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Case Study 3: Construction and Building Company

• First Online: 27 February 2024

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• Shahrokh Nikou 6  

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In this chapter we discuss a global construction and building enterprise. The context of the case company will be outlined, and then we describe how the company established their Financial Shared Service Centre (FSSC). At the end of this chapter, the antecedents that are part of the research will be explored and elaborated, and the analyses of the findings and concluding remarks will be presented.

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Nyenrode Business University, Breukelen, The Netherlands

Albert Plugge

Department of Design, Organisation and Strategy, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

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Plugge, A., Nikou, S. (2024). Case Study 3: Construction and Building Company. In: Digitalisation of Global Business Services. Technology, Work and Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51528-6_8

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As a front-line services business, CH&CO ’s phenomenal growth was hit by Covid lockdowns. But as its CEO explains, you can’t keep a great business down. 

CH&CO, a food and drinks services provider to organisations, public institutions and prestigious events across the UK and Ireland, partnered with Equistone in 2019 to support its M&A and growth ambitions.

The company’s CEO, Bill Toner, explains that by focusing on its values, such as its people – their growth and development; establishing a sustainable, local operating model; and fostering strong trusting relationships with customers, the company is now well placed to continue smashing expectations and delighting stakeholders.

Closing Company Case

Travelers point distillery.

In early 2000, several friends got together to tell stories and drink bourbon. It was obvious that friends and stories come together with good bourbon. The best stories included the rich family history of Master Distiller Mel Lytton.

Dating back to the 1880s and into prohibition, Mel’s great grandfather distilled bourbon in rural Virginia. Having grown up in a bourbon family, Mel not only had the ability to detect all the subtle flavors of a great bourbon, but he had the family recipe that had been passed down through the generations. And Mel knew how to distill it.

Mel had more stories than most. Having mastered the art of just about everything he set out to do, Mel was a stone mason, a blacksmith, and a carpenter skilled at woodworking. As Mel talked about the bourbon he was tasting and told stories of his family distilling in the mountains and backwoods of Virginia, an idea was born. The friends decided they would love to get into the business of distilling bourbon.

Bourbon is a truly American drink. It is generally aged in oak barrels and made with grain, primarily corn. Bourbon can range in price from thousands of dollars to $40–50 per bottle. In the early 1960s, Congress declared bourbon “America’s Native Spirit.”

While traditionally bourbon is mostly consumed by men, it is catching on with women too. In fact, bourbon is quickly gaining popularity among those 21 and over. “The Kentucky Bourbon Trail and the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour have drawn more than 2.5 million visitors from all 50 states and 25 countries in the last five years and have become leading educational and tourism attractions.” 88

With the growth and popularity of bourbon drinking and collecting, it was clear that there was room in the industry for one more bourbon brand.

Mel’s family recipe and his history of distilling made the group of friends confident in their ability to provide a craft or small-batch bourbon that would be equal to if not better than many currently available. They formed the company and found the perfect location to open the distillery—an old granary in the heart of America’s farming country in Kirklin, Indiana. The community is uniquely located in the middle of the state with a major highway passing through the middle of the town. Kirklin truly is the crossroads of America.

With the original group of investors and a few additions, the business was formed. Mel began distilling the bourbon. It was put in barrels and up in the rack room to age. The label, the brand, and the distribution were in the works.

The group determined that some of the best things in life included bourbon and travels. In fact, many of the stories they told over a great glass of bourbon included their many collective travels around the world. The name for their new bourbon was decided— Travelers Point . It wouldn’t be long before Travelers Point began marketing its bourbon.

As the company considered its branding and value proposition, the founders knew they wanted to have a unique story of production along with a price point that ranked with some of the premium bourbon brands currently on the market. Travelers Point bourbon would sell for around $45–60 per bottle. This would put it in the ranks of some of the sought-after brands with a following among die-hard bourbon drinkers. 89

The difference in Travelers Point is obvious to discerning bourbon drinkers. The bourbon profile is unique, with deep caramel notes and a rich combination of oak and vanilla. Many bourbon drinkers enjoy the hunt for the perfect bourbon. Travelers Point has something special. Finding the market segment that is ready for a new bourbon with a long history will be critical to its marketing success.

For more information about Travelers Point Distillery, check out their website .

Case Questions

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Case Studies

Taking your supply chain to the next level can require help from an outside organization. These stories show the innovation our people deliver to customers facing complex shipping challenges.

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How one company developed and executed a U.S. import/export compliance program

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Teradyne: Improving supply chain efficiency

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Whether you’re a shipper or a carrier, trust our supply chain experts to deliver results and support your business.

Case study: Building a customer-centric B2B organization

Customer experience (CX) is an increasingly important strategic topic in the boardrooms of B2B companies in China and throughout the world. Despite the rapid development of the previous decades, the “growth first” principle of Chinese enterprises sometimes implies customer experience can be sacrificed. But CX leaders, globally and within China, drive higher growth, lower cost, and superior customer satisfaction. In times of crisis, they achieve three-times-higher shareholder returns 1 Total return to shareholders tracked for publicly traded companies in the top 10 or bottom 10 of Forrester’s Customer Experience Performance Index in 2007–09. than laggards.

Start with a vision

A successful transformation starts from the top. Cases within and outside China confirm that the CEO must be in charge to continuously push and unify the organization.

The Chinese steel industry has taken an upturn amid the country’s overcapacity-reduction program, and companies have been enjoying robust price and volume increases. In this article, we consider one Chinese steel manufacturer whose CEO set a clear vision to build a customer-centric organization in order to gain a competitive edge and to keep the organization healthy through future downturns. The company took a series of steps to systematically and holistically shift the entire organization toward customer-centricity.

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Identify the challenges.

Comprehensive diagnostics revealed that the company faced a series of challenges. In fact, interviews with some customers were alarming: the customer voice, though central to the CEO’s vision, had no conduit within the organization and was never heard by decision makers. One key account was lost well before corporate management heard its complaints. Analysis of the research revealed several serious shortfalls in customer-centricity:

Limited understanding of customers.

The company had not systemically mapped the diverse stakeholders behind each customer, relying instead in most cases on buy-side procurement managers and their associates as the only source of customer feedback. Company representatives rarely knew or approached other customer-decision influencers or the users behind procurement, thereby losing many potential customer insights. The company also lacked access to end customers further down the value chain.

Few channels for customer feedback.

As is true at many B2B organizations, sales was the major channel through which the company gathered customer feedback. But manual relays of messages could take a long time to reach managers, assuming they were not forgotten along the way. To make matters worse, sales representatives sometimes neglected to report feedback, fearing they would be punished if headquarters learned that their customers were unhappy.

Limited analysis of feedback for insights.

What customer feedback and CX data existed within the organization was not centrally managed and synthesized into easy-to-access reports to give top management the full picture. Other stakeholders also found it challenging to access the aggregated customer feedback related to their own roles.

Customer problems not addressed.

Many customers complained that issues they had reported many times had not been dealt with, and the same problems continued to persist.

Transform to a CX-centric organization through a holistic ‘diagnose, design, deliver’ process

A holistic transformation was crafted to move the company toward the CEO’s vision, knowing that no single silver bullet could address all challenges at the same time. The transformation plan consisted of multiple modules based on a “diagnose, design, deliver” process, which takes two to three years to implement fully (Exhibit 1).

The company proceeded through the process in three phases:

Phase 1: Diagnose

The first step was to map the customers and identify stakeholders beyond buy-side procurement. To achieve this, customers were divided into segments based on similar stakeholder dynamics and customer journeys. Then the segments were prioritized based on their value and strategic importance.

Phase 2: Design

After the journey diagnostics, the company built a structured “question library” based on the journey breakdown, with customized questionnaires and feedback forms for different stakeholders. This enabled the company to collect feedback and experience data, and perform a consistent longitudinal analysis across feedback channels. Using these designs, the company was able to systematically analyze experience data, dig into root causes, and identify improvement areas.

Phase 3: Deliver

An IT backbone had to be built to implement all the designs discussed in the previous paragraphs. To achieve this, the company broke down the system design into several modules and assessed how each one should be tackled. Among the three possible development options, “customized third-party solution, locally deployed” was chosen as the best option based on five evaluation criteria: feasibility, customization, data security, timeline, and price.

Survey: Chinese B2B decision maker response to COVID-19 crisis

Key learnings: prioritize segments, and collect feedback on multiple channels.

The company eventually prioritized three segments: (1) section-steel and steel-sheet-piling dealers, (2) section-steel manufacturers, and (3) steel-sheet-piling leasing companies, with the biggest customer in each category selected for deeper analysis. In analyzing the different customers, the company discovered a pattern: three journeys—scheduling inquiry, transport and delivery, and quality discrepancy—were deemed crucial by all customers.

A new, multichannel system was designed to address the company’s various challenges in collecting customer feedback. While customers can still share feedback directly with sales reps, the system incorporates new channels, including periodic on-site interviews and feedback sessions conducted by marketing personnel or the CX team, surveys on mobile devices, and a WeChat portal where customers can submit feedback whenever they want.

This system also allows the company to reach out to previously inaccessible or remote customers, who can simply scan product QR codes to submit feedback on features and quality, or even solicit technical support. A dashboard was designed to create CX transparency across the organization, allowing different stakeholders to analyze the data and generate insights. The multichannel-backed (PC and mobile) dashboard can make customer feedback and experience data visible for stakeholders from different divisions, so they can easily analyze data and generate insights.

Manage the change to maintain success

McKinsey research indicates that 70 percent of change programs fail, mostly because of human factors. Design-phase initiatives don’t stick without procedures for proper change management. McKinsey has a useful framework for change management (Exhibit 2), from which the steel manufacturer adopted key elements.

Real impact to the bottom line

To date, the company has already generated an estimated 4 percent increase in gross profit, or an 8 percent increase in pre-interest and pretax profit—a number matching the CEO’s initial expectations of the project. Moreover, the company believes that its transformation will have a lasting impact, producing better products, more satisfied and loyal customers, and a healthier, more efficient organization overall.

All in all, customer experience is an effective tool that Chinese B2B players can utilize to create long-term competitive advantages. A company should first define its priorities, lay out an implementation path based on its current reality, and use it to work toward a superior customer experience and, ultimately, excellence.

Hai Ye and Will Enger are partners in McKinsey’s Hong Kong office.

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Bankruptcy court trustee in Alex Jones liquidation case previews 'wind-down' of media company

A federal bankruptcy court trustee appointed to oversee the liquidation of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' estate is asking a judge to temporarily block families and other creditors from seizing assets related to his media company, as he readies "an orderly wind-down process" and sale.

The trustee, Christopher Murray, "seeks this Court's intervention to prevent a value-destructive money grab and allow an orderly process to take its course," according to his emergency filing Sunday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.

The move came after families who won a 2022 defamation lawsuit in Texas against Jones asked a state district court judge to compel his Free Speech Systems, which operates the Infowars platform, to turn over "all money," including "money held in any bank accounts or being controlled by any other third parties at the direction" of the media company.

But Murray said in his request that the "specter of a pell-mell seizure of FSS's assets, including its cash, threatens to throw the business into chaos, potentially stopping it in its tracks, to the detriment of the interests of the chapter 7 estate for which the Trustee is responsible."

The trustee's challenge is only the latest in the legal saga involving Jones, who broadcasts in the Austin area. He was sued in Texas and Connecticut by families who claimed he defamed them and inflicted emotional distress by repeatedly suggesting on his show that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax. A gunman  killed 20 first grade children and six adults  at the school in Newtown, Connecticut.

The families were awarded $1.5 billion in total in their lawsuits, but they have been unable to collect anything from Jones, who has claimed he can't afford that big a sum and filed for bankruptcy in the wake of the verdicts.

During a court hearing this month, federal Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez agreed to allow Jones to convert his bankruptcy filing into a  liquidation   of his personal assets  to help pay off the settlements.

But, in a decision that Jones had favored, the judge dismissed a separate bankruptcy case involving Free Speech Systems. That has allowed Jones to continue broadcasting although the future of his show on Infowars remains uncertain and he had suggested for weeks that it could come to an end.

At his defamation trial in Texas in 2022, Jones generally blamed "corporate media" for twisting his words and misportraying him but didn't specify how.

Jones' lawyer, Vickie Driver, said at this month's bankruptcy hearing that there is money that can go to the trustee in the form of the sale of Jones' $2.8 million Texas ranch.

Court filings indicate Jones has about $9 million in personal assets, while Free Speech Systems holds about $6 million in cash with more than $1 million in inventory.

Driver did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

A lawyer for the families in the Connecticut lawsuit against Jones had said they supported liquidating Free Speech Systems because they worry it would lead to individual families battling over the company's assets in state courts.

"This is precisely the unfortunate situation that the Connecticut families hoped to avoid when we argued that the Free Speech Systems/InfoWars case should have remained with the bankruptcy court rather than being dismissed," lawyer Christopher Mattei said in a statement. "The Connecticut families are disappointed by this attempt to undercut the orderly and long overdue winddown of Alex Jones's InfoWars platform."

Murray wants the court to impose a 90-day pause on any collection action by creditors against Free Speech Systems. It's unclear when the judge may rule.

Erik Ortiz is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital focusing on racial injustice and social inequality.

More From Forbes

Auto supplier astemo provides case study of challenges facing industry.

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Hitachi Astemo vehicles used to demonstrate new automotive technology at a briefing on June 19 in ... [+] suburban Detroit.

Hitachi Astemo this week demonstrated the challenges facing major suppliers as the auto industry juggles with shifts to electric vehicles while continuing to maintain conventional internal combustion cars and trucks.

The company is developing products for both conventional gasoline-powered vehicles as well as electric vehicles. Hitachi Astemo is a tier one supplier, meaning it’s one of the big companies who deal directly with automakers. The company is 40% owned by Hitachi, 40% owned by Honda Motor Co., and 20% by private equity in Japan.

“Most people agree…we’re moving toward an EV future,” John Nunneley, senior vice president, design engineering at Hitatchi Engineering Americas Inc., said at a Wednesday briefing in Farmington Hills, Michigan. “Whatever the future is, we’ll be fine” as long vehicle production remains steady.

“It’s expensive to build plants” to supply EVs, he said “You hope the (EV) capacity develops.”

“The capital investments are huge” for EVs, added Rod Sharpe, senior vice president of sales and marketing.

The company supplies automotive systems under the Astemo name. Some of its products are for EVs directly. Others can be applied to both EVs and conventionally powered vehicles.

At this week’s briefing, Hitachi Astemo demonstrated various auto tech. They included a 360-degree vision camera system to support autonomous driving functions. The system processes data from as many as 10 cameras to provide a three-dimensional view of the area surrounding a vehicle.

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Hitachi Astemo said that camera placement can vary according to a vehicle’s design.

Also demonstrated at this week’s event:

—The company’s G5 semi-active suspension, which adjusts a vehicle’s ride for maximum stability. The system can control roll and pitch by independently controlling damping force to induce or resist pitch motion in turns.

—A steer-by-wire system, which replaces a steering wheel with a hand-held device in a front-seat armrest. According to the company, the device “makes turns with a natural turn of the wrist.”

“Steer-by-wire technology allows us to literally reinvent the steering function by eliminating the steering wheel altogether,” Harsha Badarinarayan, vice president of advanced engineering for Hitachi Astemo Americas, said in a statement.

The supplier also is using auto racing to extend its relationships with automakers.

Hitatchi Astemo has been involved with the Team Penske team in the IndyCar open-wheel series for more than a decade.

The company originally supplied fuel injectors and fuel pumps originally made for production vehicles for Penske race cars.

Team Penske is involved with General Motors Co., a big Hitatchi Astemo customer.

“I’m really involved with GM” in racing, said Sharpe, the senior vice president of sales and marketing for Hitachi Astemo. GM executives such as Mark Reuss, the automaker’s president, are a regular presence at races.

“Personally, that helps me,” Sharpe said. The executive serves as Hitachi Astemo’s global account manager for GM.

Roger Penske, the owner of Team Penske, also owns the IndyCar series and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Penske won his 20 th Indianapolis 500 as a team owner last month.

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CHCG Case Study

Contact center leadership.

The client had experienced a recent change in ownership, and was looking to improve processes, increase revenue, and support growth.

Increase in Revenue

Employee morale, productivity, case study details, project summary:, project challenges:.

• High staff turnover
• Ineffective/costly recruiting
• Stagnant growth

plan of action

Project solution.

Due to the complexity of the project, a wide variety of solutions were required to achieve desired company growth rates. 

• Staff and leadership re-organization
• Formalized recruiting and hiring procedures
• Enhanced scheduling process
• Improved company culture
• Established management best practices for employee coaching
• Decreased company risk and liability through HR improvements
• Updated quality assurance program
• Sourced right-fit candidate for Director of Operations role

THE OUTCOME

Project results.

• Achieved the highest staff count within 5 months
• Decreased turnover
• Improved employee morale
• Positioned company for growth after two years of stagnation

Contact Center Service List

Contact center technology, contact center operations, customer experience, contact center assessments, quick links, learn more about us.

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