade association. However, it faces challenges that can jeopardize the future if the industry. While the challenges do not have short term effect on the growing Indian IT-BPO industry, as the active industry ally NASSCOM's new leader has to ensure long term success of IT-BPO industry. The case can be best used to understand the IT industry dynamics through the eyes of an exemplary trade body and also understand how a trade association in emerging economies can play an important role to fill institutional voids.

Strategic management, IT strategy, Business & IT Consulting, International Business.

PGDM and Executive programmes.

Cognizant Technology Solutions, one of the giants in the Indian information technology (IT) industry, has been continually evolving new strategies and business models to cater to the global IT demand. Starting as an in-house technology unit of Duns & Bradstreet, the case highlights the various pioneering and transformative decisions taken by Cognizant to become one among the Fortune 500 companies of the world. However, despite its supremacy in the global market, they are facing tremendous competition from the other IT giants – TCS, Infosys and Wipro, to name a few. Also, the expansion of global IT players like Accenture and International Business Machines (IBM) in India is making matters worse. This intense competition, when juxtaposed with commoditization and price sensitivity on behalf of the IT demand, makes sustainability a big question mark. The million-dollar question remains “How should Cognizant strategize to ensure inorganic growth in the price-sensitive industry?”

The case highlights the market dynamics of the Indian IT industry – from its humble beginning as an attraction for low-cost labour to being one of the strategic outsourcing geographies of the IT sector – and thereby categorically points out the significance of continuous evolution on behalf of the IT firms to stay alive in this client-driven industry. The students are expected to analyze the IT industry of India, keeping in mind its vulnerabilities – price sensitivity, dependence on developed economies and intense competition – and relate the same to different strategies incorporated by Cognizant to remain one of the powerhouses of the Indian IT industry.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.