Case Studies
itjen102021
case_studiess.zipCase Studiess/10 video case study.pdf
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CHAPTER 10 E-COMMERCE: DIGITAL MARKETS, DIGITAL GOODS
CASE 3 Ford AutoXchange B2B Marketplace
SUMMARY This is a fascinating story on a B2B “electronic marketplace” initially developed by Ford called AutoXchange. In this vision of B2B commerce, the Internet would transform the relationship between over 100,000 tier 1 and tier 2 auto parts suppliers, and a small handful of very large, global automobile companies. In this electronic marketplace, thousands of suppliers would compete against one another to provide parts to the auto industry giants. In this way, the auto industry hoped to reduce the cost of parts, increase quality, achieve greater flexibility, and rationalize the supply chain process. Ultimately, the effort failed. Find out why. L= 4:58.
URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyO9QSo0FjU
CASE The automotive industry designs, develops, manufactures, markets, and sells the world’s motor vehicles. In 2007, more than 73 million motor vehicles, including cars and commercial vehicles were produced worldwide. In 2011, more than 65 million motor vehicles, including cars and commercial vehicles, were produced worldwide. In 2011, a total of 64 million new automobiles were sold worldwide: 16.8 million in Europe, 22.5 million in Asia-Pacific, 15.2 million in the USA and Canada, 4.6 million in Latin America, 2.8 million in the Middle East and 1.8 million in Africa.
Because of the global financial meltdown and recession beginning in 2007, auto production worldwide has fallen 20 percent, and even more in Europe. Asia, Russia, and Latin American auto markets rose in unit sales during the period.
General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are not only by far the largest automakers in North America, they were for a while the largest in the world and are still a mainstay in the top
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ten. Ford has held the position of second-ranked automaker for the previous 56 years, being relegated to third in North American sales, after being overtaken by Toyota in 2007. In 2011, Ford ranked fifth in global auto production with 4.8 million units, behind General Motors, Volkswagen, Toyota, and Hyundai.
Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) is an American multinational corporation. Based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, the automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. Ford’s former UK subsidiaries Jaguar and Land Rover were sold to Tata Motors of India in March 2008.
While the global auto industry is very large by any standard, generating nearly $1 trillion in sales worldwide each year, the size of the auto supplier industry worldwide is equally impressive. There are an estimated 250,000 direct suppliers to the auto industry worldwide, with about 100,000 suppliers in the U.S. alone. Coordinating the flow of parts and sub- assemblies (transmissions, differentials and axles, and sheet metal) is a massive, and very expensive task.
Ford’s AutoXchange was one of the first efforts to develop a large scale B2B (business-to- business) electronic marketplace for the automobile industry. In the end, it did not succeed, at least not in the form proposed in the video. Why it did not succeed is an interesting story of how mistakes in understanding industry supply chains led to poorly conceptualized information systems which ultimately did not work. While the effort to build industry-wide electronic marketplaces largely failed (and not just in the auto industry), the ideas and technologies were later used by individual firms separately. Today, private firm industrial networks (owned and operated by individual firms who invite a select group of suppliers to participate) are commonplace.
Ford’s AutoXchange was a grand vision of how Internet technology would overcome competitive pressures in an entire industry, and entice thousands of industrial supply businesses into an online, competitive marketplace where prices would be driven down through the workings of a transparent, online marketplace much like the stock market. The idea was quite simple: build a digital marketplace which was open, transparent, and competitive to benefit the large buyers of automotive parts.
These marketplaces were referred to as “B2B Markets” because they brought together suppli- ers businesses with purchasing businesses and did not involve the consumer. Ultimately this vision of open B2B markets came up against some powerful institutional forces. As it turns out, no rational business (or management team) wants to be a seller in an open, transparent marketplace where price is the most important and visible criterion of success. As a result, suppliers to these kinds of open digital markets often refused to participate.
While the broad vision failed, many of the technologies developed in this effort were re-deployed by the companies involved, and survive today as private supply chain networks operated by the major car manufacturers.
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Your task in this case is to figure out why the original vision did not work out as planned, and what this tells you about the role that organizational and institutional factors play in the deployment of large technology projects.
One grand vision of the dot com era was an open transparent marketplace where thou- sands of suppliers would compete against one another to sell their products to a few giant purchasers. “A consortium of buyers can exert considerable influence on a common supply chain. In 1998 GM set up a B2B (business-to-business) exchange for its auto parts suppliers, initially called TradeXchange. The idea was to streamline production by sharing information electronically. At the time GM was spending about $87 billion a year on raw materials, vehicle parts, and MRO (materials, repair, and operating) supplies with its roughly 30,000 suppliers. GM would provide specifications and information on inventory and manufacturing schedules and suppliers would provide information on price and delivery capability. Trade Xchange supported an on-line catalog, a bid-quote process, or an on-line auction. Part of GM TradeXchange allowed suppliers to solicit bids for their raw materials, potentially cutting their costs. In the first two months of operations, GM sold stamping presses in two online auctions, reaping more than $2 million in sales, and purchased more than $1.7 million in materials from supplier catalogs posted on the site.
As described in the video, Ford created a similar exchange called AutoXchange with of course different software, formats and interfaces. To solve this problem for their common suppliers Ford, GM and DaimlerChrysler announced in February 2000 that they had agreed to join together to create a single B2B supplier exchange called Covisint. The three firms had combined annual spending of $240 billion.
The Federal Trade Commission started an informal antitrust review of the Big Three exchange but soon gave it clearance. In April 2000, French automaker Renault S.A. and Nissan of Japan joined. Also among the founding firms were Commerce One, GM’s technol- ogy partner in TradeXchange and Oracle Ford’s technology partner in Auto-Xchange. In April 2001 Kevin English was named Chairman, President and CEO of Covisint.
Industry observers at the time wondered whether the two companies hired to move all of Ford and GM’s suppliers online had what it takes to get these huge projects up and rolling by the first quarter of the next year, as both promised. The feat not only required enormous commitment from suppliers, which will need to be convinced they can save money, but also huge technology and applications-hosting capabilities from the companies picked for the jobs: Oracle and Commerce One. Neither of these companies had ever built such a huge online trading platform.
Suppliers to the major auto OEMS felt that the Covisint was not intended to optimize the supplier chain but rather was just the latest tool to squeeze revenue from suppliers. They were particularly hostile to the online auction. There was friction between the OEMs and also technical difficulties due to differences in legacy systems. Outside observers felt that
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the big three were more interested in the market capitalization of Covisint than in their supply chains. Covsinit never achieved the level of success envisioned. In December 2003 Covisint sold the online auction portion of its business to FreeMarkets Inc, which agreed to merge with Ariba soon after. In March 2004 Compuware acquired the products and technol- ogy of Covisint, LLC. It is believed that Covisint had about $25 million in annual revenue and around 135,000 users.
But the ideas and technologies for creating online networks which individual firms can use to communicate and collaborate with their suppliers are alive and well. There are few “open” networks where thousands of suppliers compete with one another, but there are many “invitation only networks” where a few trusted suppliers are allowed entry. All the major automakers now operate these kinds of private networks. Price competition is usually not present, and the emphasis is on quality, just-in-time delivery, and flexibility.
1. Who do you think would pay the cost for suppliers to put their parts catalogs onto these marketplaces like AutoXchange? Who should have paid costs?
2. What were the benefits of these systems and who would reap them?
3. Why did the Federal Trade Commission open an investigation of these marketplaces?
4. What role do you think the technology played in the demise of these systems?
5. Why would more “closed” private market places be attractive to both the industry giants who buy the parts and the suppliers?
VIDEO CASE QUESTIONS
COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright © 2013 Kenneth Laudon. This work is protected by United States copyright laws and is provided solely for the use of instructors in teaching their courses and assessing student learning. Dissemination or sale of any part of this work (including on the World Wide Web) will destroy the integrity of the work and is not permitted. The work and materials from this site should not be made available to students except by instructors using the accompanying text in their classes. All recipients of this work are expected to abide by these restrictions and to honor the intended pedagogical purposes and the needs of other instructors who rely on these materials.
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CHAPTER 11 MANAGING KNOWLEDGE AND COLLABORATION
CASE 2 Alfresco: Open Source Document Management and Collaboration
(a) Tour: Alfresco Document Management System URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p266dTL6oJQ; L=XXX
(b) Alfresco Document Management at the City of Denver (part 1) URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01bUAsD5t8E; L= 4:50
(c) Alfresco at the New York Philharmonic. URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UWI5RZRC56A#!; L= 4:35
SUMMARY A central element in managing organizational knowledge is developing systems that can manage the documents which lie at the heart of all organizations. Prior to the development of document management systems, organizations relied on physical copies of documents to conduct their business which was both costly and ineffective. Document management systems digitize physical documents and store the files in a database. This allows documents to be accessed and shared both internally and with customers. While all large enterprise software firms provide document management systems, Alfresco is unique because it is an open source software platform and much more affordable than solutions from traditional vendors.
CASE Alfresco Software, Ltd. Is a software firm based in the United Kingdom that offers an open- source enterprise content management and collaboration platform. Alfresco’s platform provides content management, Web content management, collaboration, content platform
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and repository, image management, and content management interoperability services to enterprise customers. The company was found in 2002 in Maidenhead, United Kingdom, by former executives of Documentum and Oracle. Documentum was one of the original document management firms in the 1990s that developed software to manage, organize, and store millions of documents. They specifically focused on unstructured information found in documents, images, audio, and video, as opposed to structured information typical of customer record systems, which have a fixed format of fields and records. For instance, Documentum developed a customized system for Boeing to organize, store, maintain, and selectively publish the thousands of pages of information for the Boeing 777 training manuals which contained multiple file types, including text, photos, and drawings.
Alfresco built on this early foundation by developing a document sharing and collabora- tion platform based on open-source software, open standards, and licenced under various open-source licenses. An open-source license is a copyright license that makes the source code available for everyone to use. This allows end users to review and modify the source code for their own customization and/or troubleshooting needs. Open-source licenses are also commonly free, allowing for modification, redistribution, and commercial use without having to pay the original author.
There are different versions of the Alfresco software, as well as different licensing fees. The Alfresco Community Edition is free software, open source and open standard. The Enterprise Edition is commercially licensed and proprietary, but builds on the open-source founda- tion. Modifications do not have to be shared with the larger community. The Alfresco Cloud edition is a SaaS version of the Enterprise edition that operates on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as of 2012.
1. How does Alfresco support a mobile business environment?
2. Why is Alfresco superior to email for supporting collaboration?
3. What were the factors that caused the City of Denver to go with the Alfresco platform as opposed to more typical proprietary software from other vendors?
4. What business process will Denver seek to automate in the future using Alfresco, and why use a document management system to automate this process?
5. What problems did the New York Philharmonic seek to solve with Alfresco?
6. What benefits does Alfresco provide the Philharmonic?
VIDEO CASE QUESTIONS
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright © 2013 Kenneth Laudon. This work is protected by United States copyright laws and is provided solely for the use of instructors in teaching their courses and assessing student learning. Dissemination or sale of any part of this work (including on the World Wide Web) will destroy the integrity of the work and is not permitted. The work and materials from this site should not be made available to students except by instructors using the accompanying text in their classes. All recipients of this work are expected to abide by these restrictions and to honor the intended pedagogical purposes and the needs of other instructors who rely on these materials.
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CHAPTER 12 ENHANCING DECISION MAKING
CASE 2 Business Intelligence Helps the Cincinnati Zoo Work Smarter
SUMMARY By implementing a centralized data warehouse with IBM Cognos Business Intelligence software, Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden has revolutionized its business operations, increased revenues, and improved customer service and loyalty. L=4:59.
URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlNu15rVKSg
CASE Founded in 1873, the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden is one of the world’s top-rated zoological institutions, and the second oldest zoo in the United States. It is also one of the nation’s most popular attractions, a Top 10 Zagat-rated Zoo, and a Top Zoo for Children according to Parent’s Magazine. Each year, more than 1.3 million people visit its 71-acre site, which is home to more than 500 animal and 3,000 plant species.
Although the Zoo is a nonprofit organization and is partially subsidized by Hamilton County, more than two-thirds of its $26 million annual budget is paid from fundraising efforts and revenue from admissions fees, food, and gifts. To increase revenue and improve perfor- mance, the Zoo’s senior management team embarked on a comprehensive review of its operations. The review found that management had limited knowledge and understanding of what was actually happening in the Zoo on a day-to-day basis, other than how many people visited every day and the zoo’s total revenue.
Who is coming to the Zoo? How often do they come? What do they do and what do they buy? Management had no idea. Each of the Zoo’s four income streams—admissions,
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membership, retail and food service—had different point-of-sale platforms, and the food service business, which brings in $4 million a year, still relied on manual cash registers. Management had to sift through paper till receipts just to understand daily sales totals.
The Zoo’s admissions team had compiled a spreadsheet that collected visitors’ zip codes, hoping to use the data in geographic and demographic analysis. If the data could be combined with insight into visitor activity at the Zoo—what attractions they visited, what they ate and drank, and what they bought at the gift shops—it could be an enormously powerful tool for the Zoo’s marketing team. To achieve this, however, the Zoo needed a centralized analytics solution.
The Zoo replaced its four legacy point-of-sale systems with a single platform—Galaxy POS from Gateway Ticketing Systems. It then enlisted IBM and BrightStar Partners (a consulting firm partnering with IBM) to build a centralized data warehouse and implement IBM Cognos Business Intelligence to provide real-time analytics and reporting.
Like all outdoor attractions, Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden is a highly weather-depen- dent business. If it rains, attendance drops sharply—potentially leaving the Zoo overstaffed and overstocked. If the weather is unusually hot, sales of certain items—bottled water and ice cream, for example—are likely to rise sharply, and supplies may run short. Having intel- ligent insight into these possible outcomes helped the Zoo prepare for these events.
The Zoo has integrated its IBM Cognos solution with a weather forecast data feed from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Web site. This enables the Zoo to compare current forecasts with historic attendance and sales data during similar weather conditions—which supports better decision-making for labor scheduling and inventory planning.
Cognos also enabled the Zoo to identify people who spent nothing other than the price of admissions during their visit. The Zoo used this information to devise a marketing campaign in which this type of visitor would be offered a discount for some of the Zoo’s restaurants and gift shops. If each of these people spent $20 on their next visit to the Zoo, the Zoo would take in an extra $260,000, which is almost 1 percent of its entire budget.
From experience, management knew that food sales tend to tail off significantly after 3pm each day, and started closing some of the Zoo’s food outlets at that time. But more detailed analysis from the Cognos business intelligence tools showed that a big spike in soft-serve ice cream sales occurs during the last hour before the Zoo closes. As a result, the Zoo’s soft- serve ice cream outlets are open for the entire day.
The Zoo’s new ability to make better decisions about how to optimize operations has led to dramatic improvements in sales. Comparing the six-month period immediately follow- ing the deployment of the IBM solution with the same period of the previous year, the Zoo achieved a 30.7 percent increase in food sales, and a 5.9 percent increase in retail sales.
Chapter 12, Case 2 Business intelligenCe helps the CinCinnati Zoo Work smarter 3
COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright © 2013 Kenneth Laudon. This work is protected by United States copyright laws and is provided solely for the use of instructors in teaching their courses and assessing student learning. Dissemination or sale of any part of this work (including on the World Wide Web) will destroy the integrity of the work and is not permitted. The work and materials from this site should not be made available to students except by instructors using the accompanying text in their classes. All recipients of this work are expected to abide by these restrictions and to honor the intended pedagogical purposes and the needs of other instructors who rely on these materials.
1. Why was Cincinnati Zoo losing opportunities to increase revenue?
2. Why was replacing legacy point-of-sale systems and implementing a data warehouse essential to an information system solution?
3. Visit the Cognos Web site and describe the business intelligence tools that would be the most useful for the Cincinnati Zoo.
4. How did the Cincinnati Zoo benefit from business intelligence? How did it enhance operational performance and decision making?
VIDEO CASE QUESTIONS
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CHAPTER 7 TELECOMMUNICATIONS, THE INTERNET, AND WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY
CASE 1 Telepresence Moves Out of the Boardroom and Into the Field
(a) TelePresence: In-Person Experiences for All URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcfNC_x0VvE; L= 3:59
(b) AXA Cuts Costs and Carbon Emissions with immersive video collaboration
URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD4a8Y3lEgs; L=3:52
SUMMARY Telepresence is one of the fastest growing business-technology applications. It combines the power of global, high-speed, broadband Internet networks with local video, audio, and processing power to create effective meeting and decision-making environments for managers at a fraction of the cost of face-to-face, in-person meetings. As the cost of telepresence declines, it is being deployed more deeply and broadly into business firms, involving a much wider range of employees and decision-making situations.
CASE Telepresence is the effort to create a digital environment using video and audio technologies which mimic key features of real-world interactions with people and objects. Telepresence is not the same as virtual reality because the actors involved in telepresence are human beings, not avatars. Telepresence is more than just video conferencing because it has a more immersive quality. The primary use of telepresence today is to support group meetings that allow participants to be physically in different places but to interact in a realistic environment as if they were all in the same meeting room. Other uses include the use of telepresence to
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control and manipulate robots and objects in manufacturing and field settings where the use of humans would be dangerous. Military uses include control over robotic “drone” aircraft, and inspection of nuclear submarine reactors.
Telepresence, once thought to be the stuff of a distant future, has definitively arrived. First discussed as a technical possibility in the 1960s, and earlier in some novels, telepresence today is thriving thanks to broadband Internet service that has continental and global reach, field-of-view cameras that can capture a 360 degree visual experience; multiple large moni- tors to display the experience; realistic wraparound sound systems; and increased comput- ing power in the form of servers and client PCs. Telepresence systems that used to cost millions of dollars now cost thousands of dollars.
Business firms invest in telepresence systems and technologies for a variety of reasons including reduction of travel time and expenses, reduction in carbon emissions caused by unnecessary travel, improvements in worker productivity that result from lowered meeting and collaboration costs, and not least, improvements in employee quality of life. With telep- resence technologies, employees do not waste time standing in lines at airports or spending hours on flights or being away from their families for extended periods.
For high-quality telepresence, firms must make large investments in special meeting rooms, monitors, servers, and software to develop telepresence applications. This generally means that only Fortune 1000 companies can afford the top-of-the-line tools of Cisco’s telepres- ence suite. But prices are falling, so even some school districts can afford the infrastructure needed for telepresence. Schools and colleges are also making increased use of telepres- ence. Schools such as the Fontana United school district in California, which has 41,000 students at 40 school sites spread out over 40 miles and split over two major freeways, are benefiting from the introduction of telepresence technologies via a pilot program with Cisco.
Telepresence systems aimed at corporate customers are sold by Cisco , AT&T, Digital Video Enterprises (DVE), Polycom, HP, , Telanetix, Tandberg, BrightCom, LifeSize, and Teliris. Prices range from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. These systems include multiple micro- phones, speakers, high-definition monitors, cameras, and often dedicated networks and custom-made studios. They strive to be as transparent to users as possible by providing life-size videos, imperceptible transmission delays, and user-friendly interfaces.
AXA: Global Financial Services
AXA provides financial services such as insurance, banking, and savings and retirement programs to individuals as well as businesses, both large and small. With operations in 61 countries that serve more than 95 million customers worldwide, AXA wanted to better leverage the collective knowledge and experience of its 214,000 employees. In addition
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1. List and discuss briefly the benefits claimed by Cisco for its “In-person” experiences using telepresence.
2. AXA is a global financial services firm. Describe why they invested in telepresence.
3. Why does AXA need special rooms dedicated to telepresence? Why can’t conferences take place at the desktop?
4. In the past, work was organized into central buildings located in central locations (like cities) in order to facilitate face-to-face interactions. What impacts might telepresence have on the organization of work? How could you use these tools to organize work on a global scale with actually building physical facilities in remote locations?
VIDEO CASE Q U E S T I O N S
to promoting collaboration and sharing of best practices, the firm wanted to reduce the travel burden on executives, and the carbon footprint of the firm, as well as improve the productivity of executives who were constantly moving between different AXA offices and client sites. AXA possessed a basic, older video conferencing system, but it was difficult to use and plagued by performance problems that made interactions stilted and awkward. The challenge facing the firm was to identify technologies and vendors who could deliver a workable telepresence system that could be rolled out across its major operations centers.
AXA began by building two beta Cisco Telepresence systems, one in New York and the other in Paris. Early users, mostly senior executives, were impressed. This early success led to the development of a global network of 43 telepresence centers in 14 countries. A vendor partner, Orange Business Services, contributed expertise for the implementation. So far, AXA has hosted 43,000 meetings, reduced the number of executive trips by 20,000, and saved 23,000 tons of carbon emissions. In the first three years the firm expects to save about $130 million.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright © 2013 Kenneth Laudon. This work is protected by United States copyright laws and is provided solely for the use of instructors in teaching their courses and assessing student learning. Dissemination or sale of any part of this work (including on the World Wide Web) will destroy the integrity of the work and is not permitted. The work and materials from this site should not be made available to students except by instructors using the accompanying text in their classes. All recipients of this work are expected to abide by these restrictions and to honor the intended pedagogical purposes and the needs of other instructors who rely on these materials.
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CHAPTER 9 ACHIEVING OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE AND CUSTOMER INTIMACY: ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS
CASE 1 Workday: Enterprise Cloud Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
(a) What is Workday: Enterprise Software as a Service (Saas)
URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gkBvIIrTJY; L=3:52
(b) Workday: Mobile Solutions for iPad
URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_CpGQvuR9k; L: 7:06
SUMMARY Workday is a cloud-based enterprise software company that went public in September 2012. Workday provides the functionality of enterprise software provided on site by firms like Oracle and SAP, long considered the duopoly of enterprise software. Unlike these traditional enterprise software firms that sell standalone software and the infrastructure required to operate it, Workday leases the software, which is located on Workday’s cloud servers. Companies purchase subscriptions to their services, and then employees access the software through web browsers on laptops, desktops, and tablet computers.
CASE Workday provides enterprise cloud-based applications for human capital management (HCM), payroll, financial management, time tracking, procurement and employee expense management. The company is based in Pleasanton, California, and sells cloud-based human resources, payroll, and financial management tools and other related products. Workday
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is one of the most closely watched new companies in the area of cloud-based computing and SaaS (software as a service), along with early innovators like Salesforce.com, Splunk, ServiceNow, and Palo Alto Networks, all of which have done very well in raising funds and maintaining their share prices.
Founded in 2005 by executives formerly at PeopleSoft (a well-known human relations enterprise software company now owned by Oracle), Workday went public in November, and popped 72 percent in its first day of trading to $48 a share. Workday sales grew 116 percent in the six months ending July 2012. In November 2012 it posted a quarterly net loss of $41 million (GAAP basis) compared to a loss of $18.6 million a year ago. Revenue was $72.6 million in the quarter, which was up 99 percent year-over-year. While still not profit- able, investors are piling into the stock because of the promise of future spectacular growth, with profits to follow.
Workday seeks to develop applications that are designed around the way people work today—in an environment that is global, collaborative, fast-paced and mobile. They update their software from their central servers three times per year. Customers are not charged for the updates, and the frequent updates has made it possible for the company to innovate rapidly. The company’s first product was a HCM application in 2006. Since then the firm added a financial management application in 2007, procurement and employee expense management applications in 2008, payroll and mobile applications in 2009, a talent management application in 2010, and a native iPad application and Workday integration platform in 2011.
Workday generates revenue by selling three-year term subscriptions on an enterprise basis. Subscription fees are based on the size of the customer’s workforce. The firm’s strength is with human resource applications, and it currently derives a substantial majority of its revenues from subscriptions to its Workday HCM application. Workday markets its products through a direct sales force.
Like other cloud-based software offerings, Workday’s have a number of advantages over traditional on-premises enterprise software packages offered by SAP and Oracle’s PeopleSoft division. On-premises software has to be purchased and installed on the firm’s infrastructure. Firms require extensive consulting services to be able to install these systems, and the implementation period is often measured in years. These packages can be expen- sive to customize, time-consuming to implement, and difficult to upgrade. Companies running cloud software don’t face the same problems, and can also save on hardware costs since they share computing resources with others. Workday and other SaaS provid- ers offer firms a much less onerous implementation, much less expensive infrastructure requirements, and a less costly employee training period. Workday has attracted several U.S. customers, including Flextronics, Lenovo, and Kimberly-Clark.
Chapter 9, Case 1 Workday: enterprise Cloud soft Ware-as-a-serviCe (saas) 3
COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright © 2013 Kenneth Laudon. This work is protected by United States copyright laws and is provided solely for the use of instructors in teaching their courses and assessing student learning. Dissemination or sale of any part of this work (including on the World Wide Web) will destroy the integrity of the work and is not permitted. The work and materials from this site should not be made available to students except by instructors using the accompanying text in their classes. All recipients of this work are expected to abide by these restrictions and to honor the intended pedagogical purposes and the needs of other instructors who rely on these materials.
1. What kinds of functionality and capability does Workday provide to its customers?
2. Why would a firm chose Workday over a competitor like Oracle or SAP? What role does a consulting firm like Towers Watson play in the implementation of Workday?
3. What role did the iPad play in supporting the development of Workday?
4. What is the Workfeed feature and why is it like Facebook?
VIDEO CASE Q U E S T I O N S
Oracle and SAP are not standing still, and are currently promoting their own cloud-based versions of their existing enterprise products. But many in the marketplace see these adap- tations of older software designs as clumsy, and only a partial step in the right direction. Workday, as many younger firms in cloud-based computing, has designed their products from the ground up as Web-based and has delivered products suitable for the new table and smartphone platforms.
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Chapter 9:
1. Which business processes are the most important at Summit Electric Supply? Why?
2. What problems did Summit have with its old systems? What was the business impact of those problems?
3. How did Summit’s ERP system improve operational efficiency and decision making? Give several examples.
4. Describe two ways in which Summit’s customers benefit from the new ERP system.
5. Diagram Summit’s old and new process for handling chargebacks.
Chapter 10:
1. Assess the management, organization, and technology issues for using social media to engage with customers.
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using social media for advertising, brand building, market research, and customer service?
3. Give some examples of management decisions that were facilitated by using social media to interact with customers.
4. Should all companies use Facebook and Twitter for customer service and advertising? Why or why not? What kinds of companies are best suited to use these platforms?
Chapter 11:
1. Analyze Firewire using the value chain and competitive forces models.
2. What strategies is Firewire using to differentiate its product, reach its customers, and persuade them to buy its products?
3. What is the role of CAD in Firewire’s business model?
4. How did the integration of online custom board design software (CBD), CAD, and computer numerical control (CNC) improve Firewire’s operations?
Chapter 12:
1. It has been said that Zynga is “an analytics company masquerading as a games company.” Discuss the implications of this statement.
2. What role does business intelligence play in Zynga’s business model?
3. Give examples of three kinds of decisions supported by business intelligence at Zynga.
4. How much of a competitive advantage does business intelligence provide for Zynga? Explain.
5. What problems can business intelligence solve for Zynga? What problems can’t it solve?
