Sales process reengineering at Robin

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The case explores the efforts of Hamilton Mann, Group VP, Global Digital Marketing & Digital Transformation at Thales, to build a sales enablement platform as part of Thales’ larger digital transformation. “ContentFlix” aimed to be a one-stop sales enablement platform bringing together content for presentations and sales pitches and integrating solutions from across the business. Thales’ key account teams were used to operating in silos and via face-to-face interactions. Similarly, marketing and sales were distant and did not work together as effectively and seamlessly as they could. ContentFlix was intended to break down those silos and encourage collaboration between the company’s different businesses and marketing and sales teams. Mann’s team had launched ContentFlix quietly, tackling each implementation challenge as it came, and adoption had been steady. The Covid pandemic changed everything. Enforced lockdowns meant that remote cooperation between units became the only way to do business. The platform’s adoption accelerated beyond Mann’s expectations and continued to grow post-pandemic. The case explores how the team planned the platform, supported its rollout across Thales and continued to build it throughout the pandemic and beyond. The case explores in rich detail the obstacles and challenges as well as the successes Mann and his team face. The case closes with the rise of generative AI (GenAI). The team starts to consider where GenAI could enhance ContentFlix. What possibilities were there to take the platform to its next stage of development?

Terry Burns launched UniMag in 2007 and went on to develop its ecosystem of affiliated companies over several years. As most media were rapidly shifting online, UniMag established its brand as a high-profile magazine with a counter-intuitive focus on high-quality print and journalism. Since then, digitalization has increasingly shaped the media landscape, opening many opportunities for Burns. By 2023 digital activities most effectively drive the business of the many affiliated companies in UniMag’s ecosystem. In contrast, its print magazine sales have stalled, and costs keep growing. Burns and her team must make a strategic decision: What to do and what to stop? Where to perform and where to transform? In the context of a transforming media industry, the case illustrates how to set strategic direction in the face of disruptive forces in order to drive change and open opportunities.

Peter Goldschmidt became the CEO of pharmaceuticals company STADA in 2018. He was a firm believer in culture as a driving force – and a predictor – of organizational performance and competitiveness. A year earlier, two private equity funds had become majority owners of the “old” STADA – essentially a loose, decentralized network of country operations. After taking the helm, Goldschmidt made building a growth culture one of the strategic pillars aimed at transforming the company into a leader in consumer health, global generics and specialty pharma. As a major lever to achieve that vision, the CEO put forward four core values to define the new, aspirational brand of STADA’s culture: agility, entrepreneurship, integrity and “one STADA.” In its quest for agility, resilience and speed, STADA’s leadership recognized the need for an ambitious transformation that would improve collaboration to leverage learning, talent and technology, while centralizing some processes and reducing duplication and waste. Amid the Covid pandemic, in March 2020, STADA reported the highest production output in the group’s 125-year history. By 2022, the company was well on its way to achieving the owners’ growth objectives of becoming a strong, well-run organization. In a short span of five years, between 2018 and 2023, STADA built a platform that should allow the business to scale to five times its current size.