Conflicts. Negotiations. Leadership. Motivation. Power. Attitude. Communication.
Your favorite words? The time has come for the transition from concepts to solutions.
Let this be your port-key to the mind of an HR manager. Move your coins prudently
for every step could be your last.
Stage 1:
· The Participants will be required to send the solution of the case study as a soft
copy on or before 15th January 2008 latest by 23:59 hours.
· Only 5 teams will be short-listed and will be intimated through email.
Stage 2:
The results will be announced on 18th January 2008 and the selected candidates
will be invited for a presentation to be held on February 2nd and 3rd 2008 at IFMR,
Chennai campus.
CASE
“For, By and Of the Employee”
It is Thursday, 24th Jan 2008.It is 4:15 PM on the clock. R Krishnan, Vice President -
Human Resource of New Day Software Solutions (NDSS), is deep in thought in his
office on the 4th floor of NDSS House, the corporate office of the company in
Bangalore. He has just returned from a week long business trip to the US and is now
probing over the matter related to relocating the NDSS engineers to the new
subsidiary NDSS Germany which was known as Deutsche Technologies before
acquisition. At 5:00 PM, he has a conference call with his German counterpart, Mr.
Ralz Bernhard, Chief Operations Officer- NDSS Germany, on the issues related to
Manpower requirement and allocation. He has the profiles of the engineers of NDSS
who are most likely to be sent to Germany. He has done his homework, but he is still
unsure about the adequacy of the information in hand. At 4:30 PM, his secretary, Ms.
Reena Sharma hands over the report sent by Ralz describing the job profiles of
engineers at NDSS Germany.
At Home
New Day Software Solutions is an IT Company, which provides IT solutions across
the communications value chain and hence aids clients to accelerate product
development life cycle. New Day offers a unique combination of research and
development consultancy, wireless software products and software services, and
works with Network OEMs, Semiconductor Vendors, Terminal Device OEMs and
Operators across the world. New Day`s customer profile includes Global Fortune 500
and Tier 1 companies in these segments. Established in 1999, New day employs
over 4,500 people. It operates from state-of-the-art research and development
centers in Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad & Chennai in India, Frankfurt (Germany)
and Stockholm (Sweden). New day is also present in Shanghai (China), Ottawa
(Canada), Nice (France), Guildford (UK) and Boston, Dallas, New York & Santa
Clara (USA).
New day is SEI CMM Level 5 certified and its solutions are ISO 9001:2000, ISO
27001 and TL 9000 certified. New Day’s proprietary quality management system
strengthens its business offerings and ensures client satisfaction. New Day’s
commitment to environment is highlighted by its ISO 14001 certification. Hence
excellence in service and its global presence makes NDSS the preferred company
by its clients. The innovative spirit of NDSS can be seen in its people policies. It has
the concept of “For By and Of the Employee” which is unique and well known as the
best in the industry. The HR policies make NDSS the most preferred company to
work for. NDSS was ranked the best company to work for in India for the year 2007
in a survey carried out by a leading HR consultancy.
German Subsidiary
Established in 1995, NDSS Germany is a global company which works on wireless
technology. The core business areas are hardware, software and mechanical design
and testing related to these areas. The company improves the competitiveness of its
customers among their rivals by accelerating their R&D and testing processes to
achieve high quality products. Currently NDSS Germany employs 400 people. Being
such a small company there is no separate HR department.
The Interview
CEO of NDSS Germany Lars Lau had a press interview at 10:30 AM on Thursday,
28th January 2008, pertaining to the company’s acquisition by an Indian firm.
Excerpts from the interview are as follows:
Interviewer: Why Deutsche Technologies was keen on getting acquired?
CEO: “I would like to give you a brief background of the company to answer this
question. We were directing the senior management of the company on how the
company should run. But the operations team was too busy to look at anything else
other than their work. Between 2001 and 2002, NDSS Germany lost some
acquisition opportunities to German competitors. Moreover plenty of design work
was moving from Germany to China and India. We did not want to face direct price
competition. Our aim was to globalize, but with reasonable risk and that was the only
way for growth and security of our business.”
Interviewer: Switch, the leading mobile handset maker contributes as much as 85
per cent of Deutsche Technologies annual revenues. What was its reaction to the
acquisition?
CEO: “Interestingly, Switch had already asked us to enter India, China or the US. It
clearly said, “To be our good partner in R&D you have to establish yourselves in one
of those places.”
Interviewer: Why didn’t you start your own company in India?
CEO: To start something in India you have two alternatives: Organic Growth or
Acquisition. Both of them require a lot of money and this might also prove risky for
business at home. To please Switch, our main customer, we decided to be acquired.
Interviewer: Why NDSS?
CEO: My team and I were really impressed with the low employee strength of NDSS
as compared to other bidders. Moreover it shared Deutsche Technologies’ values.
We thought if we choose other bidders offering a higher price and who were also
bigger in size, we would lose control on what we were doing. NDSS and Deutsche
Technologies together complement each other. We had hardware design skills that
NDSS did not boast of and we were also interested in NDSS’s semiconductor clients.
Interviewer: European and Asian countries have many cultural differences. Wasn’t
this an area of concern during the integration process?
CEO: There are many differences as such. One point of difference that emerged was
the attrition rate in Germany which is less than 2 per cent. People stick to their jobs
in Software industry for 10 to 20 years, which is not the case in India. As far as
salaries are concerned, in Germany, unions negotiate amongst themselves and the
salary hike is then based upon the agreed contract which is reviewed once in 3 to 4
years. In India there is a salary increment of 15 percent annually across the board.
From the functioning point of view, bureaucracy is rampant in India. We, at Germany,
have learnt to be effective, and not have buffers in our system. We now learn that in
India you have buffers in terms of employees and other resources. These are a few
important issues that came to my mind.
The Situation
The acquisition process started in June 2007. Financial integration is over and
technical integration is in progress. Both the parties intend to close the entire
process of integration, including Human Resource integration by March 2008.
Questions
Ralz and Krishnan are on call at 5 PM IST. Help them to solve the issues faced by
the company.
1. What additional information is required for case to be complete and to solve the
issues?
2. Based on the assumptions and additional information that you provide for question
1 and also taking into consideration the policy and cultural differences of both the
firms suggest the best way to deal with the situation from an HR perspective.
Guidelines:
· The event is open to all students currently enrolled in a Business school.
· Maximum of three students are allowed per team and all should be from the
same Institution.
· No participant can be part of more than one team.
· There can be multiple entries from the same college.
· The solution of the case study should be in Times New Roman font, Size 12 with
1.5 line spacing. The word limit for the case solution is 3000 words.
· The front page of the document should contain the Name of the Case Study,
Names of the participants, their mobile number and email ids. The identity of the
participants should not be revealed in any other part of the document.
· The solution should be mailed to abhyudaya2008@gmail.com with the word
document file labeled as 5Ps_college name_team name
· Judgment of the panel will be final and binding.
· Organizers are not responsible for non-receipt of email submission due to the
failure of email network providers before deadline
Your favorite words? The time has come for the transition from concepts to solutions.
Let this be your port-key to the mind of an HR manager. Move your coins prudently
for every step could be your last.
Stage 1:
· The Participants will be required to send the solution of the case study as a soft
copy on or before 15th January 2008 latest by 23:59 hours.
· Only 5 teams will be short-listed and will be intimated through email.
Stage 2:
The results will be announced on 18th January 2008 and the selected candidates
will be invited for a presentation to be held on February 2nd and 3rd 2008 at IFMR,
Chennai campus.
CASE
“For, By and Of the Employee”
It is Thursday, 24th Jan 2008.It is 4:15 PM on the clock. R Krishnan, Vice President -
Human Resource of New Day Software Solutions (NDSS), is deep in thought in his
office on the 4th floor of NDSS House, the corporate office of the company in
Bangalore. He has just returned from a week long business trip to the US and is now
probing over the matter related to relocating the NDSS engineers to the new
subsidiary NDSS Germany which was known as Deutsche Technologies before
acquisition. At 5:00 PM, he has a conference call with his German counterpart, Mr.
Ralz Bernhard, Chief Operations Officer- NDSS Germany, on the issues related to
Manpower requirement and allocation. He has the profiles of the engineers of NDSS
who are most likely to be sent to Germany. He has done his homework, but he is still
unsure about the adequacy of the information in hand. At 4:30 PM, his secretary, Ms.
Reena Sharma hands over the report sent by Ralz describing the job profiles of
engineers at NDSS Germany.
At Home
New Day Software Solutions is an IT Company, which provides IT solutions across
the communications value chain and hence aids clients to accelerate product
development life cycle. New Day offers a unique combination of research and
development consultancy, wireless software products and software services, and
works with Network OEMs, Semiconductor Vendors, Terminal Device OEMs and
Operators across the world. New Day`s customer profile includes Global Fortune 500
and Tier 1 companies in these segments. Established in 1999, New day employs
over 4,500 people. It operates from state-of-the-art research and development
centers in Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad & Chennai in India, Frankfurt (Germany)
and Stockholm (Sweden). New day is also present in Shanghai (China), Ottawa
(Canada), Nice (France), Guildford (UK) and Boston, Dallas, New York & Santa
Clara (USA).
New day is SEI CMM Level 5 certified and its solutions are ISO 9001:2000, ISO
27001 and TL 9000 certified. New Day’s proprietary quality management system
strengthens its business offerings and ensures client satisfaction. New Day’s
commitment to environment is highlighted by its ISO 14001 certification. Hence
excellence in service and its global presence makes NDSS the preferred company
by its clients. The innovative spirit of NDSS can be seen in its people policies. It has
the concept of “For By and Of the Employee” which is unique and well known as the
best in the industry. The HR policies make NDSS the most preferred company to
work for. NDSS was ranked the best company to work for in India for the year 2007
in a survey carried out by a leading HR consultancy.
German Subsidiary
Established in 1995, NDSS Germany is a global company which works on wireless
technology. The core business areas are hardware, software and mechanical design
and testing related to these areas. The company improves the competitiveness of its
customers among their rivals by accelerating their R&D and testing processes to
achieve high quality products. Currently NDSS Germany employs 400 people. Being
such a small company there is no separate HR department.
The Interview
CEO of NDSS Germany Lars Lau had a press interview at 10:30 AM on Thursday,
28th January 2008, pertaining to the company’s acquisition by an Indian firm.
Excerpts from the interview are as follows:
Interviewer: Why Deutsche Technologies was keen on getting acquired?
CEO: “I would like to give you a brief background of the company to answer this
question. We were directing the senior management of the company on how the
company should run. But the operations team was too busy to look at anything else
other than their work. Between 2001 and 2002, NDSS Germany lost some
acquisition opportunities to German competitors. Moreover plenty of design work
was moving from Germany to China and India. We did not want to face direct price
competition. Our aim was to globalize, but with reasonable risk and that was the only
way for growth and security of our business.”
Interviewer: Switch, the leading mobile handset maker contributes as much as 85
per cent of Deutsche Technologies annual revenues. What was its reaction to the
acquisition?
CEO: “Interestingly, Switch had already asked us to enter India, China or the US. It
clearly said, “To be our good partner in R&D you have to establish yourselves in one
of those places.”
Interviewer: Why didn’t you start your own company in India?
CEO: To start something in India you have two alternatives: Organic Growth or
Acquisition. Both of them require a lot of money and this might also prove risky for
business at home. To please Switch, our main customer, we decided to be acquired.
Interviewer: Why NDSS?
CEO: My team and I were really impressed with the low employee strength of NDSS
as compared to other bidders. Moreover it shared Deutsche Technologies’ values.
We thought if we choose other bidders offering a higher price and who were also
bigger in size, we would lose control on what we were doing. NDSS and Deutsche
Technologies together complement each other. We had hardware design skills that
NDSS did not boast of and we were also interested in NDSS’s semiconductor clients.
Interviewer: European and Asian countries have many cultural differences. Wasn’t
this an area of concern during the integration process?
CEO: There are many differences as such. One point of difference that emerged was
the attrition rate in Germany which is less than 2 per cent. People stick to their jobs
in Software industry for 10 to 20 years, which is not the case in India. As far as
salaries are concerned, in Germany, unions negotiate amongst themselves and the
salary hike is then based upon the agreed contract which is reviewed once in 3 to 4
years. In India there is a salary increment of 15 percent annually across the board.
From the functioning point of view, bureaucracy is rampant in India. We, at Germany,
have learnt to be effective, and not have buffers in our system. We now learn that in
India you have buffers in terms of employees and other resources. These are a few
important issues that came to my mind.
The Situation
The acquisition process started in June 2007. Financial integration is over and
technical integration is in progress. Both the parties intend to close the entire
process of integration, including Human Resource integration by March 2008.
Questions
Ralz and Krishnan are on call at 5 PM IST. Help them to solve the issues faced by
the company.
1. What additional information is required for case to be complete and to solve the
issues?
2. Based on the assumptions and additional information that you provide for question
1 and also taking into consideration the policy and cultural differences of both the
firms suggest the best way to deal with the situation from an HR perspective.
Guidelines:
· The event is open to all students currently enrolled in a Business school.
· Maximum of three students are allowed per team and all should be from the
same Institution.
· No participant can be part of more than one team.
· There can be multiple entries from the same college.
· The solution of the case study should be in Times New Roman font, Size 12 with
1.5 line spacing. The word limit for the case solution is 3000 words.
· The front page of the document should contain the Name of the Case Study,
Names of the participants, their mobile number and email ids. The identity of the
participants should not be revealed in any other part of the document.
· The solution should be mailed to abhyudaya2008@gmail.com with the word
document file labeled as 5Ps_college name_team name
· Judgment of the panel will be final and binding.
· Organizers are not responsible for non-receipt of email submission due to the
failure of email network providers before deadline
