Question

This assignment challenges students to formulate a professional response to in-depth issues contained in a real-life Video Business Case. Students will act as an independent professional business consultant reporting to senior managers of the company concerned. Students are expected to provide informed and robust advice to this business client. The video below is provided by Ernst and Young company. It refers to the issues faced by an organisation in the Maritime Safety Industry. Ernst and Young is required to solve these issues.

As students, we are appointed as consultants. Firstly, we should identify the issue clearly and the cause. Secondly,we need to propose alternatives. Thirdly, we should do a decision criteria. We should then recommend the solutions accordingly. And do an ethical issue recognition.

Here is the case.

ISSUE

So, the issue we had to resolve involved a private sector organization who operate in the maritime safety industry. They are a well-established private company and provide global services to a number of different organizations. The issue arose due to a point of inflection that they arrived at as an organization.

Historically over the last 30 to 40 years they'd established a range of services which were well known and well trusted and well regarded by the organization's they interacted with. As a company they were very satisfied with their financial performance they had a very strong reputation and brand in the market.

What they had realized a number of years ago, was that they couldn't remain static a company and they needed to change the way they deliver that particular service to their clients so the rate of change outside of their industry insular competitors was accelerating far beyond their own internal rate of change.

So, at the risk of standing still they realized they had to transform their organization so they undertook this and began this transformation about three years prior to I guess us getting involved and the issue arose that they had probably three different points of inflection where they effectively had to stop that transformation which was occurring and restarted and this was causing a number of concerns to the board and to the company itself.

So there was financial concerns there was regulatory concerns, there was reputational risk at stake and also there was the sustainability of the services as it impacted Maritime Safety. So through this process they realized that the structure they had in place at that time was not going to allow them to successfully deliver this transformation so they engaged us at that point in time to do a health check and review of what had occurred today and give an independent perspective on whether that transformation was actually going to be successful and provide a set of recommendations around what changes they should make and what options they should consider regarding affecting or impacting that transformation within the organization

ISSUE BACKGROUND

So the company size was probably what we describe as a small to medium sized organization so maybe 40 to 50 employees strong. Their board was and is consisted of a number of large enterprise type organizations and the reason they engaged us as a firm was to come in and provide that intermediary layer between the organization itself who were delivering the transformation pretty much in-house and themselves as independent board members to gave them a view of the success likely success on of that transformation occurring.

So a bit more background and context around the transformation was it had a number of different elements to it one was organizational two was cultural and three was technical or technology-based so the company itself as I said earlier was primarily in maritime safety but in essence they were also delivering a technology service to their clients

CAUSE

the issue was primarily caused by the organization itself not having an independent perspective on the likely success are indeed the path to success to effect a transformation. it also had little independent oversight over how it could have actually transformed or changed that transformation through these various inflection points that it went through. there was also a degree of organizational capability which was missing and identified but hadn't been independently verified through the previous two to three-year pass. so the company itself continued to provide the services in parallel with changing and transform himself internally. so one of the significant issues that we identified was that there was no burning platform or desire to change because it was operating quite successfully in his traditional way. the same people that were providing that traditional Swedish services were also trying to effect a transformation. so there was no actual completion date or reason to ever successfully complete a transformation because the company was actually operating very successfully true delivering its ongoing suite of service causes that we identified through I guess that initial review we did of the company was that the approach to addressing the issues that encountered historically was to bring in in-house some additional capability in the same areas so they continued to feel like exasperate some of the issues through bringing in similar capability and similar services and functions without ever separating and bringing in a new perspective our new approach so the issues if you like were continuous they weren't evolving they weren't being addressed or identified and no root cause analysis are indeed kind of path forward was being identified by the organization through that that analysis so the board were quite concerned that he couldn't see the end to this transformation or project they were continuing to be successful but they were recognizing that they were being outpaced potentially by some of their competitors and they also identify that there was a lack of innovation of strategy that was being put in place by the company and the reputational risk and commercial risk was increasing on a monthly basis and hence they involved us as an organization to come in and do that independent review and then identify what some of those different options to proceed were for them moving forward.

Answer 1

ISSUE

The main issue involves here is that organisation does not have an independent perspective about the organisation.the following other issues are also notable-

1)number of people involve in the organization is 30-40.It reduces firm ability to have new ideas in the organization.

2)Robust transformations are not taking place.Mere sticking on the traditional approach is not helping organization to achieve its goal.

SOLUTION

1)appoint an independent director who has expertise in maritime safety industry.

2)regular review of the organization functioning by an outside reviewer to make sure organization is doing what it should do to transform the business.

3)appoint an outsider expert who can suggest necesssary actions for improvement.

DECISSION

The organization needs a new approach in its functioning.This can be done only by taking imprompt action to change the way the organization is working till now.Hiring fresh talent from outside would help the organization to overcome the traditional way of doing business.However organization is dealing in a sensitive industry so due care should be taken while appointing such an expert.so that it wont harm the environment and society.