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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 | September 2020 (Revised November 2020)

  Student Success at Georgia State University (A)

  Michael W. Toffel, Robin Mendelson and Julia Kelley

  Georgia State University had developed a reputation for driving student success by nearly doubling its graduation rate for students of all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. It did so while growing its student body and the proportion of Black/African American, low-income, and first-generation students—groups with historically lower postsecondary graduation rates compared to national averages. Georgia State’s Student Success team, led by Tim Renick and Allison Calhoun-Brown, used a data-based approach to deploy micro-grant programs to retain students, implemented predictive analytics to improve student advising, and optimized course sequencing to help students graduate before they exhausted their financial aid. In 2016, they faced a growing “summer melt” problem where nearly 20% of incoming students who committed to attend never actually enrolled at Georgia State—and many never enrolled at any college. At the same time, they wondered how to balance continuing to incrementally improve student success at Georgia State and scaling their efforts to help the many other universities facing similar problems who sought to learn from their experience.

  Keywords: Education; Higher Education; Learning; Curriculum and Courses; Demographics; Diversity; Ethnicity; Income; Race; Leadership; Goals and Objectives; Measurement and Metrics; Operations; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Outcome or Result; Performance; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Evaluation; Service Operations; Performance Improvement; Planning; Strategic Planning; Social Enterprise; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Issues; Wealth and Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Technology; Technology Platform; Education Industry; Atlanta;

  Citation:

  Toffel, Michael W., Robin Mendelson, and Julia Kelley. "Student Success at Georgia State University (A)." Harvard Business School Case 621-006, September 2020. (Revised November 2020.)  View Details

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• Supplement | HBS Case Collection | September 2020 (Revised November 2020)

  Student Success at Georgia State University (B)

  Michael W. Toffel, Robin Mendelson and Julia Kelley

  This is a supplement to the Student Success at Georgia State University (A) case. The (B) case includes the results of a randomized control trial that Georgia State conducted to test education technology start-up AdmitHub’s chatbot solution as a strategy for improving “summer melt” (i.e., applicants confirming that they planned to enroll but then not enrolling).

  Keywords: Education; Higher Education; Learning; Curriculum and Courses; Demographics; Diversity; Ethnicity; Income; Race; Values and Beliefs; Leadership; Goals and Objectives; Measurement and Metrics; Operations; Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Culture; Outcome or Result; Performance; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Evaluation; Performance Improvement; Planning; Strategic Planning; Social Enterprise; Nonprofit Organizations; Social Issues; Wealth and Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Technology; Technology Platform; Education Industry; Atlanta;

  Citation:

  Toffel, Michael W., Robin Mendelson, and Julia Kelley. "Student Success at Georgia State University (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 621-039, September 2020. (Revised November 2020.)  View Details

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