Baria Case Solution

Situational Analysis

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The global Spend Analysis industry had experienced relatively rapid growth over the last few years. Spend analysis was once the near-exclusive domain of smaller, specialty solution providers like BPS. However, during the past several years, several large software and consulting firms, including SAP and Accenture, have entered the market, leading to consolidation among smaller firms.

BPS, a publicly traded firm with $95 in annual sales, founded in 1997 to take advantage of the nascent popularity of spend analysis or spend management, and analysis methods and tools, was considered an early mover in the field. BPS helped its customers reduce their procurement costs and improve the performance of their suppliers. The work involves firstly scrutinizing customers' spending categories through a combination of software, data analysis, project management, and consulting. And, then identify the sources of potential savings through initiatives such as supplier consolidation and purchase standardization. Finally, the implementation of procurement and change-management projects to realize those savings.

At present, the Sales Support group's difficulties were having a direct negative impact on the performance of the entire company. Though the company is maintaining constant revenue but its market share and conversion rate are falling, probably because of the disappointing performance of the sales team in attaining new clients and renewing existing ones. The Sales directors feel they do not get the help they need from Sales Support to close new deals, while the Sales Support directors believe they could provide better support by organizing into industry-specific divisions. The increasing competition in the consulting industry and inefficiencies in the sales process at BPS may undermine the company's ability to win new business. The recently hired director of North American Sales Support has to analyze the current process flow for Sales Support and identify the problems facing the sales organization.

Issues: Quantitative analysis, Performance measurement, Competition, Process analysis, Capacity planning, Service management and Scheduling.

Analysis and Solution

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Table 1

We find that in each quarter 1 of the sectors is exceeding the desired utilization level (i.e. >85%). But the sectors are different in all the 4 quarters. Also, at the same time, some sectors are under utilized in each quarter (i.e. <70% utilization). Thus, every time, there is sufficient number of employees but still the deadlines are not met because few of the employees are underutilized.

Recommendation:

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