Ned Wicker

CASE FOR ANALYSIS

Ned Wicker

 Ned Wicker is the manger of the systems proposal department (SPD) in the Graubart Electronics Company. The department was organized a year earlier to improve efforts by the company to gain new electronics systems business. Its functions were:

1. to carefully review and evaluate all incoming bid specifications for new electronic systems required by aerospace and others users of each equipment.

2. then decide which of these (if any) would be potentially profitable, and within both the technical and fabrication capabilities of Graubart Electronics; and, finally,

3. prepare the necessary business proposals to win contracts from potential customers.

A graduate electronic engineer, Ned had been a senior proposal analyst with another company when he was hired by Wanda Alinsky, the president of Graubart, to set up the new department. This job coincided with his completion of an MBA degree and it was his fist managerial position. He personally recruited and hired a diverse group of seven highly qualified engineers as systems proposal analysts, most of whom had prior experience with customer requirements in the industry. Although the additional overhead cost would be substantial, the president, Wicker’s boss, knew that mounting a bold strategy to acquire new business was necessary d she was enthusiastic about the newgroup, especially Ned’s aggressive approach in getting things organized and underway.

Since the work of generating and submitting technical proposals to potential customer scan be both costly and time-consuming. Wicker knew the key to his department’s success would be the careful preliminary screening and selection of bid possibilities on which proposals were to be prepared by the group. It was largely for this reason that he built anelite group of professionals to work with him, and he developed a procedure for full participation by the entire group in the RFP (Request for Proposal) selection process. The procedure called...