- Which markets do Isolde and Emanuel target respectively? How do their respective business/revenue models align with their markets?
Isolde is in charge of Siiquent, and they target hospitals and big diagnostic labs’ needs for gene-based diagnosis. They sell service and consumables mainly as their customer love the company’s high level of maintenance support which lower the downtime. - Emanuel is the head of Teomiks, and their target customers are research labs and universities needed for gene-based studies. Teomiks earns from selling machine and can get a high margin on patent-protected technology as their customers doesn’t care that much about money.
- What are the pros and perils of “imposing the structure of a single revenue model” vs. “letting [the company] continue on its flexible way”?
pros
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- Impose a structure and strategy that both businesses could follow
- Resources integration to avoid vicious internal competition, and competition on resources of two business
- Reduce costs by consolidating sales forces and operations
- The patents expired, and Teomik was highly dependent on patent-protected technology. Changing strategy can help them survive and thrive in rigorous competition with others.
perils
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- May impose a great conversion cost and pain in merging resources
- May not be flexible to keep up with a dynamic marketplace
- ignoring employees’ voices that they don’t like to sell service may arise some oppose
- might not be able to differentiate with previous brand image, e.g. Teomiks has a great team of PhD which forms a professional image
- reduce loyalty and retention from previous customers
- Pretend that the CEO has decided the department heads must merge their divisions together. As a star PM assigned to mediate this interaction between department heads, how would you scaffold the discussion to ensure a fair merging process?
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- Note: you are not asked to find a solution, but to find a viable process for finding a solution!
- I would start thinking from their standpoints and think about the situation. “We give customers what they want, we respond to competitors’ initiatives, and we listen to employees for building their business,” said Isolde. These seem reasonable and would be generally agreed upon by the board, I believe. I would start by thinking about why the board and the heads are having the same thoughts but ended up using different approaches. I will have deep conversations with the CEO and also do more research on why and how should they merge the two divisions. And I believe Peter had known it, but somehow he couldn’t directly reply to their questions or concern, instead, he drove away and tried to cut in from another angle. I would prepare more fact-based market research and analysis to answer Isolde and Emanuel’s concerns, and show my understanding of their thoughts — it is easy to think from what we see in front of us. I would try to use statistics to zoom out our picture to review this issue by revenue and other company-wise indexes. In addition, I will try to understand Isolde and Emanuel’s need for the request, see if there is any solution to satisfying both needs at the same time, and try to negotiate between the two. If they still do not buy it, after these fact-based statistics and negotiations, maybe I will start to bring up this conversation to a higher authority and discuss their thoughts and decision.
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