Appex Corporation
In this case we see evaluation process of management information systems and intercarrier network services company Appex Corporation, when hiring new COO Shikhar Ghosh, who soon became CEO of the company. Company operated in few-years established market, which increased rapidly. Company were being innovative, entrepreneurial, technology-driven but lacking structure, what lead to further problems such as losing their profits. As we see, the company was so unorganized that employees even did not showed up at work on time, stayed long after day finished, and had an attitude to the costumers which can be described in short words: “we’ll call you back”.
What were the challenges that Shikhar Ghosh faced when he joined Appex?
In my opinion first of all Shikhar Ghosh faced with project-based structure, which was Appex Corporation running on, having few knowledge of what exactly was happening there. The structure was very informal and fluid, therefore it was very difficult to actually take power over the workers. They were used to work in their own way – nobody did know what he have to do, things simply were done on enthusiasm and initiative of the employees, not by their job descriptions, they even didn’t have any.
In rapidly growing market Appex also did increase number of employees, this lead to the fact that company was unable to monitor its expenses. Appex was spending cash quickly. Therefore people worked on more and more projects at once. Nobody had time to plan schedules or meetings.
Eventually it became hard to accomplish even basic tasks such as the preparation of price analyses of new products. Shikhar Ghosh faced this chaos, where people who could not withstand just quit.
Appex were behind schedule and started to miss installation dates and experienced failures in product development. Information flow, in general, was becoming more difficult.
These key challenges Shikhar Ghosh had to deal with.
Evaluate the importance of each of the structural changes he implemented. How important were they? What problems did each new structure address? What problems, in turn, did they create?
Ghosh’s we mentioned above Ghosh firstly faced with the problem of lacking power to actually influence on the company employees. He had a lot of ideas and experience on his previous position in Boston Consulting Group, working as a consultant. Venture capitalists of Appex Corporation were hoping that he would be able to improve company profits by changing structure and put things in order (making accounting and billing system, organizing better communication and report system).
Shikhar Ghosh actually did complete change the structure of Appex Corporation. He actually invented his own method of changing structures and providing new structures and motivation