Cases

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https://vlerick.dspace7.openrepository.com/handle/20.500.12127/4

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Energizing the future: An asset criticality framework for Fluvius
(2024) Sandu, Georgiana; Samii, Behzad
Fluvius, the largest multi-utility company in Flanders, has launched a programme to optimize inventory accessibility and visibility for their contractors. Adelard, the Head of Asset Planning, has worked closely with different departments at Fluvius and their partners to understand the current inventory issues and update the framework accordingly. The Case follows Adelard, who wants to increase inventory visibility and make it more agile. A simple missing part in mission-critical organizations, such as Fluvius, can significantly impact network availability or, more critically, operational safety. Thus, Adelard wants to define a criticality index to help prevent stockouts and simplify internal decision-making, using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) analysis. He has already talked with experts from different departments about possible dimensions of the criticality index and compiled a pairwise comparison matrix for the AHP analysis. Ultimately, he wants to link criticality to their cost-based ABC segmentation and define policies to manage each segment.
Integrated supply chain management (ISCM) at Eandis
(2024) Samii, Behzad
Eandis, the distributor of electricity in Belgium, is about to launch a multi-year multi-phase smart meter implementation project. Its supply chain management organisation should be transformed to a more agile and cost efficient structure to tackle the challenges of maintaining service quality, managing multi-functional teams, establishment of formal communications, internal collaboration in forecasting and planning, and external cooperation among utility companies and cities. The teaching case provides a detailed analysis of challenges faced by a (traditionally) asset-based organisation while being transformed to an info-based entity from the supply chain management perspective.
Thriving in Pfizer's Global Production Network: Post COVID-19 Strategy for the Puurs (Belgium) Site
(2024) De Meyer, Arnoud; Ferdows, Kasra; Vereecke, Ann; Singapore Management University; McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University, Washington, District of Columbia, USA
The case describes the trajectory of Pfizer's plant in Puurs, Belgium, towards becoming a lead plant within Pfizer's international network. Additionally, it examines how the plant can maintain this position in the future. Having been the exclusive site outside the United States for producing the COVID-19 vaccine, the key question emerges: how should the plant evolve, and what additional capabilities should it cultivate to continue its leadership role? The case delves into the journey of the Belgian plant, navigating through the aftermath of mergers, acquisitions, and restructuring within Pfizer's global production network from 2000 to 2020. It chronicles the development of crucial capabilities that not only ensured the plant's continued existence, but also how it garnered the trust of senior management to undertake in 2020 the pivotal task of producing the COVID-19 vaccine, which it accomplished with phenomenal success. The case ends with Luc Van Steenwinkel, VP Operations and Site Leader, and his team wondering what the best strategy would be for the plant to sustain its successful trajectory. Should it prioritize increasing its scale or broadening its scope? Or could it do both?
Getting the job done: Nowjobs an industry disruptor
(2024) Meuleman, Miguel; Verweire, Kurt; Carrick, Anne-Marie
This case describes how House of HR, an international HR services group, dealt with turbulence in the European human resource and employment services market. This case study shows how established firms can respond to such turbulence by building a new business model outside their core market. It shows the challenges during the various phases of the creation of this new business model - from the idea's inception of the idea to the formation of the new team, and then to the launch of the new concept, the scaling of the venture and the international expansion phase. Although the new venture has experienced a healthy start and has been very successful since then, significant questions remain. One of those questions is how much freedom to give to the new unit and how to shape the growth path of the new business.
Fluvius driving towards sustainability: Building a supply chain ecosystem to drive transformation and positive change
(2023) Sandu, Georgiana; Samii, Behzad
Like many organizations, Fluvius, the Belgian multi-utility company, pledged net-zero emissions across its operations by 2050. Fluvius is also the preferred partner of the local authorities to drive the energy transition in Flanders and to implement the European Green Deal actions and guidelines. As Head of Procurement, Gunther is convinced he can make a difference in both Fluvius's sustainability priorities: (1) reducing its ecological footprint, and (2) enhancing sustainability within its supply chain. Gunther and his Procurement Team have made solid progress in consolidating the supply chain for the energy transition, but engaging the partners with the Fluvius CSR charter is still a work in progress. Fluvius is part of a network of more than 3,000 partners, of which more than half are small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) that do not necessarily have the knowledge and the resources to start their own sustainability journey. However, Gunther understood that the only way to achieve their net-zero emissions ambitions requires working closely and helping their suppliers adopt sustainable practices. Doing so requires a combination of strategic, operational, and cultural initiatives serving as incentives to adopt greener practices and operate a sustainable business model.
JOB Co: Making Mentor 2.0 Agile
(2023) Viaene, Stijn
In 2019, the director of the newly minted Digital Services Lab at JOB Co. found himself on the brink of a crucial meeting with the company's chief executive officer. The focal point of their impending discussion rested on the stagnation of progress in the Mentor 2.0 project—an initiative conceived to embody an agile paradigm in digital transformation, championed by an inventive Scrum team. Despite the project's noble intentions, the journey towards agility had proven to be riddled with formidable challenges for the team. The director, acutely aware that the destiny of Mentor 2.0 was intricately intertwined with the prosperity of the Lab, the linchpin of JOB Co.'s digital metamorphosis, grappled with the necessity of explaining the situation accurately. The imminent meeting stood as a decisive moment for him to carefully consider the most effective strategy. He understood that the future path of the Mentor 2.0 project held significant implications for the Lab—a pivotal force guiding JOB Co.'s digital evolution.
New product the bankruptcy of General Motors (GM)
(2024) Weiss, Martin
On June 1, 2009, General Motors (GM) filed for bankruptcy under chapter 11, after more than 100 years of existence and 77 years as the number one car manufacturer in the world. Marking the largest bankruptcy in the corporate world, it remains intriguing to understand what caused GM's bankruptcy and whether could it have been avoided. One of the main reasons often proclaimed is the financial crisis, which in 2009 was coinciding. But besides this external shock, had other issues within the automotive industry or within GM itself an even stronger impact? To recover from a crisis or even bankruptcy, as GM attempted with the emergence of 'New GM' after the bankruptcy, it is crucial to have a thorough understanding of the specific issues at hand.
RDEA Glass: remaining vigilant in a digital world.
(2023) Viaene, Stijn
Bernhard Harding, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at RDEA Glass, needs to convince the executive team to double down on digital transformation. The CEO agreed to spend time on the matter in the next executive meeting. Harding believed his colleagues didn't see things clearly and needed to break free of the current focus. He looks back to how the meeting went, assessing whether the executive team was able to show the required strategic vigilance, to then make up his mind as to how to address the CEO's call for input for a next meeting.
Allianz: Predicting direct debit with machine learning
(2022) Van der Schraelen, Lennert; Willems, Emma; Stouthuysen, Kristof; Verdonck, Tim; Grumiau, Christopher; Thoppan Mohanchandralal, Sudaman
In January 2021, the chief data and analytics officer (CDAO) at Allianz Benelux SA (Allianz) spotted a possible opportunity to optimize cash flow with direct debit. Direct debit was a pre-authorized financial transaction between two parties where the amount due was directly and automatically collected from the payer’s bank account. Direct debit would allow Allianz to shorten payment processes, reduce risks by anticipating payments, and improve customer loyalty. Despite the clear advantages of direct debit for both clients and insurers, only a few of Allianz’s clients were currently making use of direct debit. It was not clear what drove Allianz’s customers or brokers to implement direct debit. This was where the CDAO and his data office team came in. The data office possessed a large amount of data on Allianz’s property and casualty insurance contracts and customers. Now the team needed to investigate how this data could be leveraged to determine the value drivers and develop a strategy to convert more clients to direct debit payments.
Allianz: Improving P&L through machine learning
(2022) Heyvaert, Carl-Erik; Darmawan, Viola; Stouthuysen, Kristof; Verdonck, Tim; Grumiau, Christopher; Thoppan Mohanchandralal, Sudaman
During an Allianz Benelux SA (Allianz) board meeting held in early 2019, Allianz’s chief financier officer (CFO) had a profound discussion with Allianz’s chief data and analytics officer (CDAO) on improving the company’s profit and loss (P&L) statement by targeting problematic cases among disability claims related to Allianz’s life insurance product. It appeared that certain claims had very long durations, leading to recurrent payouts surpassing the total amount of premiums. Consequently, there were too many claims that could translate into future losses. If this phenomenon persisted, Allianz could lose millions of dollars in revenues. Therefore, the CFO contacted the CDAO and his data office and requested that the team identify the client segments in which the most problematic cases of disability claims occurred. Additionally, the CFO wanted the data office to build a predictive model that could estimate the duration of a claim, to adapt the premium coverage to specific customer segments.
Allianz: Optimizing Customer Acquisition Strategy using Machine Learning
(2022) Brié, Bjarne; Distelmans, Tineke; Stouthuysen, Kristof; Verdonck, Tim; Grumiau, Christopher; Thoppan Mohanchandralal, Sudaman
In October 2019, the regional chief data and analytics officer at Allianz AG, Belgium, attended a two-hour strategy meeting with the Allianz Benelux chief executive officer, who had expressed concerns about the company’s digitalization strategy. A few days earlier, the marketing department had found that online sales channel results had fallen unexpectedly. The chief executive officer was worried that the company could lose market share if it did not react accordingly, which would damage the company’s competitive position in the market. Therefore, the regional chief data and analytics officer was asked to gather a team to investigate why online sales were low and to design an effective customer acquisition strategy. In addition to his data office staff, the regional chief data and analytics officer asked for the business transformation unit to provide assistance. He had to consider how best to approach this challenging task.
Ovinto: Preparing for a series a venture capital investment round
(2019) Manigart, Sophie
Late 2018, Frederick Ronse, founder and CEO of Ovinto, was going over the options to finance the next development stage of his scale-up. Ovinto is active in big data analytics and IoT in the rail freight industry. It had now gained traction and had lined up some highly visible customers. Its recent partnership with SAP, the global software solutions company, was also a major step forward. Now was the time to push the company on a high growth trajectory, but some EUR5 million to EUR10 million was needed to achieve this. Important questions crossed his mind. How much should Ovinto try to raise? What would a reasonable valuation be, that would be agreeable to his current investors - and himself - but that would not scare off potential investors? And who might be interested investors, that could add value to his scale-up? Frederick understood that raising professional venture capital was not only a financial decision, but a highly strategic decision as well. This case won the Entrepreneurship category at The Case Centre Awards and Competitions 2023.
FD Mediagroup: Surviving digital disruption
(2022) Verweire, Kurt; Viaene, Stijn
The FD Mediagroep (FDMG) case describes how a leading local, niche newspaper company dealt with the challenges of digital disruption in the period 2011-2020. It describes both the actions taken at the corporate and business unit level and shows how FDMG has strengthened its core media business. Furthermore, the case describes how FDMG grew beyond its media core and unveils how the company decided to manage this new business division, and how it chose its operating model: Should the new business operate as an autonomous division or should the corporation actively pursue synergies with the other business divisions?
Barco ClickShare: Introducing the next-generation meeting experience
(2021) Standaert, Willem; Muylle, Steve; HEC Liège
Barco - a global technology leader in industrial visualization solutions - pioneered the category of wireless presentation systems for business meetings with its launch of ClickShare in 2012. Barco ClickShare rendered cables in the meeting room redundant, enabling meeting participants to share their laptop, tablet or smartphone screens wirelessly on the meeting room display. Over time, the Barco ClickShare product portfolio had evolved to 5 models, each targeted at a different type of meeting room - from huddle to board room. After 7 years of stellar growth, ClickShare was at a pivotal point: It had to sustain its momentum and double the number of units sold in three years' time, while driving meeting technology innovation and spearheading the next generation digital meeting experience. The case is situated at the beginning of 2020 and describes how the first two generations of Barco ClickShare products were brought to market, resulting in an installed base of 750,000 units across the world, with a presence in over 40% of the Fortune 1000 companies. In the case, three key executives of Barco's Meeting Experience business unit appraise how ClickShare evolved in terms of product design, market definition, value proposition, pricing, distribution, and communication, and discuss the competition. Given the changing market conditions and competitive dynamics, the executives set out to further digitize the product line, which raised two important strategic issues: What should the next-generation ClickShare experience be and how to bring the digitized product line to market?
Fluvius drives towards sustainability: A case on rare earth elements (Ree) supply integrity
(2020) Andersen, Stephen; Sandu, Georgiana; Samii, Behzad
As Supply Chain Manager at Fluvius, the Belgian distribution system operator, Gunther wants to formulate a plan that can generate incentives to move towards greater energy supply chain sustainability and resilience. The low-carbon energy transition relies on rare earth elements (REEs)-enabled technologies tainted by their harsh mining ecosystem effects and their Chinese policies dependence. Gunther, adopting a holistic approach, analyses the complexity of the global, green energy supply chain. What does a sustainable energy supply chain actually mean? How to create a cascade of sustainable practices that reaches first-tier suppliers? How to couple resilience and sustainability and contribute to sustainable development? This case is designed to be exposed in Business Administration, Energy Management, Supply Chain Management, Operations Management or Technology Management courses. The goal is to develop and practice skills in identifying trends and weaknesses in a dynamic supply chain and to formulate an action plan that can integrate sustainability and resilience across an organization's supply chain.
Building a Corporation from Scratch—aim.group
(2021) Verweire, Kurt
Customer churn prediction using machine learning and customer lifetime value analysis at Eurotel
(2021) Stouthuysen, Kristof; Verdonck, Tim; Van der Schraelen, Lennert; Decorte, Thomas; Brié, Bjarne
Every CFO should invest in getting to know the organisation’s customers. After all, building long-term and valuable customer relationships is an important driver of value creation. This case study explores how machine learning and predictive analytics can be used to develop a deeper understanding of customer behaviour and to enhance customer profitability. The case study consists of two parts: part A, customer churn prediction using machine learning, and part B, customer lifetime value analysis. In part A, the focus is on using machine learning to predict customer churn at Eurotel, a Belgian telecommunications start-up. The participants will learn how to pre-process raw customer data and will use different modelling techniques to predict customer churn. Furthermore, they will learn how to select the right model based on business relevance and performance. In part B, the participants will use the insights derived in the first part to analyse the customer lifetime value of the different Eurotel customers. This will serve as input for a marketing analysis. The goal is to determine which customer and product segments of Eurotel are most valuable and to strategically select the right marketing campaigns to target those segments. The participants will learn how to implement a customer lifetime value analysis and how the resulting information can be used to design an effective marketing campaign. The participants will also learn how they can implement the analysis in python.
Machine learning to predict the net promotor score and improve patient experience
(2021) Stouthuysen, Kristof; Willems, Emma; Heyvaert, Carl-Erik; Distelmans, Tineke
Net Promotor Score (NPS) is a simple yet prominent indicator for customer satisfaction that is widely used in organizations. An in-depth analysis of the NPS and its drivers can provide organizations with highly valuable insights into their current deficiencies and strengths. CFO’s, for example, can use this metric to develop a strategy map. This case study explores the use of machine learning to perform an NPS key driver analysis at IndyCare, an Indian hospital group. The aim is to develop a model that predicts whether patients are promotors, detractors or passive customers for the hospital, and to assess feature importance of the models. The participants will also learn how to address a specific problem encountered when using NPS status as a target variable. In particular, the difference in scaling between the features and the target variable causes a low statistical fit of the various models. This problem is addressed by adding an additional feature to the model which considers subgroups of patients with common scoring patterns. Next to the analysis on the level of the hospital group, the participants will also go more into detail in this case study. More specifically, they will examine whether different patient groups have other drivers for their NPS. For this purpose, the participants will also explore unsupervised learning by making use of clustering techniques.
Kaffee kostuum: A dilemma in retail financials
(2020) Boute, Robert; Van Mieghem, Jan
John Dong, the founder and CEO of Kaffee Kostuum, was puzzled. He had executed his business plan down to the smallest detail. His company had realized tremendous growth in only five years, topping his target of €1 million1 in revenue by the end of this fiscal year. But somehow, his business was more cash-intensive than expected. The return on sales was less than 6%. Dong examined, once more, the options provided by a team of summer intern MBA students and wondered how to proceed.
IT strategy for growth at Fagron
(2020) Viaene, Stijn; De Coninck, Ben
The case takes us back to March 2010, when Fagron - a multinational pharmaceutical company focusing on speciality pharma - underwent a strategic transformation to turn the company into a worldwide, scalable organisation. In the case, we follow the newly-appointed Chief Information Officer, Rene Clavaux, who had been asked to lead the Information Management department. As a non-traditional, innovation-driven IT professional, Rene was put in charge of a department that had always been viewed as subordinate to the rest of the organisation. At the Executive Committee meeting of March 2010, he was expected to outline a clear IT strategy to support Fagron's growth, starting with a clear mission statement for the IM department.

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