KASTON PYRAL CASE

Kaston Pyral Case

Kaston Pyral Case

Q1- Write a report identifying these issues and analyze how it affects the organization?

Ans. This case illustrates two specific and one general set of issues that are topical in many types of operation. The two specific issues are those of increasing

“Internationalization” which refers to the increasing importance of international trade, international relations, treaties, alliances, etc. Inter-national, of course, means between or among nations. The basic unit remains the nation, even as relations among nations become increasingly necessary and important and (often along with that) increasing “consolidation” which is viewed as a positive step in cost nd expense control in the BPO industry particularly if it improves the competitive landscape of the marketplace.

The more general issue is that of operations improvement.

The case contains both general statements of the company's strategy along with a description of its decision to concentrate its call center operations on to three sites worldwide. The efficiency of a call center depends on the methods used to generate and retrieve data as well as the database and interface needs.

The Process and operations improvement in a call center can be categorized as follows: (i) those involving long term strategic planning including the design of the facility, (ii) those related to medium term aggregate planning of services, and (iii) those decisions that are made on a daily or weekly basis. The strategic decisions involve the allocation of resources (e.g., equipment and communication systems) as well as the layout and location of the facilities. Included in this category of decisions are those regarding the routing of the calls, whether the caller should be switched from one customer service representative In describing these decisions we implicitly assume that the strategic objectives of call center management are derived from an overall plan that specifies how different distribution channels are to be used for serving the corporate objectives. For example, the decision whether to sell related products is sometimes considered outside the scope of the call center strategic decision making process. (Faulkner 2000)

Q2- Try thinking about the information in the case under the three headings

Direct

Develop

Deploy

Ans. This proposes three sets of activities which any operations function must develop in order to take a strategic approach to improvement. These three sets of activities are as follows:

Direct - understand the intended competitive position of the organization in its marketplace so as to let that direct the operations resources and processes;

Develop - within the operations function develop an understanding of the resources and processes so as to enhance their overall capability;

Deploy - make sure that operations capabilities are fully understood by the organization so that potentially advantageous changes in market position can be made.

In fact a fourth set of activities completes the loop, the development of market strategy. This is seen by the model as the choice of a specific market position (or sets of market positions) within the potential scope of feasible market positions dictated by the operations capabilities.

The first “D” in the three Ds model is “direct”, and ...