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• Case | HBS Case Collection | June 2020 (Revised November 2020)

  Vanguard Retail Operations (A)

  Willy C. Shih and Antonio Moreno

  The first two cases in this series are set in the financial services industry, and explore whether it is better for back-office workers to be generalists who provide the flexibility of being able to handle the complete range of transactions that the company faces or specialists who focus on a subset of the overall transaction mix. The objective is to introduce the advantages of demand pooling in reducing the variability associated with the forecasting of highly variable workloads, while also demonstrating the benefits to worker learning and efficiency improvements that can come from specialization.
  
  The case is set at the Retail Investor Group Operations of the Vanguard Group, the mutual funds and ETF giant. Karin Risi, the managing director, is faced with a back-office operation that hasn’t kept up with massive transaction growth, one that is struggling under the weight of mounting client phone call and transaction volumes, client complaints, and buckling employee morale. And worse, the press was taking notice. The (A) case details the complexity in the growing backlog and frames the question of whether they should pursue a specialist model. The (B) case, for distribution in class, details the impact of an initial segmentation of workload into eight categories and poses additional questions for class discussion and analysis.

  Keywords: pooling; generalist model; specialist model; Operations; Service Operations; Management; Financial Services Industry; United States;

  Citation:

  Shih, Willy C., and Antonio Moreno. "Vanguard Retail Operations (A)." Harvard Business School Case 620-104, June 2020. (Revised November 2020.)  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2020

  HP Instant Ink: (Self) Disrupting the Consumer Printing Market

  Elie Ofek, Marco Bertini, Oded Koenigsberg and George Gonzalez

  Seeking to disrupt the consumer printing market (before being disrupted by others), and in response to customer pain points, in 2013 HP Inc. launched an ink replenishment service called Instant Ink, where customers pay a monthly subscription fee based on the number of pages printed. Replenishment cartridges are automatically sent to the customer prior to running out of ink. The service had reached 7.5 million subscribers by mid 2020 and senior management now expected to scale it substantially. Several growth opportunities were being considered, these included: targeting customers with printers enabled to be part of the service but who declined to join in the past; making instant ink the default option when buying a new printer; adjustments to the pricing tiers and other plan components; more extensive marketing efforts to generate awareness; geographical exansion; broadening the service to laser toners; attacking the remote work space; and thinking about ways to bundle additional elements, such as paper and hardware (printers, computers, etc.). A concrete growth plan to make Instant Ink a multi-billion dollar business was needed before the annual Wall Street analyst conference to be held in the fall of 2020.

  Citation:

  Ofek, Elie, Marco Bertini, Oded Koenigsberg, and George Gonzalez. "HP Instant Ink: (Self) Disrupting the Consumer Printing Market." Harvard Business School Case 521-016, November 2020.  View Details

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• Teaching Plan | HBS Case Collection | October 2020

  Merck: COVID-19 Vaccines

  Willy C. Shih

  COVID-19 infections were still climbing across the U.S. and many other parts of the world in September 2020, and it seemed that every time Ken Frazier, the CEO of Merck & Co. consented to an interview in recent months he always seemed to hear the same question, “Where’s Merck?” The company, a leader in the global vaccine business had a low public profile even though it was working assiduously on two vaccine candidates for the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. The U.S. Government had initiated a high profile program—Operation Warp Speed (OWS)—to accelerate the development of vaccines, but Merck was notably absent. Should Merck seek or accept funding from OWS, and what terms might accompany such an agreement?

  Keywords: Health Pandemics; Health Testing and Trials; Innovation and Management; Innovation Strategy; Research and Development; Business Strategy; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States;

  Citation:

  Shih, Willy C. "Merck: COVID-19 Vaccines." Harvard Business School Teaching Plan 621-067, October 2020.  View Details

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