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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.

The case is based on data collected from in-depth interviews, and from company, third-party and regulatory–agency documents. In addition to prior conversations over several years between the company founders and the lead case writer, there were several rounds of interviews in 2023 with the surviving founder and in-depth interviews with eight of the company’s key managers. Company documents reviewed included bylaws, organization charts, profit and loss statements and staffing statistics, all from founding to sale. Also reviewed were documents and evaluations of company operations and performance produced by the merger & acquisition firm that handled the company’s eventual sale. The company owner insisted on complete disguise of the company and all its members and prohibited disclosure of detailed proprietary financial data.

At the strategic level, this case is about how the unique, complex and changing healthcare environment created opportunities and threats to which a women-owned and run start-up company, Aloe Health (AH), had to respond to become and remain successful. At the personal level, the case illustrates what it takes for an entrepreneur and leader having clinical but no real business acumen to start, expand and turn around a company and ultimately position it for a successful acquisition, continually learning and adapting along the way.

The case describes how two women who were friends for many years started up a home healthcare company later in their lives and grew it into the largest women-owned business of its kind in the USA. Based in the Southwest USA, an area with many factors conducive to success, they navigated the many complexities of US Medicare regulations to create a fully-integrated home healthcare company providing unskilled personal care, medically skilled homecare and end-of-life hospice services to thousands of clients. The case provides background on the founders and the home healthcare industry context, and details the steps taken to start up and build the company into a fairly successful enterprise; one of the largest of its kind in the region. The (A) case ends with one of the founders facing a crisis brought on by the death of her co-founder and the revelation of some significant organization dysfunctions, leaving her unable to profitably exit the company and unsure of whether she would be able to turn things around. The students are tasked with making recommendations for what she should do next.

The (B) case brings events up to fall 2023, describing the steps the surviving founder took to transform her leadership style and the company’s systems and culture, and to navigate the due diligence process associated with preparing for an (ultimately very successful) acquisition. It also shares the owner’s “lessons learned,” and briefly notes the current state of the acquired company and the many AH employees that it continues to employ.

The case provides ample information for students to appreciate the company’s strategy and the challenges of operating in the highly regulated health care industry. However, it is probably even better suited to illustrating the “soft” issues of new-venture management, such as the tendencies of founders to overload themselves by micro-managing their growing venture and not adapting to expansion, and for those with clinical backgrounds to focus on caring for patients and employees while overlooking business essentials and organization systems. It also illustrates how business partnerships among strong-willed individuals can produce dynamics in the founding team similar to a “marriage,” with affection and complementary talents, yet also tensions. It further illustrates the process of a successful turnaround strategy, and the “due-diligence” challenges of preparing for an acquisition.

This case has a range of course applications at multiple education levels. Although it is probably best suited for graduate and executive-level programs, it can also be selectively used in undergraduate classes, particularly if populated by upperclassman. It is ideally suited to courses on entrepreneurship and on healthcare management. For an entrepreneurship course, it could be positioned mid-way through the semester, after covering topics relating to the entrepreneurial mindset, founding teams and business models. It can be used to get the class focusing on competitive issues and the challenges of starting up a company in a highly regulated environment, on entrepreneurial founding-team characteristics and management tendencies (e.g. micro-management control tendencies), on transition issues from start up to growth stages and on exit strategies.

We believe this case is also well suited as a teaching exercise for students pursuing healthcare management studies in baccalaureate and graduate programs (MBA, MHA, MHS) in which instructors wish to broaden student exposure to a real-world scenario that focuses on entrepreneurial behavior in a healthcare setting (a topic of increasing interest to healthcare practitioners and managers given the current trend toward provider formation and ownership of health facilities). Here, the case may be used to focus on the complexities of the healthcare industry, the key differences between various healthcare service business models and on the challenges that technically (clinically) trained professionals often face when trying to manage a healthcare business. Ideal placement of the case would be in a capstone course, after students have been introduced to their functional coursework in topics such as introduction to management, organizational behavior and leadership, financial management and strategic thinking. The case also challenges students to apply knowledge obtained in specialized coursework in healthcare systems and policy, industry regulation, as well as healthcare reimbursement methods.

The case also may be used in organization behavior courses to focus on team, cultural and leadership issues and in strategic management courses to focus on strategy implementation. In addition, there are enough family business themes in the case (even though Aloe is not actually a family business) to use it in a course on managing family businesses.

This case attempts to study one of the key problems faced by a multinational organisation in the globalised environment that exists today: whether to outsource or insource. Outsourcing deals with getting into a contract with an outside vendor/supplier (local to the region in question) to deliver services to the parent company as per the agreed deliverables. On the other hand, insourcing deals with setting up operations in the destination country and hiring local staff on behalf of the company to do the same tasks.

Historically, outsourcing has been considered a better choice because of several benefits such as the ease of setting up operations, a predictable costing model and reduced capital investment. However, it comes with its own set of disadvantages as well, including a high attrition rate and a sub-standard level of quality in the deliverables. Apart from the quantifiable parameters, there are several qualitative parameters as well, which encompasses the employees' passion/commitment towards the company, sense of achievement and performance management process.

This case considers an existing situation in First Telecom (henceforth, referred as FT), where they have outsourced one part of their operations to multiple providers in India and are now facing huge issues with the quality of the deliverables; as a result, FT are now looking to explore if an insourced solution would be more cost-effective and productive. It evaluates the two models against various parameters and makes a recommendation on the preferred model.

This case can be used as a teaching tool in the following courses: MBA/postgraduate programme in strategic decision-making; MBA/postgraduate programme in management in management accounting and management control systems; and executive training programme for middle- and senior-level employees to look at the various factors involved (in addition to cost) that should be taken into account while comparing outsourcing versus insourcing.

FT is a communication service provider and has presence in more than 170 countries around the world. The company is considered among the top three telecom companies around the globe and offers solutions to multinational customers in the areas of networks, IP telephony, security services and other managed services.

The company has more than 100,000 employees around the globe. In addition to the regular (on rolls) employees, the company also outsources a lot of its operations in various countries to local service providers. The services that this company outsources include software/tools development, solution pricing and in-life service management. Historically, the company has believed that outsourcing is a better alternative because of the ease of setting up operations and lower cost.

However, because of the recent changes in the global market, there is a huge pressure within the company to reconsider all the functions and find ways to contain costs to help the company's bottom line.

There have been numerous complaints about the quality of output from one of the outsourced functions, namely, the “Pricing Team”, which is being presently outsourced to two service providers in India. The lack of accuracy has cost the company a key opportunity valued at more than USD5 million and the COO is furious at this loss. He has tasked the head of business improvement to do a full review of the function and look at the possible alternatives the company can explore to avoid these issues in future.

FT now wants to do a cost-comparison analysis of the existing set-up with a new insourced set-up considering all costs that would come into play. This would help FT to decide the future course of action to ensure reduced costs and enhanced operational efficiency from the process.

Understanding of cost-comparison parameters involved as an effective tool for strategy development and achieving organisational objectives; understanding of SWOT analysis (organisation level and decision level) and its applicability in the organisation context; understanding the Porter's five competitive forces model to illustrate the effect of environment on an organisation; and understanding of outsourcing and insourcing models and the pros and cons of each model, which is a key management decision in most multinational organisations.

Historical reports of the concerned unit in terms of the costs incurred, rate of attrition and operational efficiency achieved. Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis, 14th ed., Charles T. Horngren, Srikant M. Datar and Madhav Rajan, Publisher: Prentice-Hall, 2012.Practical implications Based on the option (outsourcing versus insourcing) found to be better, appropriate actions would need to be taken in terms of either renewing the contracts with the outsourcing partners or preparing to terminate the existing contracts and hiring of talent from the market to replace the outsourced staff.

For nearly two decades, India as a country has grown considerably and one of the key contributors in that growth has been “Business Process Outsourcing” from all across the world to India. While the outsourcing wave has provided the initial push to the economy of India, it would not be able to help sustain the momentum primarily because of two reasons: the first is the growth of other countries, such as Hungary, the Philippines and China, as alternatives for outsourcing (and equally may be more cost-effective at times); and the second reason is the shift in various companies towards an insourcing model for critical functions.

Therefore, as a country, India needs to move ahead and, instead of only focusing on providing resources to do the tasks outsourced by global companies, focus should now shift to promoting innovation and creativity among the workforce. A lot of companies nowadays are realising the importance of product innovation and are investing huge amounts in R&D to come up with breakthrough technologies that can help them create a sustainable development model. However, this should in no way be considered an end of the outsourcing era. Although there needs to be an effort towards improving the interlock process, outsourcing is here to stay because of the benefits it brings.

This paper aims to first, identify the external and internal factors that a company needs to analyze when formulating its digital platform strategy. Based on the framework of PESTNPG (political economic social and culture technological population and globalization) and internal analysis a company should analyze both internal and external factors to formulate its digital platform strategy. For companies from emerging markets the institutional-based market created by national or local governments is important for digital platform strategy. Second dynamic capability theory and its linkages to digital platform strategy. The dynamic capabilities view is considered as a primary theoretical lens in the strategy literature to analyze a company’s strategies to achieve sustainable competitive advantages. To carry out a successful digital platform strategy companies need to build strong dynamic capabilities to capture or create opportunities and reconfigure their resources simultaneously. Third the advantages and disadvantages of different digital platform strategies (i.e. an independent digital platform and online–offline integration platform) and the possible consequences and risks of different strategies. It is important to evaluate different types of digital platform strategies that require different capabilities in terms of business structure product structure revenue structure organizational structure and technology architecture. A company needs to link these capabilities to a digital platform strategy to enable the integration (or separation) of online business with offline business. It also increases the accuracy and efficiency of online business. Fourth key points of digital platform strategy implementation. Companies need to identify key profit models for their digital platform to promote business growth and financial returns. It is equally important to increase customer value by leveraging its digital exhibition platform and to learn to use digital technology to foster organizational dematerialization.

Zhejiang Meorient Commerce & Exhibition Inc. (hereinafter referred to as “Meorient”) was a leading company in the exhibition industry in China. The unexpected outbreak of COVID-19 plunged Meorient into a state of emergency that forced it to fight for survival. Further, China had launched a national strategy of Digital China, which created new market opportunities for Meorient. As a result, Meorient gradually developed and launched its digital exhibition services in 2015. Meorient suffered significant losses in 2020 due to COVID-19 and had to formulate a new strategy based on a digital exhibition platform in 2021. Chairman Pan Jianjun had two options. One was a purely digital platform strategy without the original offline exhibition business. The other one was an online and offline integration strategy. Which option was the best way forward for Meorient? Pan had to make a choice. Some of the top management team members believed Meorient should completely transform into a digital platform company and provide comprehensive online digital exhibition services. Over the previous 20 years, Meorient had accumulated a large amount of data from domestic and foreign exhibitors and professional buyers and had gradually developed a digital exhibition platform. It was one of the companies that pioneered digital transformation within China’s exhibition industry. More conservative thinking held that Meorient's strategy should focus more narrowly on the integration of online and offline exhibition businesses. Toward the post-pandemic era, China’s national strategy of “Digital China” accelerated the development of digital infrastructures. During such critical transitional period, Meorient had to choose wisely if it was to sustain its profits or even survive.

The case is aimed at students in undergraduate, MBA, short course executive, EMBA or other executive education programs, especially where digital transformation is featured subject matter.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy

The learning outcome of this paper are as follows: enabling students to learn about business and marketing issues of the natural gas distribution industry. To expose students to organizational processes aimed at finding solutions to customer issues. To make them appreciate the aspects of service quality and SERVQUAL model. To make the students aware of the significance of market research for problem-solving. How to use market research findings to address the customer issues? Enabling the students to learn how cross-functional teams contribute to addressing marketing and customer issues. Students should appreciate how to study towards creating a customer-centric organization with an organization-wide commitment including that from the top leadership.

Abhay Shankar, Sr. Manager-Customer Service at Reliable Gas Company Limited a state government piped natural gas (PNG) distribution utility whose customer service department is concerned about the provision of best service to its PNG domestic customers. Domestic customers are low volume but largest in numbers and are considered to be a tough, demanding customer segment. A general opinion among the marketing team of the company is that they are trying their best to serve its customers and that their efforts are no less than their private sector counterpart global gas customer service efforts. Abhay is in dilemma on what to do to improve customer services?

Masters students.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 8 Marketing.

This case gives readers the opportunity to think about strategies employed in the postal sector amid sector, technological, national and global challenges. It highlights the importance of thinking about real options, and real solutions to counter the failures of the past and the uncertainties of the future.

The case will be particularly useful for master's degrees, Master of Business Administration, doctorate students or undergraduate specialized courses of strategy, public sector management and privatization.

This case study aims to analyze the manner in which LibanPost transformed itself from a government bureaucracy to a commercial company and how, through diversification, it was transformed from a traditional postal operator to a high-end service provider. In addition, it attempts to examine the stages that have led to LibanPost's success, shedding the light on the major barriers and enablers for its reform.

The students will be able to examine how a privately owned postal company succeeded in transforming a courier company from a bureaucratic public administration incurring substantial losses to a profitable commercial company, through privatization, and grasp the major success barriers and enablers for LibanPost, while exploring the reasons behind the failure of the foreign–national partnership.

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

Expected learning outcomes are as follows: to understand the nature of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) manufacturing industries based on Al Junaid Industrial group when considering entering such businesses. To understand how unexpected short-term shocks such as a global pandemic may require long-term changes in a company’s outlook and planning. Discuss the marketing mix strategy that the Al Junaid Industrial group business products and services elements follow. To understand the competitiveness of Al Junaid group’s business environment and to identify the potential for business growth. To gain skills at developing a marketing strategy using the products, price, place and promotion model.

Al Junaid Industrial group is a small to medium-sized HVAC manufacturing company created over 12 years ago, in the United Arab Emirates. It has a production line company in the Sharjah industrial area with a capacity of 5,000 ft. The company not only manufactures air conditioning and its accessories but also provides installation and maintenance services. As for its international connections, it imports raw materials such as aluminum and exports air conditioning grills and accessories, offering installation services to many destinations, including Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and the Gulf Cooperation Council. The company has recently suffered a setback due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020 its net revenue and profits decreased by an average of 40%. As a result, Al Junaid Industrial group currently faces several internal and external challenges affecting its business performance such as high operating expenses, low market demand and stiff competition. Due to these challenges, this case study argues that Mr. Obaid Al Junaid, the Chief Executive Officer, should develop a new marketing strategy aimed at raising revenues to levels closer to those observed before the onset of the epidemic.

This case could be used in undergraduate and graduate classes of the business management field, as well as in development programs for managers in small to medium-sized enterprises (SME). Students (final year students of an undergraduate program for a bachelor’s degree) are expected to have a basic knowledge of Strategic management and business in general. It is preferred that the students have basic knowledge about small-to-medium businesses. Additionally, the managers in SME should be familiar with operational management, business management and marketing strategy and some of the challenges faced by managers in industrial businesses.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Strategy.

MBA level. The case can be used primarily for the following courses: strategic management, competitive strategy. It can also be used for courses on: international business, international business environment, business marketing.

Intense competition and a turbulent economic environment posed problems for Infosys, a leading information technology (IT) company in India. Infosys lost market share and its second position in the IT industry to Cognizant. An adverse economic environment affected its clients' IT spending and introduced severe price-based competition in the market. Infosys' business model operated on charging price premium from clients, and the company never compromised on its margins. The company was forced to revaluate, as outsourcing, the main revenue earner for Infosys was experiencing commoditization, and other players were willing to compromise on margins. The Indian IT industry had moved up the value chain and competitors were offering consulting services, where there was huge scope for differentiation. Infosys did not have the requisite resources to compete in this domain. Decline in share prices, negative investor sentiments, downward revision of revenue guidance targets, loss of large clients, higher attrition rates, and visa problems in the US market (Infosys earned more than 60 percent revenues from this market) added worries for the company. In response to these challenges, Infosys initiated Strategy 3.0, wherein the company planned to move up the value chain and offer consulting services and other high-end solutions to clients. This was a shift from its predominantly outsourcing-based revenue model. The company acquired Lodestone to hasten implementation of Strategy 3.0. Initial analysis, however, suggested that Infosys was merely aping Cognizant's well-established strategy. Infosys also needed to tackle perceptual issues regarding its competencies.

The instructor can use this case to facilitate the understanding of: the impact of an intensely competitive environment on a company's strategy, how changes in the competitive landscape and business environment can erode sources of competitive advantage for an incumbent, the impact of a client's business environment on the vendor's business, the concept of value chain and analyze how companies in an industry move up in the value chain, the concept of business model, and how environmental changes can impact a hitherto robust business model of a company, evolution of business model over a period of time with changes in the business environment, the internal conflict between ideals and values versus revenues and market share for a company, key resources and capabilities that shape the differential advantage for an IT company, designing and implementing strategic solutions, the evolution 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.

A student can evaluate the variables related to the corporate governance decision for the future of the companies while simultaneously facing other internal factors, such as understanding the owner's address style. In addition, the student will be able to balance and weigh current resources, understanding that the conceptual frameworks of agency theory, resource dependence theory, agency and transaction costs, as well as the types of leadership and power are useful to understand this type of companies, common in emerging markets.

This case describes the actions of Nestor Salcedo Guevara, founding partner of Industrial Andina S.A. and owner of NSG Service Stations, companies focused on industrial manufacturing and retail fuel sales, respectively. The case covers a period of 40 years, from the founding of Industrial Andina S.A. in 1978, its restructuring into a family business in 1982, the strategic decisions concerning the political and economic situations from the eighties to the new millennium, and the creation of NSG Service Stations in the year 2000, until August 2018, when Nestor faced the decision to expand NSG Service Stations and reactivate Industrial Andina SA with new projects. Therefore, Nestor must decide the next steps for the future of both companies. This case study highlights several challenges of business economics and administrative strategy facing entrepreneurs or experienced managers and allows to discuss in class concepts of corporate governance such as ownership structure, incomplete contracts, management styles and defensive strategies associated with the power of the CEO - Owner.

Undergraduate students in Business Administration or Economics and post-graduate MBA. Business Economics courses, Strategic Management, Corporate Governance courses.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

The case can be taught to MBA/PGDM students to give them experiential learning in the course on entrepreneurship. The case can be used to specifically make the student understand the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in the male-dominated business sector and recognize the entrepreneurial competencies needed to run a business.

Entrepreneurship.

Shany Jalal, Promoter and Managing Director of Servicecare Pvt. Ltd., and the protagonist of the case proud owner of Servicecare Pvt. Ltd. reminisced the circumstances that drove her to start the business venture in Bangalore, India. At the age of 17, a personal setback instilled in Shany a strong desire to become self-reliant and independent. Backed with a degree in hotel management and a meager loan amount of INR 10,000 provided by her father on certain terms and conditions, Shany deep dived into the soft facility management sector business way back in the year 1999 and since then there has been no turning back. Today, Shany Jalal is proud that her venture by starting a proprietorship company “Service Care”, and later converted it into a Private Limited Company, “Servicecare Private Limited” in 2011. Shany Jalal was proud that her venture is a name to reckon with in Bangalore. She has had a team of 4,200 employees, which operates Pan India, providing top-notch corporate cleaning solutions. Her motto was not to compromise on quality and she continues to provide the highest level of service to her esteemed clients, some of them even dating back to the days of inception. Her determination powered by a strong value system is what keeps the company a cut above the rest. Being in the soft facilities management service for almost 20 years, Shany Jalal feels she has achieved her dream. Today, she is a highly successful woman entrepreneur. As she retraces her career path, she owes her success earned through years of dedication, commitment, hard work and timely intervention of some kind-hearted individuals. Since 2011, the company witnessed an average growth of 41% year on year. Though there was stiff competition from domestic and multinational property management companies, Shany sailed through. However, in the global pandemic of 2020, when her business was impacted, Shany realized that to sustain organizational growth, she had to integrate technology with service. She contemplated ways and means of integrating technology with services to meet the clients’ demands. However, Shany believes that to sustain organization growth, technology must be integrated with service. She is currently contemplating ways to introduce and integrate technology with services to efficiently and effectively meet clients’ demands.

1. Understand the gender issues in India and its impact on women entrepreneurs. 2. Analyse the ecosystem that supports supported women entrepreneurs in creating a new venture. 3. Identify the leadership traits and style, entrepreneurial competencies and capacities of the women entrepreneur in this case. 4. Recognize the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in the facilities management business sector. 5. Explore various options of integrating technology to improve facilities management services provided to the clients.

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Shany was able to face the challenges that came her way successfully with grit and courage. She was able to expand her business. Her business helped lighten the lives of many people as she provided a means of livelihood to the underprivileged. Shany was also able to motivate her husband to start a business venture and stood by him. She encouraged women to stand on their own feet especially motivating women to set up their own businesses. She is also in constant touch with other like-minded women entrepreneurs who share similar experiences in handling crises. This gives her more insight to take proper decisions.

Women entrepreneur, Facilities management services, Technology supported services

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.