Case
Business Platforms: Sloan Valve 1. Describe Sloan Valve’s customer value proposition and profit model. 2. How would an end-to-end new product development (NPD) process resolve the challenges that Sloan Valve identified with the old NDP process? Provide explanations for each of the three categories provided in Table 1 of the case. 3. The effective use of IT was critical to the success of the reengineered NPD process. Assess the extent to which the reengineered NDP process reflected automation, control, empowerment, and collaboration IT strategic roles? In your view, which IT strategic role is the dominant IT strategic role? 4. Global processes can be standardized or nonstandardized and they can be integrated or nonintegrated. In your view, should Sloan Valve’s NPD process be designed and executed as a standardized process? Why or why not? Should Sloan Valve’s NPD process be designed and integrated as an integrated process? Why or why not? IT Infrastructure: Natural Springs 1. The strategic justification for the initial ERP investment is provided in Table 1. Disregarding as best you can the eventual failure of the ERP implementation, does this justification provide a sound argument for implementing an ERP system? Answer “yes” or “no” and then explain your answer. 2. The Sun System clearly did not provide all the local functionality required by Natural Springs. What was the most significant functionality gap present at the factory? Describe the set of options generally available for resolving such gaps within ERP systems. Which option would you have recommended to Natural Springs to resolve the described factory gap? Why? 3. Which of the options listed in your answer to Question 2 did Natural Springs opt for? Why? What was the outcome and why did this outcome