Appex Corporation
What were the challenges Shikhar Ghosh faced when he joined Appex?
Appex’s Position and Performance
When Shikhar joined Appex, the firm was relatively small and had 25 employees and was earning $2 million in revenue. Appex was loosely structured and was losing money rapidly, which was serious concern for the investors and they expected Shikhar to turn around the situation. The problem with the culture at Appex was such that everybody did things on their own time and they were not responding to customer queries promptly. Appex was missing the product development scheduled deadlines and there was no coordination on the job deliverables.
Company Work Atmosphere
When he joined, Shikhar realized that the atmosphere at Appex was changing from being entrepreneurial to chaotic. Shikhar noticed that people arrived at work and addressed the immediate crisis situation at hand and there was no planning or prioritizing the future work. With the growing size of the firm, there was no coordination between functional groups with no schedule for planning or meetings adding to the increase in chaos. People who couldn’t withstand the chaos, quit.
Customer Service
From the customer service side, the volume of the customers and orders had increased but the firm was not in a position to handle the increased demand. They were able to provide technical assistance to very few of the customer who were happy with it, but leaving behind a large chunk of the customer unaddressed.
Human Resources
On the human resources side, there was observed a major mismatch between the forecasted recruiting plan and the actual recruiting. There was no clear split between who is going to attend which meeting, no clear career growth pattern defined and also no consolidated salary structure. According to Ghosh, there was no defined area of responsibility nor accountability. It was clear from the above observations that Appex was in dire need of a proper structure and control.
3. What would you have done in Shikhar’s place? Were all the changes in structure necessary? How would you address the challenges Shikhar is facing towards the end of the case?
The structural changes were necessary