At the outset, the A case appears like a typical IT project at Adecco, the leading HR solutions company. At the end of 2017, a new IT infrastructure service provider had been selected. Adecco’s IT project manager was tasked with migrating almost 500 applications – running on around 3,700 servers located in the current provider’s datacenters – to existing or new servers located in the datacenters managed by the new provider. The challenges were not unique, but they were plentiful and the stakes were high. The potential cost savings were significant, and the technologically advanced new infrastructure should provide a solution to the many outages that Adecco had been experiencing over the years. Switching from one provider to another is not the most exciting project to be involved in. The project manager knew that he would have to “borrow” some of the best resources from the 60 countries that were impacted by this change. With an 18-month project timeline, it was critical for him to find a way to keep the momentum going that had been created during the signing of the new €20 million a year contract – Adecco’s largest contract with an IT services provider to date. Never having managed a global project before and being fully aware of the potential pitfalls plus the fact that most projects of this size overran by 40% in time and 20% in cost, the project manager was anxious and wondered what options he had to bring this project to a successful end.
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Managing Multiple Role Identities - Family Enterprise
Leaders of family firms are struggling with multiple role identities, and poor board management is putting the future of family enterprises at risk.
By
Alfredo De Massis, Cristina Bettinelli, Manisha Singal and
John Davis
How Haier works - Company Culture
An in-depth study into Haier’s RenDanHeYi philosophy reinforces how it enables business units to innovate and develop new products based on what customers need.
By
Daniel R. Denison and
William A. Fischer
UrbanLuxe: Supply chain and M&A
Summary
This brief case exercise presents an increasingly common business scenario: An established player acquires a small, agile start-up to re-energize its value proposition. In this case, established global beauty giant UrbanLuxe acquires beauty start-...
Reference
IMD-2654
Copyright
©2024
Copyright owner
IMD Copyright
Available Languages
English
Contact
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Boosting and sustaining operational excellence
Summary
The case explores the principles and challenges of operational excellence through the experience of Magdi Batato, former EVP of Operations at Nestlé. It examines how he implemented Mission-Directed Work Teams (MDWTs) to empower front-line workers,...
Reference
IMD-2653
Copyright
©2025
Copyright owner
IMD Copyright
Organization
Nestlé
Industry
Consumer Goods, Food and Beverage;Consumer Goods
Available Languages
English
Contact
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Managing Multiple Role Identities - Family Enterprise
Summary
Leaders of family firms are struggling with multiple role identities, and poor board management is putting the future of family enterprises at risk.
Contact
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
How Haier works - Company Culture
Summary
An in-depth study into Haier’s RenDanHeYi philosophy reinforces how it enables business units to innovate and develop new products based on what customers need.
Contact
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
UrbanLuxe Cosmetics: Embracing S&OP/IBP
Summary
The case is seen through the eyes of the newly appointed supply chain director at a cosmetics company based in Berlin. The general manager has tasked the new supply chain director to provide bold process recommendations to improve the poor service...
Reference
IMD-7-2572
Copyright
©2024
Copyright owner
IMD Copyright
Organization
UrbanLuxe Cosmetics (Invented name)
Available Languages
English
Contact
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Metalshub: A steely approach to launching a B2B metal trading platform
Summary
Few Business to Business (B2B) marketplaces have succeeded. Metalshub has successfully combined a software platform as a service, with a marketplace matching supply and demand for raw materials used in the Metals and Mining industries. Through innovative pricing and business models, the company has managed to scale its operations in a short timeframe.
Reference
IMD-7-2457
Copyright
©2024
Copyright owner
IMD Copyright
Organization
Metalshub
Industry
Materials, Metals and Mining
Available Languages
English
Contact
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Tesco and Ocado: Contrasting online grocery supply chain models
Summary
E-commerce as a share of retail continues to grow, accelerated by the pandemic. This is particularly true of the online grocery market. As one of the largest online grocery markets in the world, the UK has many players, but two of the most dynamic...
Reference
IMD-7-2553
Copyright
©2024
Copyright owner
IMD Copyright
Organization
Ocado, Tesco
Industry
Information Technology, eCommerce;Consumer Goods, Food and Beverage
Available Languages
English
Contact
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Galeneo Health: Scaling the hospital@home platform
Summary
MADRID (SPAIN), MARCH 2023. Jaime Garcia-Prieto, founder and CEO of Galeneo, was polishing the deck for the fundraising for his healthcare start-up. The seed round of €1 million would take him to the institutional A round scheduled for Q3-2024, a comfortable 18-month+ runway. His proposal to decentralize healthcare through a tech-enabled hospital@home platform offered the solution people were looking for not only in Spain but also in most advanced economies. According to a recent Economist article, the NHS, like many healthcare systems, had become a sickness service, not a health service. To live up to the promise of its name would require a shift in focus, away from hospitals to the community, from centralized treatment to community-based prevention and bedside medicine. In other words, health systems needed to be investing in smoke alarms, not fire extinguishers. In 2020, as the Covid pandemic began, Jaime envisioned the future of in-home care for patients with chronic treatment needs. In 2021, he embarked on developing a platform to coordinate bedside medical care anywhere, anytime, in minutes. Galeneo was born. By 2023, it had integrated 200+ healthcare providers (HCPs) and 11+ institutional partners in the Madrid region, enabling the provision of general high-value services outside hospital. Revenues of €1.6 million in 2023 were expected, with a growth rate of about 8% every month and net profit breakeven reached in February. Things looked positive, but there were issues around scaling fast – although Jaime had found solutions. To counter the limited availability of qualified healthcare workers, he developed the Galeneo Academy to train future in-home bedside specialists. Tech-enabled standardization reduced operational complexity through an easy-to-use app and included real-time monitoring and quality control. Finally, the whole concept of community-based bedside medicine was still nascent, which meant market participants needed to adopt original approaches. But it was a large market with great potential.
Reference
IMD-7-2496
Copyright
©2023
Copyright owner
IMD Copyright
Organization
Galeneo
Industry
Healthcare, Health and Medical Services
Available Languages
English
Contact
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Pandora: Mastering the success factors of circular supply chains (Mini case)
Summary
Jewelry manufacturer and retailer Pandora is one of the largest jewelry players in the world. One of the key programs in Pandora’s circularity efforts had to do with the target of sourcing 100% recycled silver and gold by 2025. Executing on this goal became a complex journey, particularly as recycling precious metals represented a supply chain in its own right. It also came with its own set of carbon impacts and environmental protection requirements. Could Pandora overcome the many constraints in operationalizing a viable circular model for silver and gold?
Reference
IMD-7-2524
Copyright
©2023
Copyright owner
IMD Copyright
Organization
Pandora
Industry
Consumer Goods, Luxury Goods and Jewelry
Available Languages
English
Contact
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Patagonia: Can circularity and sustainability win together? (Mini case)
Summary
Although Patagonia is not a player in the luxury segment per se, its track record in achieving circularity speaks volumes to luxury brands in terms of what a more mass-market brand is prepared to achieve in the circularity space and on its implications. Patagonia has discouraged overproduction and overconsumption, consistently working to create products that would never end up in a landfill. The main tenets of the company’s approach were called the five Rs. Reduce: Don’t buy what you don’t need. Repair: Fix items that still have life in them. Reuse: Sell or pass clothing on. When you’ve exhausted those options: Recycle. The last tenet, Reimagine, was a pledge to “take only what nature can replace.” Early on, Patagonia executives began investigating how they could encourage customers to reuse older clothing items that were not worn or no longer fit. Nevertheless, studies on textile circularity in general have pointed out that the practice has yet to establish sustainable economies. Large-scale reuse, repair and recycling have typically been hindered by high transportation, labor and processing costs as well as the decreasing quality and cost of new products. Furthermore, notwithstanding its status as the clothing industry’s beacon of sustainability – and billing itself as “in business to save our home planet” – Patagonia has never shied away from pursuing a high-growth, for-profit business model.
Reference
IMD-7-2525
Copyright
©2023
Copyright owner
IMD Copyright
Organization
Patagonia
Industry
Consumer Goods, Apparel and Fashion
Available Languages
English
Contact
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications