This week's assignment is the analysis of a business case (attached). These cases are reflective of actual business decisions in modern-day organizations. As we strive to enhance our analytical, decision-making, and writing skills, the objective of this assignment is to strengthen your knowledge of this week's material through the application of the topics to an actual scenario. As the ability to assess your knowledge and understanding of this material is paramount to the successful completion of this assignment, please ensure that the deliverable that you submit is reflective of this knowledge, and demonstrates the appropriate level of depth of analysis and strength of positions.The case is attached.

This assignment should only be completed AFTER you have thoroughly read and reviewed this week's assigned readings AND you have thoroughly read and reviewed the assignment instructions and criteria in the assignment grading rubric. As you develop your response throughout the week, be sure to continually review the instructions and grading rubric to ensure that your response takes ALL the included criteria into consideration.

Your assignment response should be submitted in a single document with the response for each case clearly and separately delineated within the same document. Your responses to each question within the case MUST be clearly numbered.The minimum word count for this assignment is 1000.

ASSIGNMENT

To fully complete this case assignment, please read and analyze the assigned case. Be sure to speak in OB language throughout to reflect your knowledge of the terminology and concepts covered this week. Your responsemust be numbered as outlined below, and provide the following:

1. Situation

In this section of the case analysis, you will focus on identifying situational aspects that have led to the situation being reported in the case.You are to explain the situation in Organizational Behavior terms specific to this week's textbook material.These aspects should include relevant context, people-related, and organizational factors that have contributed to the current situation. Creating this profile relies on your understanding and application of key concepts, frameworks, and theories contained in the text and other course materials. Please note that the focus of this is to highlight the OB related issues; however, it is understood that other management-related issues may also contribute to the situation. This section MUST explain the situation using terminology and related material from this week's textbook readings. Remember to cite appropriately.

2. Problem

The situational profile leads to the identification of the major problem in the case. For example, the case may frame the problem as personality and attitude, but the underlying OB problem may relate to organizational structure. Thus, you must analyze the situation deeper to uncover the foundational OB problem. In a case, there may be several problems; however, there is onlyone MAINproblem. All the other factors that appear to be problems are symptoms of the main problem. In this section, you will identify theONEmain problem and explain why it represents that main OB problem in this case.The problem MUST be stated in OB terms, reflecting an OB concept from this week's textbook readings.Include specific examples from the case, textbook, and external sources to support your position. Be clear in your statement of the problem.

3. Case Question(s)

Identify the specific questions that must be addressed in order to solve the central problem identified. Think of what you would need to know in order to make a decision on how to solve the problem you have identified.Please note that these questions MUST be related to the problem that you have identifiedand you must explain why an answer to each question is necessary to solve the problem. What information do you have to know to solve the problem? Questions unrelated to solving the problem or those that are general and not specific to your problem will not meet these criteria. Consider internal and external factors that may have influenced the current situation, whether mentioned in the case or not. Think about the functional information required in order to accurately address the central problem. List each question and explain individually why each question is pivotal to solving the identified problem. Be clear and specific in your answers.

4. Alternative "Solutions" (3)

Present three separate and independent courses of action that could be enacted to solve the problem. For EACH alternative, be sure to explain the course of action, the organizational actors and resources required to complete, the benefits and risks of said action, and how/why the action could potentially solve the problem. Each action MUST solve the specific problem identified, and be independent of the others.Make your case with the support of internal and external sources.Number each alternative solution as 4a, 4b, 4c, etc.

5. Recommend

Identify and recommend theONEsolution out of those identified in item 4 above that is most tenable. You may not offer a combination of the alternatives; only ONE of the alternatives can be selected. Provide evidence to argue in favor of the chosen solution, explaining why this solution is the most tenable compared to the others, and is most appropriate to solve the problem identified. Assume you are presenting your idea to the organizational decision-makers; you want and need their agreement and support. Present apersuasive argumentas to why this solution is the best solution for the problem, including support from course material, the field of OB, and other relevant factors as support for your argument. OB language must be used. Thoroughly support your position using internal and external sources.

6. Prediction

Briefly predict and paint a picture of what the situation looks like AFTER the implementation of your recommended solution. How would the situation as outlined in your response to number one (above) change? How does the organizational experience change for the actors involved? Please note this is not a conclusion; it is a prediction of what the outcome will be and how the situation will be different after your recommendation is implemented.

CASE STUDY:

S_EATTLE(WA), N_OVEMBER 2014. With barely two weeks' worth of cash left in the company's bankaccount and10newpeopleonthepayroll, CharlotteWhitmorestared nervouslyather computer screen in the newly designed Seattle office. Launched in 2009, Analytics Pros (AP) was a consultancy aimed at giving global brands the most accurate picture of their digital landscape. In particular, AP analyzed every interaction an online customer experienced with the brand's website, mobile apps, marketing efforts and any other touchpoints. The firm primarily leveraged the leading software platform Google Analytics 360 Suite, part of the Google Marketing Platform, to generate insights to help its customers gain a better understanding of their own customers' journeys, from marketing acquisition andpurchasethroughtoretentionandloyalty.

WhenAPstarted,itsstrategywascrystalclear .Fiveyearslater,thecompany wasteetering on the brink of bankruptcy, with 30 employees and some 150 clients depending on its survival. What happened? Scaling up the business proved a lot more challenging than anticipated. To speed up growth, it moved from organic to acquisitive growth, a proposition that proved more complicated to deliver on than expected. In August 2014, Charlotte met the founder of a creative agency that shared AP's ''entrepreneurial'' attitude and drive, not to mention a strong cultural fit. A merger was quickly agreed upon, giving AP the ability to co-sell analytics and creative services to its clients, a novel proposition in the industry and quite possibly a game changer. But the costs of the merger became apparent sooner than its intended synergies, quickly making the deal financially unsustainable and shifting the focusfromscalingupandintegrationtosurvival.Atthispoint,itwasunclearifAPwasstillin a position to pull the deal through and stay cash-flow positive. But getting out of the dealno longerseemedfeasible. QuestionsswirledinCharlotte'shead:Shouldshefocusherenergy on finding fresh money for the firm? Could she be the problem? Would it make sense to recruit a new professional to take over as CEO? How do you even conduct a search like that? Charlotte took a deep breath. She had to make some hard choices, and she needed todoitstraightaway.Procrastinationwasnotavalidoption.

Benoit Leleux is Stefan Schmidheiny Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at IMD, Lausanne , Switzerland.

Charlotte Whitmore is CEO at Wisdomist, Seatlle, Washington, USA.

Natalia Ligai is Head of Network Sourcing, NetworkStrategy at Takeda,Zurich, Switzerland.

Theofanis Manolikas is Principal at BlueMatterConsulting, Zurich, Switzerland.

Genesis of Analytics Pros Seattle

Charlotte and Caleb were in their early 20s, newly married and with their first baby on the way when they decided to start Analytics Pros in February 2009. Charlotte had previously been practicing as a pediatric oncology nurse when she had a life-changing accident. In summer 2008, she fell 15 feet off a ladder and shattered both her arms and skull. After her recovery, she was unable to return to work and decided to pursue something entrepreneurial that would allow her to work flexibly.

Caleb for his part was the director of search marketing and web analytics at a creative agency in Seattle. He loved his work, especially the analytics part. As the agency grew, its focus began to shift away from growing the internal analytics team and Caleb realized their futures were starting to diverge. For him, web analytics was the future, and the landscape was ripe for companies to gain competitive advantage through improved digital understanding. Caleb had developed a reputation as a leading expert in web analytics software, so it seemed to make sense to start a consultancy to help people use web analytics tools to boost corporate performance.

You can maybe make a living, but a consultancy won't scale. And, the economy right now is not looking good.

Charlotte's dad, Wall Street securities analyst, 2009.

The young couple were both fired up. The initial vision was conservative: building something that could support their little family and maybe a handful of others by doing something they loved. Work-life balance was of the essence. The plan was to leverage Caleb's analytics expertise to help anyone who needed assistance with web analytics, in particular other analytics partners and agencies, and small and medium-sized businesses. Charlotte would manage the finances, strategic relationships, and the people side of the business. Their fundamental beliefs were summarized in a short statement (Exhibit 1).

On Caleb's last day at work, the news broke that Microsoft was making its first-ever mass layoffs due to economic conditions1. Caleb's manager stopped by his desk and whispered, "Youknow,youcanstillstay! "Itwasago/no-gomoment: ithadnotdawnedonhimjusthow badatimeitwastoleaveastable, well-payingjob.

The following week the two newly minted entrepreneurs did what any freshly unemployed couple would consider: they went on vacation to Hawaii using half of the two weeks' vacation time they had banked up. Once at the beach, they hatched a business model that they believed could sustain their family. By serving four clients each month on a retainer basis, they could make a good living and achieve a decent work-life balance. During the trip, they incorporated the company under the name Analytics Pros, signed client #1 and agreed on the name of their second child (still in-utero).

Big data: the industry

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the problem is I don't know which half.

John Wannamaker, a "pioneer in marketing" [2].

Traditional advertisingwasperceived aswoefullyinefficient.Forthemostpart,mediabuys- even with a coherent strategy and high demographic indexations - never reached the intendedcustomer.Therewaslimitedcontrol overtiming,i.e.theadswererarely presented to people ready to make the purchase. For example, a traditional media advertising company working for a company selling hats would identify TV shows, radio programs, magazines andoutdoorlocation smorelikelytohaveahigherdensity ofhat-wearingpeople to promote the company's products. So, even the best media buy would only reach people whoworehats,notnecessarilypeopleconsideringbuyingtheirfirsthatorthosereadyto

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buyanewone.Itwouldcertainly nottargetpeoplesearchingactively forhatsontheirdigital device.

Furthermore, advertising agencies managed primarily large accounts, i.e. enormous advertising budgets of big brands. These agencies were effectively the gatekeepers of the advertising industry. If a company wanted to launch a brand or grow an existing one, it wouldhavetoadvertise.Inordertodoso,itwouldhavetoworkwithanagency notonlyfor the creative part (designing the ads) but also to buy media across the fragmented media landscape. There was no single go-to place where a company could purchase advertising toreachanentire countrydirectlyonitsown.

Digital threw a wrench into the traditional advertising business model. As people spent more and more of their time online, advertisers had to follow. It was only in 2012 that digital advertising spend, like search, social media, online video and display ads, surpassed spending on print (magazines and newspapers), and in 2016 that digital spending eclipsed traditional TV advertising [3] Digital media allowed advertisers to directly buy media and increase the level of ad precision while measuring directly and in real-time ad views, purchase decisions and payments. Agencies struggled to adapt to the change, and tech companies like Google, Facebook and others thrived. The situation changed from running an ad that would reach people who mightwant something to digitally targeting only those who want that something and are ready to buy one, through search engine advertising.

However, as powerful as the new technologies were, adoption was slowed by companies struggling to understand the performance of their advertising spend, as they lacked the capabilities to use these latest technologies on the billions of data points that could now be collected. Web analytics software solutions were still very expensive, and the talent to operate them was even less accessible.

In themeantime,theriseof pay-per-click search engine advertisingputa new emphasisonmeasuring marketing spend. Google quickly recognized thatsimply sending betteradvertising traffictoa websitewas notnecessarily goingtogenerate more sales- success was alsodependenton the website designand thecustomer's journeyto getthere. Improving advertising effectiveness required enhancingthewebsites, and forthat moreconsumer insights were necessary. These insights couldonly be deliveredwithsophisticated webanalytics software measuring realuserbehaviors and quality factorsfrom thestartof thevisitthroughto the endoutcome (i.e. reading content, contactinga firm, makinga purchase, etc.) along with accuratelytyingthis behaviorback to theadvertising driving traffictoit.

Google'smoveintowebanalyticswashighlyanticipatedbutinearly2005itprecipitatedthe movement by taking a shortcut and acquiring Urchin Software Company, the makers of Urchin Web analytics software. The product line was rebranded as Google's Web analytics software.

Analytics pros' business model

Ifsomeonecomestoyoursite,wecanwatchthemscrolldown,seehowfartheyscroll,howtheir mouse moves around, if they try and click on something, whether or not that click has a hyperlink. Maybe something on your website looks like it's clickable. Maybe your potential customer tries to click on it, they're surprised, they immediately go back - that's not what they're looking for. Maybe they're scrolling all around, looking for something and struggling to find it. They'relookinginthefooter,orintheheader.Stillnotfound.Well,wecanhelpyouanalyze your websiteforthesatisfactionofyourcustomer.

Charlotte, in a discussion with a Fortune 500 client.

Leveraging billions of data points from customer interactions would allow finer tailoring of their online shopping experiences. Reality though was that just a few companies were realizing this opportunity to the fullest.

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CharlotteandCaleb wereconfidentthey could developa newconsultancythat would helpclients reducethefigurative distancetotheir online customers using digitalanalytics(refertoExhibit2fora descriptionofthebusiness model). They woulduse andresellthe mostadvancedUrchinandGooglewebanalyticssoftwareandservices. Contrarytomany existingresellers, APwouldnotdiscountthesoftwarelicensesbutinstead bundleina generoushelping ofservices.Asanticipated,theall-in package provedattractivetobuyers and, since manyoftheservices purchased actuallywentunclaimed, resultedinhigher overalloperatingmargins. Duringthefirst threeyearsofoperations,thesepackageswereakeyrevenue sourceforthefirm.

The second revenue stream came from pre-paid blocks of service hours; most work was sold on an hourly basis and not on a fixed-bid or value basis (refer toExhibit 3for the service offering). Larger blocks of time purchased led to higher discounts on the per-hour rate. This pricing model proved convenient for clients as the "pain" associated with procuring a budget and worrying about approvals only occurred once at the outset. Once the firm had acquired the "service credit," requests could simply be processed against it without incurring additional scrutiny and grueling budget approvals. The model was clearly enticing for working capital purposes, with the client paying upfront for work to be delivered later. But the approach also required a careful tracking of billable time since it would otherwise be easy to overspend or understaff projects.

Take-off and engine change mid-flight [.. .]

We have this total obsession with brands and going after the kind of fun brands that we would want to buy from.

Caleb

Charlotte and Caleb survived the first year of operations. They were able to recover their costs and secured mostly small to medium-sized businesses, including some advertising agencies that hired them for training purposes. Some of these companies later grew into AP's competitors, a learning experience but not discouraging. The entrepreneur couple were confident and enjoying their new life, their 18-month-old daughter and now 6-month- old son. The year 2010 would be the year when things would take off.

Caleb was CEO and Charlotte managed the operational business. In reality, as often with startups, everyone was doing everything. Despite fierce competition from more than 20 boutique consultancies, AP was able to add two key accounts to its client roster, namely, GoProandProvidenceHealthSystems,alargeregional healthcareandinsurance provider.

The addition of these two big brands contributed significantly to AP's revenue growth of 300% and enabled the company to hire three full-time employees during 2010. Thrilled by theseearlywins,Charlotte andCalebconcludedthatthekeytosuccess waslargestrategic brands. With these two prestigious accounts under their belt, other blockbuster brands wouldalsowanttosignon,especiallyiftheystayed lean,flexibleandinnovative.

One method they used convincingly during the period was A/B testing. This method enabled companies to look at how one attribute affected every subsequent step on a website, including the ultimate purchase decision.

One client questioned a video on their initial web-interface that was making people run away, instead of motivating them to stay on the website. With A/B testing, customers would randomly be directed either to a webpage with the initial video or one with a standard screen and a photo. For both scenarios, their subsequent behavior would be tracked. People directed to the video would indeed be more likely to abandon the page quickly, hypothesis being most were looking at the website during working hours. A video with sound could be distractive and drive the user to close the window immediately. However, a more complete analysis of the behaviors showed that the people exposed to the initial video, while more likely to abandon their shopping trips, were also more likely to fill and purchase their shopping cart [.. .]

Charlotte

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Theapproachworked. In2011,AP'soriginaldigital offeringhelpedwinStarbucks,Princess Cruises and other household-name brands as clients. With these new revenue streams, Charlotte & Caleb decided to improve their cost structure (and personal lifestyles) and relocate their business headquarters from Seattle to the rural town of Bend, OR. The location was ideal to hone Charlotte and Caleb's dream of a better work-life balance, including lots of skiing. Unfortunately, Charlotte soon discovered that this resulted in a struggle to retain AP's five full-time employees and recruit new employees. Also, both entrepreneurs had to travel more and had less time with the family. Work-life balance dreams wereadreamofthepast.

During the year, Google released a "premium" version of its free Google Analytics service on a Software-as-a-Service subscription. The improved version was redesigned for enterprise needs. Both the software subscription and the essential services were included in a one-year minimum contract. The service would be sold directly by Google and its network of authorized resellers who, when reselling, would be responsible for providing the essential services. Google offered the reseller a 50% margin on the manufacturer's suggested retail price, i.e. the price Google would sell the solution for directly. The reseller itself was able to bill the end customer whatever was contracted for, e.g. just the software and services or as part of a larger package.

The new offering sounded attractive to the entrepreneurs as it would fit perfectly with their business model. Unfortunately, when it launched, they did not qualify as resellers because of concerns about their ability to serve large accounts.

An even greater challenge came in early 2012 when, with only 30 days' notice, Google announced it was discontinuing the legacy Urchin software product line, AP's core business. Charlotte and Caleb were shocked. Urchin Software sales accounted for nearly 50% of their revenues in 2011, the remainder coming from various consulting services as well as software and services for the free version of Google Analytics. This sounded like a potentially fatal blow for the company. Services could still be added, but with no new software updates or versions coming out and no access to the premium Google Analytics software, AP could soon be out of business.

Business challenges turned into heated arguments, first in the office but then at home, and back to the office. Baby number four was on the way and it was clear that they had to rethink their business model and reposition the company quickly.

First, they relocated the business headquarters back to Seattle, with space for up to 20 people. Second, recruitment was accelerated and reached 12 full-time employees plus several contractors by the end of the year. Third, they launched their own self-branded conference series called "BEST Practices for Google Analytics." Finally, they rebuilt the business case around Google's new premium service, leveraging their unconventional but successful "service bundling" approach.

Their efforts paid off, and Google gave them the go-ahead to become an official reseller, with one major condition: they would have to sell one annual premium contract within 90 days of joining the reseller program or pay for one full subscription at wholesale cost, a costthatthecompany couldnotbear.

Rebound and growth

The approach was risky since it could damage the client relationship if Google for some reason backed out at the last minute from executing the reseller contract. However, signing thereseller contractfirstwasnotanoption.AfirstPremium customerwasfoundandsigned a contract with AP. Once received but before being counter-signed and executed by AP, the contract with Google was signed and executed too. AP became a Google Analytics Premiumreseller andexecuteditscontractwiththefirstnewpremiumcustomerthesame

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day. The approach worked. To prove a point to Google, AP proceeded to sell five more contracts in its first quarter as a reseller, more than all other resellers combined during the same time period.

Thereisnothinglikebeingtoldyouaretoosmall ,youwon'tsucceed, toreallymakeyouwantto showeveryonejusthowbigyoucanbe.

Charlotte

In 2013, the company grew to be the second largest Google Analytics Premium reseller, added marquee brands to Google's platform such as Yelp, Redfin, About.com, Wacom Technologies and others.

APwasinthegameandtrying towin.Salesgrowthcontinued atafastclip,making itthe#2 company in terms of the number of contracts. The BEST practices conference generated more opportunities than the company was able to serve. The strategy of putting services first, going after large and recognizable brands, and growing revenue as quickly as possible enabled the company to end the year with 20 full-time employees and double its revenues.

It also rapidly exposed fundamental limitations. The company had once again outgrown its officespace, forcinganothermove.Thenewspacewouldneedtobeabletoaccommodate the planned growth for at least five years. AP's core asset was knowledge and expertise delivery, both human-capital intensive. Qualified human-capital for web analytics was still rare. Almost one employee per month had to be added, with each requiring onboarding and training, taking time away from client delivery and antagonizing the firm's cash-flow generationabilities.Therewasnosysteminplacetoscaleexpert staffknowledgeatapace equivalent to clients andrevenues.

This started to show in employees' stress levels and the quality of work delivered. Caleb's relationship with the technical staff deteriorated. He believed "people should learn on their own, like I did," rather than building systems for internal development. Unfortunately, most employees could not reliably develop their own expert skills. Caleb started to distrust the work done by his team and to do more of the work by himself, not only depriving the employees of learning opportunities but also creating an unsustainable level of work for himself. Charlotte sensed the issues and tried to compensate for Caleb's retrenchment, spending more time in the office to alleviate the tensions but in effect causing frictions between the two entrepreneurs.

Changingtheguardandanewstrategicdirection

While we had gained a broad base of corporate clients with whom we had developed deep relationships, we struggled to expand revenues beyond the core analytics services we offered. Weestimated thatforeverydollarspentonanalytics,theywouldspendtenoncreativeservices. Wethoughtwecouldsellthese creativeservicestoourclients usingourstrong relationshipsand an analytics-based pitch using the client's own data. While many billion-dollar agencies had triedandfailedtomergedatanerdsandcreatives,andwewerecrazyenough tobelievethatour littleentrepreneurialindependentfirmcouldactually doit.

Charlotte

Entering 2014, the company had again doubled its revenues and increased the size of its team by 50%-30% FTEs. Charlotte and Caleb decided it would make sense for Caleb to step down from the CEO role, which Charlotte would assume. The change in roles would help them both personally as well as the company, as Charlotte's leadership and people skills were becoming more and more critical to the firm's growth. While in theory it all made a lot of sense, Caleb found letting go of the CEO role much harder than anticipated, adding a new dimension of stress to their relationship both as a couple and as professional partners.

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Charlotte knew that she would not be able to fix the relationship instantly, nor the fact that she was only seeing her children during the weekend in the office while she was working. Shefeltdeepinside thatthecompany wasonthedoorstepofanothermajorboutofgrowth. In early August 2014, she met with the founder of a creative agency she had worked with before. The firm shared AP's "entrepreneurial" attitude and drive, not to mention a strong cultural fit. What else was needed to agree on a merger? The timing was right too, with the big third and fourth quarters just around the corner. AP would be able to co-sell analytics and creative services to its clients by early fall and sales would materialize as of Q4. But howcould theymergetheirrespectiveteams?

Merger discussions began almost immediately and in under two weeks a stock merger was agreed with very little legal oversight. The verbally agreed plan was to merge the creative agency with AP. The relative equity weights were based on the size of the forecasted in- yearrevenue ofbothfirms, withatargetof$5mforAPand$1millionforthecreative firm.By mid-August, Charlotte moved all the creative firm's employees to AP's payroll, despite no signed dealdocuments.

However, by early September, major strategic differences emerged between Caleb and Charlotte again, this time over the rationale for the merger. In Caleb's eyes, AP was buying the creative firm. This new setup enabled AP to sell design, development andcreative strategy driven by smart data and insights to large clients. The rule of thumb was that for every dollar spent on analytics, ten were spent on creative services. Charlotte, for her part, saw the deal as a real "merger" that would create an analytics-driven creative agency, something entirely new in the industry, not a "creative-first" or a "data-first" entity. The argument soon heated up as to which company should be the real "survivor" and drive the brand and strategy. A "creative-first" approach would put the creative director front and center, coming up with design ideas and, through an iterative process with the client, deciding which one was best. In a "data-first" approach, data would be analyzed to determine what new designs needed to be incorporated. The creative director would consider the data insights to design new options. These options would be run through live A/B testing where they would be shown to a subset of users, and response data would be collected and analyzed. The final decision would be based on what the data said was best, not on a person's opinion of what they liked or thought looked best.

To make things worse, Charlotte and Caleb also disagreed on the combined company name. Charlotte and the creative agency's founder believed a new name for the combined firm was needed to represent a fundamentally new offering to the market space, a data- driven creative approach. Caleb could not agree less: the DNA of AP was and had always been data and analytics, now augmented by creative capabilities. How would clients perceive Analytics Pros if the focus changed from analytics to creative?

The issues were never fully resolved, with the partners agreeing to disagree. The original name survived for lack of a more powerful alternative.

November 2014: a new cliff hanger [.. .]

The anticipated sales boost from adding the creatives never materialized. What did show up though, fast and furious, was the cash flow burden of the added headcount to Analytics Pros' payroll. To make matters worse, the new employees were working on winning new "creative-only" clients under their brand, not bringing the new revenue streams over to AP, while the assumption had been that the accrued revenues would be brought into AP once the merger had been completed.

By the end of October, it became clear that AP was about to run out of cash due to payroll load, no new revenue streams, heavy bills for the construction of the new joint office, and a six-week delay on a large payment from a new client based in Japan [4]. By early November2014,withjusttwoweeksofcashleftinthetill, thecompanyhadaburnratethat

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was clearly not sustainable and parties in the merger were still fighting every step of the way.

For Charlotte, this was again make-or-break decision time. Back in 2009, everything had seemed simple. Five years later the company was on the brink of implosion. More than 30 people, most with spouses and children, depended on her for a job and clear direction.She couldnotjustletAPjumpoffthecliff.Shehadtofindawaytopullthedealthrough, quickly, mergetheteamsandstart leveragingthesynergies.

To stop the immediate cash bleed, a number of options could be envisioned. She could push some of her accounts receivables by offering special conditions for speedypayments. She could also delay some payables, even though most were salaries and other social security coverages. But to stop the bleeding more decisively, should she also consider backingoutofthedealaltogether?Atthispoint, thesituationmadenosense:shecouldnot keep paying the newly added workforce if revenues were not accounted for in AP's books. However, how could that be done without damaging the company or creating negative side effects withclients?

Charlotte's head was spinning. Maybe she was the one who needed to let go. Maybe the company needed a new, more experienced CEO at this point. Over the years, she and Caleb had invested all their energy in Analytics Pros, putting it before their family and themselves. Firing herself and bringing in a new CEO would clearly demonstrate her own managerial failure but it would be better than total financial failure. But would it even be possibletobringingabetterCEO?Howwouldsheevenconnect withoneandattracthimor her to this difficultsituation?

Herthoughtsweregoingroundandround. Whatwasthebestoption? ThistimeGoogleand dataanalyticswouldnotbeabletoprovidetheanswer.

Notes

1. Whitmore, Charlotte, "Firing yourself as CEO at Analytics Pros."https://medium.com/@ SoundFinancialG/firing-yourself-as-ceo-charlotte-whitmore-of-analytics-pros-f67ba051856d
2. "Sad Day for Microsoft: 5,000 Laid Off, Earnings and Revenues Down." Techcrunch, accessed June 2018 at:https://techcrunch.com/2009/01/22/sad-day-for-microsoft-5000-laid-off-earnings- and-revenues-down/
3. American merchant and religious, civic and political figure, considered by some to be a proponent ofadvertising,July11,1838-December12,1922.
4. "YouTube highlights problems with digital advertising." Accessed July 2018 at:www.economist. com/business/2017/03/30/youtube-highlights-problems-with-digital-advertising
5. The delay was due mainly to a tax treaty certificate not being processed by the US Internal RevenueServiceinatimelymanner.