Vermont Teddy Bear Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Summary

The case illustrates the importance and value of Information systems in running and maintaining a business which is purely dependent on E-commerce.The case discusses the deadlock facedbyBob Stenlz, chief information technology officer, who joined the company inNovember 2009. Heproposed and devised such solutions that could improve the supply chain of the company, minimize the effect of discrepancyon the system and improve the experience of thecustomer. Themain problem Bob has to deal with is choosing the right project to overcome the discrepancies while staying under the prescribed budget and also making it acceptable for the CEO and otherboard of directors.

Since the company has recently faced an economic downturn, it is not in a favorable position to dispense huge investments to hire a new costly software which isacurrentnecessity. Moreover. Bob doesn’t have a lot of time to come to a final decision as the new season of sale,Mother’s Day, is just around the corner,. In addition to the above problem, the secondary problem that Bob has to deal with, is the right positioning of the product and right marketing strategy.

So,in order to deal with the issues, thecompany should outsource its functions temporarily in the coming peak sale season, while in the meantime, extract the data from the middlewareand employ new Supply chain optimization software to deal with further future operational and functional issues.Moreover, the operations and channels of the product are diverse, the company should build an in-house IT system.A database to rightly integrate the needs of the business into the system,it will be cost effective and will also engrave right knowledgeforpreparinganaccurateplatform to serve the need of the business.

Vermont Teddy Bear Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Background

The company Vermont Teddy Bear has to manage its business operations and functions in the competitive market through thestrong integration of IT system in the organization.VTB developed a mix of homegrown applicationsthat integrates into the main hub called the middleware.In addition, thecompany has a strong skilled team, which has been working with VTBfor more than fouryears and is considered a valuable asset to the company.These employeeshave a lot of information and data stored within their minds and hence offer a competitive advantage to the company.

However, under such circumstances, the IT system of VTBis not properly established, which created seasonal issues in maintaining orders and data of the customer. Moreover, due to the absenceof the IT System, the company is unable to gather data from the customers which could be used further in future to identify and forecast the trends in themarket.

Also, the case depicts the distribution and market channel strategy ofVTB.The. company used 4 Channels (retail, mail, Phone and Web) to connect with customers and manage the data generated from all these sources separately but integrate them through middleware.

In order to deal with and manage the IT system of the organization, Steltz hired Bob to manage the data from middleware to correctly gauge and analyze the buying behaviors inseasonalsales and to predict the next purchase.Since middleware IT system was undocumented, it becomes complicated for Bob to extract the customer’s data in a short periodbeforethe next season of sales arrives.................

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