Atomic Company Case Study

The company started off producing 20,000 units of mountain bikes. We did not change the production quantity. Last year our forecast sales were 24,000 when we only sold 19,866; therefore we thought it would be best to leave production at 20,000 bikes. Having excess inventory, we concluded that 20,000 units should be enough considering our quality has not changed and our advertising will not increase the sales dramatically. Although we had the choice to produce as much as 30,000 units, we felt as though we did not have sufficient money to increase production. We were interested in allocating the money towards marketing as opposed to production. We realized that without awareness, no matter how many units we make, sales would be inefficient.

MTC initially needed to obtain substantial investment capital due to two main factors: a research-heavy industry, and the need to create most of the markets for its products. Although the founders' goal was to become a major manufacturing company, they did estimate that the company would need $50 million in capital before it would become self-sufficient. Their initial financing model was to first recruit a superior technical team, use that to attract additional equity investment and development funding from interested corporations, and then develop manufacturing capabilities. Commercial sales began 2.5 years after inception, and MTC is nearing the break-even point in 1990.

As stated above this does have its disadvantages as decisions can be slow and staff can become to involved in the managing of the business.

The company believes that new initiatives are necessary to bolster unit volume and especially reorders. I believe Advanced Materials lacks coherent strategy for Nundies to effectively appraise the financial worth of product service offerings. The managers must reduce the spending on order getting costs because they cannot increase their output to the capped limit of 100,000 liners. Other issues are whether or not the distribution approach currently used by the company will help reach profitability, and whether or not the company effectively reaches the target market.

1. What are the key elements of Silver Ships’ strategy? Which of the five generic strategies is the company pursuing?

Aerial created a well-known company established back in the 1900’s. During World War II, the company played a major role in providing pocket knives, bayonets, and trench knives for the armed services. Nevertheless, providing a unique characteristic into its product Aerial switched over to become the Midwest’s largest salon suppliers. In creating and evolving into the largest salon supplier, many functions of the business improved while some created several issues. Becoming a well-established salon supplier was only one step, but maintaining the data and storage was another. Aerial quickly established that the shipping and storage areas were accumulating more time and space than they ever predicted. Recognizing the issues and figuring out a game planned played a major role in the company.

The first problem develops when JPF considers the issue of sales force size. Bob Powell notes in the case that he doesn’t believe that a SVP can develop effective relationships with more than 30 IMOs. This suggests a workload approach to growing the sales force. However, the decision to compensate SVPs on the basis of 100 percent commission based on sales in their territories means that the SVPs are reluctant to see “their” territories subdivided. It is human nature to want to keep as much of

Nucleon is a small biotechnology start-up with a very promising potential product (CRP-1), which is also the first product that Nucleon is planning to go into the clinic market. Nucleon has reached to human clinical trials phase with its product and it has no manufacturing facilities that satisfy the guidelines for these clinical trials and testing. Nucleon is on the verge of making a critical choice of manufacturing strategy, which will affect Nucleon’s survival in the intense competition in the long haul. Nucleon management is aware of the facts that they have a limited budget to start with, the financial environment in biotechnology is rapidly changing and establishing the safety and efficacy of products like CRP-1 is

The Company has embarked on an innovative and breakthrough product: Quartz. Yet, the sales momentum has not shifted in its favor. There were several issues and problems that might have been causing such a problem. Exhibit (3) summarizes the main issues and causes of the Quartz lack of initial sales. Being in a niche market, Quartz needs to sell more than 100 units per day to breakthrough the mainstream, which is the ultimate goal of the Company.

One last issue ACME is facing involves the integration of demand and supply. ACME business strategy has followed a traditional approach, selling product through a giant telecommunications monopoly (ATC). While the telecommunications environment has changed, they have not reacted proactively. They seem to lack the development of a supply chain capacity that matches all the newly created demand coming from mass merchant buyers and department stores.

This alternative does not need traders to intervene in sales representatives’ jobs but the company has to make sure that both departments are able to identify prospective customers and make existing customers still trust in the company’s performance.

Appendix B clearly shows, that from a sales representative’s point of view it does not pay to build a team. Assuming that a successful sales representative, who is in the company for about 2 years (meaning that his own sales are still on the rise of 20% annually and not declining, because he is shorter than 5 years in the company), acquires one sales representative in his circle of friends, it can be seen that already in their first month, let alone year together, it diminishes the sales of the leader. The more members he accepts in his team, the greater are his losses from his own revenue and hence, his profit. This is

Atom Staffing is the speediest and simplest staffing solution! What do we do? We fill vacancies and job orders in the speediest and simplest way. For whom do we do it? We turn staffing and employment problems into solutions between current students, recent graduates, and all employers who are willing to accept young talent.

Paying dividends will reduce the available funds of the company but is a way to increase shareholder value. Increasing or decreasing of DPR spells out the standing of the company to its shareholders. Reduction or not giving dividends for a period will reduce AFN but will mean that the company is struggling to provide enough profit. Shareholders may see this as a signal that further investments for the company are riskier.

A third challenge facing Mr. Heal and Mr. Thomas is the issue of a sales force that is properly setup to accommodate the strategic alliance. On page six of the case, we learn that the HP-Microsoft and IBM-Cisco alliances both utilized dedicated sales staff. We also learn that in Europe, “HP used a specialized, dedicated sales force for selling HP services bundled with Cisco products.” (Page 6) In fact, Elias Stephan, who was then HP services group’s global alliance director, noted that “In Europe, the relationship with the field is much better.” (Page 6) If both HP and Cisco were used to utilizing dedicated sales staff with strategic alliances, what incentive was there for both firms to break the trend when dealing with an HP-Cisco alliance?