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Case Study - National Business Management Services ( Contemporary Small Business Cases Dr. Linda Liddicoat (ed) 2010. NMIT Press Ltd) National Business Management Services (NBMS) was a state-owned enterprise providing training courses to government departments. In a restructuring exercise it was decided to sell it. It was felt that there was significant intellectual property in the training materials which could be commercialised and offered more widely. Three former staff have joined the new enterprise and a further two staff members have been recruited. Robbie – he is the former director of the state-owned enterprise and he has contributed 50% of the capital needed to buy the company. He is a 40-year-old Australian and he worked for the previous state-owned organisation for 8 years. He is the CEO of the new company. He has been financially stretched by his purchase of shares in the organisation and cannot afford the business to fail. He is finding the transition to a commercial operation challenging – more business than they could cope with used to flow in from all over government departments. Now he has to prepare tenders and ‘schmooze’ with potential clients – he hates networking and doesn’t see why he has a Marketing manager if he has to do this stuff. Kere is a 35-year-old Maori. She has worked for the state-owned company for 7 years as a trainer and has significant experience in developing and delivering training material here and with other private training organisations. She is especially knowledgeable in Maori culture and it is felt that she will be valuable when it comes to building relationships with the Maori community. She has a 25% share of the new company and is the Training Operations Manager. She too can ill-afford to lose the money she has invested in the company. She is not sure if it is because of this higher pressure but she notes that she and Robbie are ‘locking horns’ more now than they ever did in the previous enterprise. Nick is a 28-year-old Kiwi of European descent. He works in training delivery and held a position with the old enterprise for 3 years. He is ambitious and saw himself moving up the ladder in the Civil Service. In fact, he only joined such a small business because Robbie persuaded him it would be good for his career and Robbie could see a big role for him in the future. Nick is confident and believes he has some great, fresh ideas. He would like to do more training development work. He is confident he could do what Kere does. In fact, he has an eye on her role. Paula is a 48-year-old Kiwi of European descent. She did not work for the old enterprise and was recruited from a post of Marketing Manager for a private training organisation. She will handle all the Marketing for the new enterprise. She didn’t know any of the others before she joined and is slightly nervous about the lack of commercial nous in her new colleagues, but particularly in Robbie. She is trying to build a good relationship with him, and impress upon him the importance of Marketing. She also knows that there are valuable Maori contracts in the marketplace and she can’t understand why Kere isn’t more proactive in following up with her personal contacts here. Peter plays golf with Robbie and Kere’s husband and he used to work in another government department alongside Kere’s husband. He was persuaded to put in the final 25% of capital that was required. He is also the Finance Director. He has been giving everyone a sound reality check about spending and the need for frugality until contracts are secured. He feels like ‘bad cop’ all the time and he is now realising why people say you shouldn’t mix business and pleasure – friendships are beginning to be strained. Tensions have been rising since the business was established. The first battle lines were drawn over the name of the new business. Robbie wanted to call it ‘Mana Training & Development Ltd, because he felt it would help them appeal to the lucrative Maori market. Kere had real concerns over the name – she argued that in Maori ‘mana’ is not a learned skill as Robbie seems to think, but it is about respect and honour and it can be taken away – it is not something that people can gain through training. They took a vote and Robbie, Nick and Peter voted for ‘Mana Training and Development’ and so this is the name of the company. Kere felt let down by her friend Peter and can’t understand how the vote went against her. Kere thinks they should be tapping in to the new e-learning market and she also thinks they should update their product offerings to include executive coaching and mentoring – this is a particularly lucrative sector but one with which they are not very familiar yet. She knows it is a risk because it’s a new direction but she has just returned from a training and development conference which confirmed her view that this is where the industry is heading. She has spent a sleepless night after the conference worrying about how to get her proposal on the new direction accepted by the others. 1. Outline the sources of power and who holds them in this organisation. 2. Create an influence map, looking at it from Kere’s perspective. Show the nature of influence relationships between all of the stakeholders. This should reflect the relative importance of each stakeholder and the strength of influence between stakeholders. 3. Critically assess potential influencing options that Kere could adopt in this situation in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. These options should have a clear grounding in influence theory i.e. you must describe the theoretical framework(s) you are using. Select the best way forward for Kere’s situation and give reasons for your answer. APA style Reference,include a full reference section.1,200 words

Resources:? Microsoft® Excel®  "How Netflix Expanded to 190 Countries in 7 Years" from Harvard Business Review Call Center Waiting Time Part 1: Globalization and Information Research  Context:?Companies that perform well in their country of origin usually consider expanding operations in new international markets. Deciding where, how, and when to expand is not an easy task, though.   Many issues need to be considered before crafting an expansion strategy and investing significant resources to this end, including:   the level of demand to be expected for the company’s products/services  presence of local competitors  the regulatory, economic, demographic, and political environments  Carefully researching and analyzing these and other factors can help mitigate the inherent risk associated with an overseas expansion strategy, thus increasing the likelihood of success.  As a data analyst in your company’s business development department, you’ve been tasked with the responsibility of recommending countries for international expansion. You’ll write a report to the company’s executive team with your research, analysis, and recommendations.  Instructions:   Write a 525-word summary covering the following items:  According to the article listed above, what were the most important strategic moves that propelled Netflix’s successful international expansion?  The article mentions investments in big data and analytics as one of the elements accompanying the second phase of overseas expansion. Why was this investment important? What type of information did Netflix derive from the data collected?  According to the article, what is exponential globalization?  Not all international expansion strategies are a resounding success, however. Research an article or video that discusses an instance in which an American company’s expansion efforts in another country failed. According to the article/video you selected, what were the main reasons for this failure? Do you agree with this assessment?  Explain some of the reasons why certain companies’ expansion plans have failed in the past.  Part 2: Hypothesis testing   Context:?Your organization is evaluating the quality of its call center operations. One of the most important metrics in a call center is Time in Queue (TiQ), which is the time a customer has to wait before he/she is serviced by a Customer Service Representative (CSR). If a customer has to wait for too long, he/she is more likely to get discouraged and hang up. Furthermore, customers who have to wait too long in the queue typically report a negative overall experience with the call. You’ve conducted an exhaustive literature review and found that the average TiQ in your industry is 2.5 minutes (150 seconds).  Another important metric is Service Time (ST), also known as Handle Time, which is the time a CSR spends servicing the customer. CSR’s with more experience and deeper knowledge tend to resolve customer calls faster. Companies can improve average ST by providing more training to their CSR’s or even by channeling calls according to area of expertise. Last month your company had an average ST of approximately 3.5 minutes (210 seconds). In an effort to improve this metric, the company has implemented a new protocol that channels calls to CSR’s based on area of expertise. The new protocol (PE) is being tested side-by-side with the traditional (PT) protocol.   Instructions:  Access the Call Center Waiting Time file. Each row in the database corresponds to a different call. The column variables are as follows:  ProtocolType: indicates protocol type, either PT or PE QueueTime: Time in Queue, in seconds ServiceTime: Service Time, in seconds Perform a test of hypothesis to determine whether the average TiQ is lower than the industry standard of 2.5 minutes (150 seconds). Use a significance level of ?=0.05.   Evaluate if the company should allocate more resources to improve its average TiQ.  Perform a test of hypothesis to determine whether the average ST with service protocol PE is lower than with the PT protocol. Use a significance level of ?=0.05.   Assess if the new protocol served its purpose. (Hint: this should be a test of means for 2 independent groups.)