Case Study:

You are employed as the Finance Manager at Brum Brew, which is afictitiousmedium-sized Craft brewery, based in Birmingham. The company employs 75 staff, and is currently in its 6^th year of operation. Its mission statement is:

'To deliver unparalleled customer experience, placing our customers first, via a collegiate cultural approach. One that focusses its USP on sustainable premium brews sourced only from natural ingredients, to become the UK's 1^st choice purveyor of craft beer'.

Brum Brew's principal shareholder is the Managing Director with an optional employee share scheme recently initiated.

The Managing Director has decided on a strategy of Digital Transformation of the organisation resulting in the recent implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP system (seeMSD link) . This includes Finance Management, Manufacturing and Supply Chain components. By using a Microsoft ERP system solution together with Brum Brew's existing Office 365 suite of tools and apps (seeOffice 365 link), she hopes to eradicate any past and future data compatibility issues across the organisation.

As part of this Digital Transformation, Brum Brew have also recently developed their own website with some basic eCommerce features (a member of Brum Brew's IT team volunteered to develop this). Also, as Brum Brew's Finance Manager you have started exploring Office 365 apps and the use of Power BI (seePower BI link) to create reports and performance dashboards.

This recent expansion into eCommerce has created an increase in product demand but also an increase in Customer Support. Customers, Distributors and Retailers sometimes phone, send emails, post on social media or even arrive on site to try to get a resolution to their query. Different people across the organisation are dealing with the queries resulting in varied responses and different levels of customer service. The queries can range from an order status enquiry, product returns, product suggestions and general feedback. Responsibility for these queries is unclear, there are no consistent policies or processes and some go unanswered.

The Operations Manager is feeling stressed as most customer issues end up being delegated to one of the Operations Team often disrupting productivity.

With a current economic crisis, Brum Brew's Managing Director is determined to meet the increase in demand and customer engagement without increasing labour costs. She is keen on automating Customer Service with the use of 'chat bots', FAQ's (frequently asked questions) on the website, removal of landline phones, ask employees to run apps on their phones, employ artificial intelligence for social media monitoring and customer insights.

The Managing Director is also mindful of data security as recently Brum Brew experienced a breach of their systems. The hacker is believed to be a disgruntled ex-employee that was made redundant after the recent change to Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP implementation but this not been proven.

The Sales Manager, wants Brum Brew to invest in a CRM system and the creation of a small Customer Service team. The Sales Manager has conducted some initial research into CRM's such as MS Dynamics 365 (seeDynamics 365 Customer Service), Monday.com (SeeMonday.com CRM) and Salesforce (seeSalesforce Customer 360) which according to Gartner.com is the leader in this field.

Both the Managing Director and Sales Manager agree that business improvement changes are needed in the area of Customer Relationship Management to support the company's mission statement "to deliver unparalleled customer experience".

Answer all THREEquestions

Question One: Strategic Management

a) As a result of their recent CRM implementation, Brum Brew have started customer profiling and value mapping. Consequently, Brum Brew are keen to further develop their eCommerce Products and Services. You recommend that Brum Brew should map this business model onto the 'Business Model Canvas' (Osterwalder, Pigneur, Papadakos, 2014

i) To support your recommendation, you are required to: Briefly explain a Business Model Canvas and its potential benefits to Brum Brew(13 marks).

ii) As part of your recommendation construct a table example where Column One details all nine elements of the 'Business Model Canvas' with a brief explanation; Column two providesone example (with a brief description) for each of the nine elements that illustrate how Brum Brew will deliver their expanding eCommerce(27

b) Based on their customer insights, Brum Brew are considering offering food/snacks to their product portfolio. You have been asked by the owner of Brum Brew to provide a critique and recommendation of the following strategic approaches to implement this new product strategy:

i)Freewheeling approach: Describe what the approach is, provide an example of the type of organisation that would use this strategy, evaluate it by detailing two advantages and two disadvantages associated with it when applied to Brum Brew's new product strategy; would you recommended this approach for Brum Brew and why or why not?(20 marks).

ii)Rational approach: Describe what the approach is, provide an example of the type of organisation that would use this strategy, evaluate it by detailing two advantages and two disadvantages associated with it when applied to Brum Brew's new product strategy; would you recommended this approach for Brum Brew and why or why not?

iii) Brum Brew have introduced a Management by Objectives (MBO) approach to their CRM Customer Support team. Each team member has been given a personal objective to close customer queries within 24hrs. Identify two advantages, and two disadvantages to this (MBO) approach together with impact to Brum Brew or the Customer.

Question Two: Human Aspects

a)Brum Brew's Managing Director has appointed a new Customer Support Manager.

i) The new Customer Support Manger has asked you for some advice, "should I lead or manage the Customer Support Team?"

Provide an answer, justification and two practical examples

ii) Using Tannenbaum and Schmidt's (1959) 'Continuum of Leadership Behavior', describe how this model, with its associated 3 forces, can help the Customer Support Manager with an appropriate leadership style and solution for each of these three scenarios.

• A customer has reported an allergic reaction to one of the new Brum Brew flavours.
• Customer queries about refunds are answered differently by the new members of the team.
• 50% of Customer queries are received outside of working .

b) Aware that the new CRM system and customer focus will require a degree of cultural change across the organization you are tasked with the following:

i) Aware of Cameron & Quinn's (2011) Organizational Culture Competing Values Framework you have been asked to explain some characteristics of aHierarchy Culture that you recognize across Brum Brew and recommend two practical strategies relevant to Brum Brew that could be incorporated to move towards a moreMarket Culture type.

Question Three: Managing Relationships

a) The new CRM system is driven by the Customer Support Team but corrective actions and resolutions will involve activities fromall departments across Brum Brew. Aware of the impact of this change on Brum Brew's organization, the Managing Director of Brum Brew has tasked you to propose a change management strategy. You decide to use Lewin's (1951) Change Management theories.

i) Construct a Forcefield model that identifies:

Five driving forces for why this change is required and five forces that may restrain this change.

ii) Assess and justify the magnitude of each of therestraining forces. Argue which restraining force you would seek to address first, and why?

iii) Focus on one of the restraining forces identified, and construct a plan using Lewin's (1951) 'Unfreeze, Move, Refreeze' model to detailtwo activities you would recommend at each of thesethree stages to implement change.

b) Recognising that implementing the CRM project required the project manager to work across internal departments as well as external partners, you decide to:

i) Present an argument for the project manager to develop as a boundary spanner (Williams, 2002, 2010) during the next project of eCommerce expansion. Explain a boundary spanner with context to eCommerce expansion and provideonerelevant example activity under the three competencies of a boundary spanner.

c) One of Sales Manager's team has voiced reluctance to support the expansion of eCommerce.

i) The Sales Manager has asked you for some negotiating advice. Identify the eight stages of negotiation and one example action in each stage appropriate to this situation.