Operations

Executive Summary Baria Planning Solutions (BPS), Inc. was founded in 1997 and is a publically traded firm with $95 million in annual sales. BPS helps its customers reduce procurement costs and improve the performance of their suppliers. The firm uses a combination of software, data analysis, project management and consulting to scrutinize its customers’ spending categories. It identifies sources of potential savings through initiatives such as supplier consolidation, purchase standardization, while implementing procurement and change-management projects to realize those savings. Over the past several years larger competitors such as SAP and Accenture have entered the market, capturing large market shared which caused smaller competitors to consolidate. Through acquisitions, BPS’s primary markets include the U.S. energy sector, government sector (federal and state agencies, larger municipalities and non-profits), manufacturing companies and the retail sector. However, recently BPS’s performance showed disappointing results; specifically, BPS’s win-loss ratio, qualified new sales opportunities and renewal rates have all been declining. Additionally, BPS has realized some issues with the organizational of their sales team, sales support group and sales operations group. BPS acquired companies to remain competitive in the market place but has identified significant inefficiencies among the groups. Faced with these challenges, BPS North American Sales President, Brandon Ali, has tasked newly hired Christy Connor with preparing a proposal containing recommendations on how they can turn the situation around.

1. In 2007 and 2008, in an effort to remain competitive in the market place, BPS acquired 3 firms, which served government sector, manufacturing companies and retail sector respectively. However, BPS allowed the acquired firms to operate semi-autonomously, which resulted in incompatibility among different departments, along with seasonal workload issue, both...