Case Studies
The 2004 financial performance was very encouraging for Varina Nissen, who was then in the second year of her role as Managing Director for Manpower Australia. Revenue had increased by 10% while costs were well below target. The overall measure of performance, return on sales, had been improved. Scott McLachlan, the CFO and Director of Corporate Services, announced confidently, “We have achieved the budget targets. It’s never happened before in the history of Manpower Australia”. The corporate strategy developed by Varina and her team, and executed through the balanced-scorecard (BSC), had achieved the short-term financial objectives for the company and a turnaround in a relative short period of time. However, future challenges awaited Varina and Scott, not least of which was how to use the BSC to secure further performance improvements.
Suresh Cuganesan, Guy Ford and Haider Khan
Case 2006-2: Casella Wine and the Success of Yellow-Tail
There could be little doubt that Casella Wines has ascended quickly among Australia’s Top twenty wine exporters. It started from eighth position in 2001, and then moved to fifth, fourth, and finally third position by 2004. In fact, Casella’s performance has resulted for the first time in a decade reshaped the order of Australia’s top five wine exporters by both volume and value. Today it accounts for more than one third of Australian wine sales in the U.S. In less than ten years it has grown from five to more than three hundred employees in the winery business alone.
Peter Steane and Yuvon Dufour
Case 2006-1 Hosted CRM: Literature Review and Research Questions
The 22 July 2005 meeting was called by the General Manager of Communications to discuss the planned implementation of a CRM solution for the fundraising department. She looked around the boardroom as people left and thought that she might have pushed too hard. ANGLICARE had spent over $400,000 on CRM but had not, in her view, got value for money - at least, not yet. Mrs Dearne Cameron wasn’t alone in holding this opinion. There had been the debacle with the consultant, though, to be fair, that had been some time ago.
Francis Buttle
Case 2005-6: IGA and the Coles-Shell Alliance
The Executive Management Group at IGA thought this was a serious problem. It was late-2004, and although they were not fuel retailers themselves, they were facing intense competition for the grocery dollar from two retailer/fuel company alliances - the Woolworths-Caltex alliance and the Coles-Shell alliance.
Franics Buttle and Simon Rushworth
Case 2005-5: CRM at Suntel, Sri Lanka
Suntel Ltd., owned by Telia AB, the national telecom operator of Sweden has consolidated itself in the Sri Lankan telecommunication market as the No 2 fixed telecom operator. Aggressive marketing and sales strategies coupled with rapid network expansion has ensured that Suntel was in a strong position to develop its subscriber base. Suntel believed it had a unique approach to serving telecommunication needs with its total customer focus and proactive and innovative leadership. It became the first fixed telecom provider in Sri Lanka to receive the ISO 9002 quality certification. The ISO 9002 certification suggests Suntel has clear processes and commitment to standards.
Francis Buttle
This is a case study of a leading edge project management initiative within the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The ABS is an organization with a reputation for being better at IT than other organizations and it has a core competence in project management. This case study is of an initiative to lift their IT governance practices to even higher levels. The case describes how the ABS implemented a project management framework (PMF) to create a widespread awareness within the organization of the difference between project management success (outputs) and project success (outcomes). The adoption rate of the PMF was acceptable, with all large projects using it, but the formal adoption of the PMF by other projects had slowed when the executive sponsor left.
Raymond Young
This is a case study of a difficult project in an organization with a reputation for consistent success. It describes how an executive project sponsor influenced a very understaffed IT project to achieve a modest success in spite of very little support from the rest of the organization. The project succeeded despite a poor project plan, little user support and malicious political opposition. This confirms the critical role of an executive sponsor for project success and it provides extensive background information to explain how top managers really influence projects to succeed. The case is particularly valuable for its detailed description of how important it is to build commitment and trust over the length of a project. It highlights the subtleties related to the communication of priorities and the need to seek out, listen and respond to unanticipated issues.
Raymond Young
Case 2005-2: How Projects Fail "Successfully"
This is a case study highlighting dysfunctional management practices arising from inconsistent conceptions of IT project success. It describes an apparently successful project (on-time on-budget), but challenges the traditional assessment by highlighting the fact that the project delivered less than half of what was promised. The case provides a concrete example for readers to appreciate the much-neglected insight that project management success does not necessarily lead to project success from a business perspective. It provides extensive background information to suggest the cause and remedy for the issue rests mainly with top management. It was conducted over a 17-month period and is based on interviews with key stakeholders followed by an extensive review period leading to a signoff by the organization.
Raymond Young
Case 2005-1: A Passion to Succeed
SkyHigh Property Investments is a subsidiary of a major investment bank. SkyHigh’s success depends on its ability to recognise, purchase and manage quality commercial properties for its clients and its ability to attract quality tenants and keep them happy while controlling expenses. They also need to provide their investors with timely information. The CEO of SkyHigh had trebled the size of company in only four years. The organisation originally managed only a handful of buildings for a superannuation fund, but by the end of 2000 it had over 100 major properties, many thousands of tenants, and thousands of investors across a number of investment vehicles. The enormous growth in complexity was imposing operational stresses on the organisation. The CEO was acutely aware of it because two companies in the industry had recently lost market share because poor operational systems had undermined investor confidence.
Raymond Young
This is a case study illustrating the political realities of a ‘routine’ IT project. The project had a very poor outcome, overall revenues were compromised and the senior managers personally suffered as a result. The main reason for the poor result was not so much poor project management or lack of technical skill but rather the lack of ‘senior management support’. The case provides extensive background information to show that the lack of support was to be expected given the political realities of the case. It suggests that such situations are typical of routine projects and therefore a major consideration in all IT projects. The case was originally prepared to test an IT risk management framework and modified to support an MBA class on IT Management. The case was used to help students to appreciate that so called IT experts and the common IT prescriptions tend to focus on inappropriate issues from a business perspective. The objective was to help students internalise the finding that “unless top management are actively involved, the idea that computers will produce substantial benefits is the big lie of the information age”.
Raymond Young
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