M1A3 Capstone

Case Study—Introduction to ABC

Throughout this course, to help illustrate the concepts, you will follow the story of the ABC eLearning Company and its activities. The company was founded in 2003 when eLearning was just taking off in the marketplace.

When you examine your business or organization, whether as an owner or an employee, it is important to understand business in general, your specific industry thoroughly, and also the economic indicators. By triangulating basic business practices, industry demands, consumers, and key economic indicators, managers and leaders are able to develop a diverse and flexible strategy around driving business success.

Organizations may enter the marketplace with one product or a focused product suite approach, but it is critical to be constantly paying attention and allowing the business to evolve based on what is going on with the general economy as well as marketplace demands.

ABC’s initial proposition was to help academic institutions develop online learning. The company was just at the right place at the right time and picked up customers because of the growth of online learning. However, two years after it was established, the founders realized it was important for the business to define its strategy and plan how to execute it in a way that employees could support it and the marketplace would adopt it.

The company set up an innovative consortium of academic institutions and businesses that served online learning but did not compete with ABC. This consortium brought vendors and prospective clients together to better understand needs and what services could support the needs. This was the first of many steps the company used over the years to position itself in the marketplace and communicate its strategy.

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