Emtec: Culture, Acquisitions, and Co-innovation as the Upstream Future for Midmarket Firms
Munir Mandviwalla, Larry Dignan, Laurel Miller, Bertrand Guillotin
Abstract
In 2022, Emtec Inc., an information technology and digital services firm located in Florida, was at a critical juncture. The company had seen immense success as a hardware reseller and managed services provider to government agencies and midmarket companies in the US. But Dinesh Desai, the founder and former chief executive officer, was concerned about decreasing profit margins and intensifying competition in the current reseller and managed services business. Low barriers to entry were adding new entrants and competition on pricing as well as affecting the ability to acquire and keep talent. Furthermore, the pace of technological change influencing newer offerings such as cloud and custom development was creating significant uncertainty. For Desai, the question came down to the following: Stay the course and build upon established services or pivot to a different mix of offerings? The pressure to chart a new path was very important, given the uncertainty about the future and the cutthroat price-based competition in the market.
Ivey Publishing, W33454, February 13, 2024
IBM Newco: A High-Stakes Spinoff Amid a Battle of the Tech Titans
Bertrand Guillotin, Theodore L. Hill, Munir Mandviwalla, Julianne Sellin
Abstract
Two months after his January 1, 2021, appointment as chief executive officer (CEO) of NewCo, the code name for the soon-to-be spun off managed infrastructure services portion of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), Martin Schroeter was faced with the daunting prospect of creating a distinct strategy and identity for a huge company in a very short time frame. Announced on October 8, 2020, by IBM’s CEO, Arvind Krishna, NewCo was a high-stakes strategic move to “create value through focus” and “increased agility to focus on evolving customer needs and delivery excellence.” Once spun off, NewCo would immediately become the world’s leading managed infrastructure services provider, with US$19 billion in revenue, 90,000 employees, and 4,600 customers, including more than 75 per cent of the Fortune 100 across 115 countries. With the spinoff expected to be complete by the end of 2021, Schroeter had only a few months to craft a strategy, recruit a leadership team, define a new identity for the company, ensure a “strong strategic relationship” with IBM, and bring thousands of customers and tens of thousands of employees into NewCo. Success required many pieces to come together rapidly and seamlessly. Schroeter was unsure how best to address these challenges. All he knew was that failure was not an option and that time was short.
Ivey Publishing, W33970-PDF-ENG, September 04, 2023
Meta: Digitally Transforming Workforce Management at Scale and with Agility
Munir Mandviwalla, Laurel Miller, Larry Dignan
Abstract
In March 2020, as COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Atish Banerjea, the chief information officer of Meta Platforms Inc. (Meta) was tasked during a high-stakes senior management meeting with moving the company online. Banerjea knew that the future growth of Meta was dependent on talent and digitally enabling workers. He wondered how he was going to digitize Meta’s office-centric culture, in which almost all recruitment, onboarding, and workforce management activities relied on in-person engagement and processes. Until that point, all of Meta’s focus—and Banerjea’s mandate—had been to enhance in-person work. Banerjea assembled a team to rewire Meta’s onboarding and employee experience processes. They would have to quickly lead Meta’s pivot to remote onboarding and remote work around the world at scale.
Ivey Publishing, W33549_P, August 08, 2023
Alexion: Digital Co-Innovation Accelerating the Application of Analytics
Larry Dignan, Laurel Miller, Munir Mandviwalla
Abstract
Alexion Pharmaceutical Inc. (Alexion), founded in 1992, was a biotechnology company that focused on therapeutics for rare diseases. As the company grew, it sought to scale operations to serve a growing number of patients and their families worldwide. The search began for an innovative, forward-thinking, strategic information technology leader to spearhead the effort. In 2015, George Llado was hired as senior vice-president and chief information officer. Llado realized that big data and analytics could play a unique transformational role in identifying customers to accelerate sales growth and realize the mission to save lives. He wondered if analytics enabled through cloud computing, a new kind of data platform, and betting on technology start-ups could accelerate patient identification. When he joined Alexion, Llado faced a unique set of related challenges, including (a) applying analytics in a highly regulated industry, (b) rapidly creating a new type of integrated data platform, (c) managing dysfunctional vendor relationships, and (d) balancing the role of data and analytics in relation to the traditional sales force approach in pharmaceutical firms.
Ivey Publishing, W28560, February 16, 2023
Mandviwalla, M, and Palmer, J. (2008). The globalization of Wyeth. Ivey Publishing.