Question

Your company, Acme Computers, is considering outsourcing its customer support activities. Your team has been assigned the job of determining which of 3 companies would best meet the company’s needs. Your company has determined that the maximum yearly contract that they are willing to pay is $1,000,000. Your team has also determined that the factors important to Acme Computer and the weights that the factors should be assigned are “low cost” (weight factor = 4), “familiarity of the company with Acme’s product lines” (weight factor = 8), “number of support lines the company will staff” (weight factor = 6), “fluency of the company’s staff with English” (weight factor = 8), and “demonstrated ability to deal quickly and satisfactorily with customer issues” (weight factor = 3).

You have bids from 3 companies: Anderson Support, which offered a bid of $800,000; Beta Technology, which offered a bid of $950,000 and Calloway Services, which offered a bid of $1,100,000. Your team scores them according to the following table:

CRITERIA	Anderson	Beta	Calloway
Low Cost	5	3	2
Familiarity with Acme Products	5	7	10
# of Support Lines	5	2	3
Fluency of English	6	7	8
Ability to quickly satisfy customers	3	4	4

a.Based on the information given, are you satisfied with the bids that you have received? Why or why not?

b. Use the Kepner-Tregoe technique to determine which company’s bid should be accepted if any. Show your work.

c. Which company should you choose for outsourcing your customer support? Why? Why may you be concerned about going with that company?

Answer 1

a.Based on the information given, are you satisfied with the bids that you have received? Why or why not?

As the bids are nearly competitive and there seems to be a balance in the subject matter knowledge and relevance of the prospective vendors and their quotes hence the received bids seems satisfactory.

A more detailed analysis would be understandable after the through evaluation of the received data in the next section.

b. Use the Kepner-Tregoe technique to determine which company’s bid should be accepted if any. Show your work.

The provided information on the received bids are:

Criteria	Anderson	Beta	Calloway
				Weight factor figures
Low cost	5	3	2
Familiarity with Acme Products	5	7	10
# of Support Lines	5	2	3
Fluency of English	6	7	8
Ability to quickly satisfy customers	3	4	4

Hence we start with the analysis:

In the first step: List threats and opportunities:

For Anderson threats are:

• The cost is highest.
• Familiarity with Acme products is the least.
• Fluency in English is least.
• Ability to satisfy customers is least.

For Anderson opportunities:

• Number of support lines are highest.

For Beta threats are:

• Cost is lower than Anderson but higher than Calloway.
• Somewhat familiar with products.
• Number of support lines are minimum.

For Beta opportunities are:

• Ability to satisfy customers is good.
• Fluency in English is good.

For Calloway threats are:

• Number of support lines is less than Anderson.

For Calloway opportunities are:

• Cost is minimum.
• Product familiarity is highest.
• English fluency is highest.
• Quick customer satisfaction is highest.

c. Which company should you choose for outsourcing your customer support? Why? Why may you be concerned about going with that company?

The outcome of the analysis would be to go forth with Calloway for assigning the assignment.