BUSINESS CONSULTING STUDY

What kind of products shoud I chose?

2008-07-16T22:01:00.000-07:00

Notice:

1. Please refer the original case description and analysis in the "Vault Guide to the Case Interview, p 82".
2. All right reserved by Joe Hao.

Situation

A new restaurant owner came for suggestions of selecting hand dryer . Initial research suggests three options: paper towels, roller towels and hot air dryers.

Brain Storm

The analysis in the "Vault Guide to the Case Interview" is enriched, so I will not repeatedly discuss it. Such case can be easily expendable to various situation. For example: "What kind of Texas Holdem table should I choose for my casino?" "Which shampoo should I choose for my new hotel? ". Here I will try to build a analytic frame for such kind of case.

What makes Intel success?

2008-07-15T21:23:00.000-07:00

Notice:

1. Please refer the original case description and analysis in the "Vault Guide to the Case Interview, p 89".
2. All right reserved by Joe Hao.

Situation

This would happen to a person with high-tech background with big possibility. Interviewer want to evaluate your understanding of such area and the ability of analyzing in broad view.

Brain Storm

To analyze a company in broad strategic terms, fully understanding the feature of its industry is necessary. Intel blongs to the hihg tech industry. Formally, high tech (from wiki) is defined as the technology that is at the cutting edge—the most advanced technology currently available. But I prefer to regard high tech is the area which charicterizes itself by consistently changing new technology.

SWOT would be a appropriate tool for this case.

Analysis

I do think the analysis on "Vault Guide to the Case Interview" is good enough for this case. I summarize as follows:

1. Strengths -> Opportunities:
* Stay abreast of technology chages, keep R&D headstart.
Have the primary core competency of its area.
* Successfully brand its products -> Enhance the size of marketing; Cross-promotion by its parterner and customers.
* Majority percent of market -> Economies of scale: cost ad

2. Weaknesses -> Threats
*Taking the advantages of reducing cost, relized by simply copying Intel's products, Intel's competitors are well-equipped to compete in price sensive, lower-end markets. One terrible thing for Intel is, the major source of growth in microchip market lower-end, price sensive market.

Reduce Cost for a bank

2008-07-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

Notice:

1. Please refer the original case description and analysis in the "Vault Guide to the Case Interview, p 79".
2. All right reserved by Joe Hao.

Situation

A customer came to ask you to enhance their bank operating efficiency. He hope you and your fellow consultants to look at the non-interest, non-personnel expense in order to cut costs.

Items

Operating efficiency: A ratio of the actual output of a piece of equipment, department, or plant as compared to the planned or standard output. (Formula: actual output of a period x 100 / maximum rated output).

Full value procurement (FVP): An analysis of non-interest, non-personnel expense is actually a evaluation of FVP. FVP is the degree of expense optimization on common purchase and services. The measurement of FVP is the amount of reduced expense which is used to spend on common purchase and services.

Brain Storm

There is no formal frame work to analyze the FVP. As per the definition of FVP, finding the products and services which are shared among all business functions is the point.

Analysis

I would like to drill down this case by asking following questions:

1. I would like to have a general idea of this "bulge bracket". Following points are the ones I will pay more attentions:
* How is the general financial performance?
* How much is the general revenue and cost? (Well, this question seems not that professional, someone helps me?)
* How is their market? - How many branches? How many states do they cover?
* Is there any big upcoming events, like M&A, market expansion, ad promotion, investment on infrastructure?

2. After grab a general idea of back current status, I am going to analyze if the high cost is triggered by recent events, for example, M&A, market expansion or even in a lawsuit.

3. If the high cost is not triggered by current events, I would take an assumption of common purchases and service in a bank based on my common sense. (Remember, first tell your interviewee that you are going to make assumptions. Second, ask for confirmation after doing so )

4. After understanding of major business functions, purchase and products shared among all business units, suggestion can be made with reasonable explanation. Four major suggestion are listed:
* Cut off unnecessary or non-profitable branches, departments, plants, machines. Reduce the number of employees.
* Using high tech digit to cut cost. For example, company could use collective intelligence tools and cooperative system in order to save common office products and travel fee. On-line marketing and promotion would be a efficient and cheap way for bank.
* Out source some business functions, say, customer service, information center, website design, document management.
* Minimize the number of products and service providers.

Why waffle market is soaring?

2008-07-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

Notice:
1.Please refer the original case description and analysis in the "Vault Guide to the Case Interview, p 63".
2. All right reserved by Joe Hao.

Situation: A client came to the you (consultant) to ask the reason of a significant jump of their waffle sales in the last two quarters.

My initial brain storm:
Based on my common sense, food market seems not to be the one which may have unexpected jump or down, but there are still some exceptions in my mind:
Q1. If the the waffle market is weather depended, i.e. is eating more waffles in a extreme hot or cold weather counts a possibility?
Q2. Did this company have M&A actions in the last months?
Q3. Did the waffle industry change significantly, i.e. is there any waffle company get bankrupted or give up their waffle business?
Q4. Did our client enter any new markets which contributed significantly?
Q5. Does eating waffle become a fashion?
Q6. Is there any natural disaster in the next quarters and people regrate food in case. (OK, I know this reason is probably good for waffle, but I may suitable for food like water. )
Q7. Did they change they promotion strategy, for example, if do they let Michal Jackson to be their spokesman. (This may works 20 years ago...)
Q8. How about price?
Q9. Did they change the component of their waffle?
Q10. Did the client make a strategic change of their marketing or sales (Well, this question is a little big and vague, but I think it would be a good question to be start with)?

Ok, above unfixed issues are just part of all issues which can effect the sales. Someone may argue my "crazy common sense - food market is a relatively steady-going market". Well, I would say, most market are affected by these factors, however, how much these factors can affect is the point. I will not break down this issue this time. I just randomly list the staffs in my mind, of course, in a really messy order. I will try to break the situation down using a more formal and professional way.

Analytic Tool:
Four Ps model (Price, position/place, product, promotion) is a analytic tool to analyze the marketing of products/services, so it would be a appropriate for this case.

Because I can not impersonate the interviewer, I just simply list my questions according to the 4Ps model. You can find the problem and the then suggest according.

A. Position (Usually from a big point of view, analyze the market as a whole)
1. Has the overall market grown recently?
2. Q1,Q2,Q3,Q4
3. Did the sales of other breakfast foods of our own breakfast products increase as well?(Yeah, it may happen with a big possibility that the sales jump of waffle are triggered by some other products, for example, people may found some ice cream tastes fantastic with waffle...)
4. How about other waffle companies' sale performance? Did they also have a sales jump?
5. Is there any political policy for the waffle market

B. Promotion
I believe just simply ask the interviewer if the client change their promotion strategy in any way.
Of course, you can specify like this:
1. Has company promoted other related products?
2. Are there some famous person who declare their favor of our waffle?
3. Did we starte to put our ads on popular TV programs?
4. Did we change our ads?
...
My immature understanding of promotion analysis is: promotion generally has two points:
(1). Impress the current customers by prices, quality, unique feature etc.
(2). Develop new market and new customers.

C. Price
1. Has our client lowered prices recently?
2. Have other waffle manufacturers raised their price?
3. Have we raised price?

D. Product
1. Did we change the raw material suppliers?
2. Did the suppliers change their offering staff?
3. Did we change the recipe of our waffle, is the ingredient the same?
4. Did we still use the same assembly line?
5. Did the waffle's shape, taste, color, texture change?

Well, hopefully this helps.

Joe Hao