Words: 579
Emma Richardson is in a dilemma whether to go ahead with the Project Aerial or not. The poor decision making process is one of the main reasons for the dilemma caused. Had the management of TerraCog not ignored the idea of shifting to satellite imagery as soon as Posthaste did it, the damage would have been much less. The organisation suffers from inefficient group structure. The decisions were not made in the right manner. When customer requests increased, Richard Fiero on his own decided to change his mind on satellite imagery, without discussing it with anyone else.
Now the product development team is not happy with the decision made because it feels that there are several other exciting projects that are being compromised upon. Moreover, with a decision of go/no-go to be made by Emma, the large size of the group involved again threatens to thwart the decision making process. The inter department conflicts add to the dilemma. The sales team headed by Ed Prior feels the new product Aerial should be priced below $425 to capture the lost market share to the competitors.
The design team headed by Allen Roth, redesigned within the existing GPS platform so as to speed up the development process and avoid costs of new moldings and major configurations. As per their estimate of the pricing team, the price for sale would, at the minimum, be $475. The price is quite too high for the sales team to consider. The design team has pressed the production team to reconsider the price estimates; otherwise this can force the sales team to reconsider how to position the product. The sales team has pressed the design team to redesign the product considering the price.
Each team is trying to put the onus on the other department to bail them out of the problem. Each one is more concerned about his/her individual goals which are not helping solving the problem either. Allen Roth, as the director of Design & Development was entrusted with the responsibility of reducing costs to the level Sales would be comfortable with. Given the features and functionality required in Aerial, costs could only be cut down by 7-8%. Any more cuts could seriously undermine the quality of the product. Ed Pryor, vice-president, sales, noticed the demand for GPS with satellite imagery among retailers.
He is concerned about meeting the sales targets. His main concern is to offer a high-functionality product at low cost. Emma Richardson’s objective is to get all parties to reach an agreement on the price point for Aerial. She understood the urgency of getting the new product to market as TerraCog started losing share to PostHaste. As the executive vice-president, she has to address both the inventory problems and quality issues as well. Tony Barren’s production team is wary about the feasibility of the requirements.
The cost estimates are shooting the roof due to requirements to redesign the total platform and also due to the time constraints. Harold Whistler, the company co-founder is preparing for retirement and Roth aimed at becoming the next VP, design and development. Richard Fiero, the company president is concerned about the differences between the sales and the production teams. He is concerned about Tony’s production fiasco in another project and wants to be extra careful this time. He wants better cross-departmental co-operation. His aim is to get Aerial on the shelves at the start of Q3 of 2008.