Saver.Coin Case Study: Management, Leadership, and Organizational Structure

Assignment

Case Study

The current CEO of Saver.Coin is Mr. Gordon Phua. He graduated from a local university with a Bachelor degree in Marketing. During his university days, he had ventured into several small businesses. Although he did not sustain most of these small businesses, he had gained much in terms of experience and confidence. In 2015, a survey conducted by Gordon and his friends revealed that:

- 25% of Singaporeans eat out daily

- 54% of Singaporeans purchase based on price

- 33% of Singaporeans purchase dinning discount

- 40% of Singaporeans purchase based on deal.

In 2016, Gordon Phua with his two friends decided to set up Saver.Coin, a lifestyle solution’s company that strive to integrate social media and discovery services through artificial intelligence to create a lifestyle platform focused on discovery of places and people. Basically, the company focuses on connecting subscribers with local merchants by offering activities, such as shopping online by offering the latest fashion apparels to high tech gadgets, as well as offering the best deals and discount vouchers for dinning at the most delicious eateries in town. In addition, Saver.Coin helps merchants advertise their businesses and products and services at a low cost. 

Management and Leadership

Mr. Gordon Phua believed that keeping the organisation structure lean and nimble greatly reduced unnecessary bureaucracy and red tape thus, greatly contributed to a higher level of ‘efficiency and effectiveness’ in the business. With a simple structure, the fixed and direct costs would be kept at a low level. Most of the business costs were variable costs that were directly linked to the operational revenue and sales activities. In terms of financial management, that would keep the breakeven point at a very low level – an essential factor for the survival of the business, especially at the inception stage. Gordon Phua’s business philosophy was to ‘focus on the value creation and the value-add of the business’ and the costs would be taken care of. Currently, the business employed 20 full-time staff and 10 part-time staff mainly in the writer division - see diagram 1 for the organisation chart with four hierarchical levels. 

Question 1

(a) Compare and contrast the traditional goal-setting and Management By Objective (“MBO”) approach. As Gordon, the CEO of Saver.Coin, was a very goal-oriented leader, how would you explain to Gordon on the use and benefits of MBO in Saver.Coin?

(b) Conducting external environment scanning is one of the essential competencies needed to deal with today’s turbulent and dynamic business environment. You are required to identify and describe the key components of the macro external environment in Southeast Asia, and then develop a checklist of items (or questions) that the CEO must look out when conducting the macro external environment analysis. Provide relevant examples.

(c) Discuss how the top management of Saver.Coin could apply the eight-step decisionmaking process (also apply the checklist developed in part (b)) to finalise its decision on whether to invest in Indonesia or Vietnam. Develop your answer in a report format. 

Question 2

(a) Apply the knowledge of organisational structure and design that you had learnt to describe the three (3) organisational structure problems that Saver.Coin is facing, and provide relevant examples from the case. Put forward two (2) suggestions on how to deal with these problems.

(b) As Saver.Coin intends to expand its business abroad, examine the current structure, and then propose a new structure for the organisation?