1. You are evaluating the effectiveness of a training program aimed at enhancing the people management skills of Project Managers of an ITES company. Suggest the steps in developing a training evaluation process. How would you use the Kirkpatrick model to evaluate the effectiveness of training?
2. A retail chain wants to set up 40 stores across India in the next 6 months. They are hiring promising Stores managers, keeping their aggressive expansion plan in mind. Suggest some talent assessment tools for this position. The HR head wants to consider a few modern performance management methods besides 360 degrees’ approach. Which methods can she consider? What would be an argument for 360 degrees in comparison to other methods?
3. Orient Chemicals want to develop an effective succession plan to promote talent from within.
a. Suggest the steps involved in an effective succession planning program.
b. Why should Orient Chemicals focus on developing a Succession planning program?
International HR Practices
Q1. Dow Limited - an Australian MNC employed Australians (PCs) and Papua New Guineans (host country nationals) in its subsidiary in Papua New Guinea. The remuneration package for Australians is ten times more than that for Papua New Guineans for the same job. More than 85% of the host country employees (Papua New Guineans) complain that they are highly demotivated as the company pays highly discriminated remuneration for the same job performed by Australians and Papua New Guineans. Considering the situation, explain why do MNCs prefer Ethnocentric Approach and share the limitations of the same.
Q2. You are the Group HR director for a small company that has begun to use international assignments. You are considering using an external consulting firm to provide pre-departure training for employees, as you do not have the resources to provide this ‘in-house’. What components will be needed to be covered? How will you measure the effectiveness of the pre-departure training program provided by this external consultant?
Q3. Mazvode is a Japanese general insurance company which has spread its operations across the continents with almost 55 percent of its employees working outside Japan. Performance management policy of the company is more developmental, learning and feedback driven in Japan, while the same is highly measured and competitive in North America, goal driven in Europe and a mix of all approaches in other nations of companies units. There is widespread dissatisfaction with performance management practice across as found out in employee satisfaction survey, since performance management has scored minimal.
Further study revealed that younger employees in Japan have sought a competitive and incentive-based performance management, while employees in North America have felt that the system should focus more on development rather than being task driven since most of customer engagement performance comes from contextual performance. There are other employees who have argued to do away with performance appraisal system altogether as in their belief it was demotivating than helping any cause.
a) Describe the major challenges faced in assessing the performance in international context.
b) Suggest the criteria for the performance appraisal of International employees.
1) Brillio is a technology company that develops and deploys disruptive solutions that help customers compete better and capture business value faster. The company has invested in developing advanced tools. A sharp and obsessively focused talent acquisition strategy is at the core of Brillio’s ability to meet the highly demanding needs of its technology clients. HR Head at Brillio says. “When talent acquisition equips business to meet market needs, HR stops being a support function and becomes a strategic partner.” and that is just because of the key challenges around talent acquisition. As the HR Head of Brillo point out the challenges faced by Talent acquisition team in detail.
2) A follow-up survey was conducted the year after the implementation of the new appraisal system. Results were as follows:
81 percent better understood work group objectives
84 percent considered the new appraisal fair
72 percent said they understood how their merit raise was determined
70 percent met their personal and work objectives
77 percent considered the system a step in the right direction
As the HR manager you have noticed change in an appraisal system after the implementation of the new appraisal system. List out the Modern Appraisal Methods which has resulted a positive outcome with examples.
3) Jim Delaney, president of Apex Door, has a problem. No matter how often he tells his employees how to do their jobs, they invariably decide to do it their way, as he puts it, and arguments ensue between Jim, the employee, and the employee’s supervisor. One example is the door-design department, where the designers are expected to work with the architects to design doors that meet the specification’ While it’s not rocket science, as Jim puts it, the designers invariably make mistakes such as designing in too much steel, a problem that can cost Apex tens of thousands of wasted rupees, once you consider the number of doors in, say, a 30-story office tower.
The order processing department is another example. Jim has a very specific and detailed way he wants the order written up, but most of the order clerks don’t understand how to use the multipage order form. They simply improvise when it comes to a detailed question such as whether to classify the customer as industrial or commercial.
The current training process is as follows. None of the jobs has a training manual, although several have somewhat out-of-date job descriptions. The training for new people is all on the job. Usually, the person leaving the company trains the new person during the 1- or 2-week overlap period, but if there's no overlap, the new person is trained as well as possible by other employees who have filled in occasionally on the job in the past. The training is the same throughout the company for machinists, secretaries, assemblers, engineers, and accounting clerks, for example.
a) What do you think of Apex’s training process? Does it help improving the performance of employees?
b) Explain in detail what you would do to improve the training process at Apex Door.
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Digital Payments
Q1. Explain with example working of virtual currency? How should security be ensured in virtual currency? Do you think Virtual currencies will take over real paper money in future? Support your answer with reasons.
Q2. What all processes are included in payment services? List at least 4 different payment system gateway providers and explain working of any one of gateway provider in detail.
Q3. Imagine you own a small business that sells products online. Your customers often abandon their shopping carts because the checkout process is too complicated.
a. What all can you do to solve this problem? How can you use a digital wallet to simplify the payment process and reduce cart abandonment rates?
b. Describe the features of a digital wallet that would be most beneficial to your business and how you would integrate it into your website or mobile app.
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IT Security and Risk Management
1. Even in this age of Google Pay, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, where you can use virtual payments to purchase items in real stores and restaurants with your smartphone, the “old fashioned” credit card and debit card isn’t going away anytime soon. With that said, many people who use them are afraid that the payment information that’s on those cards could be
lifted by hackers, even if they remain inside a wallet. That fear includes the newer credit and debit cards that have RFID chips inside. That’s why some folks who use those kinds of cards are buying RFID blocking wallets, which are supposed to keep hackers from taking your payment information. Explain RFID Hacking and ways to avoid it.
2. Access control is a method of guaranteeing that users are who they say they are and that they have the appropriate access to company data. Most security professionals understand how critical access control is to their organization, which access control techniques would you want or expect your bank to employ to keep your bank account safe? Give detailed justifications for your recommendations.
3. CovidLock is a new Android ransomware that conducts a lock-screen attack against its victims. A security research Team, in the course of monitoring newly registered Coronavirus and COVID labeled domain names, discovered a website luring users into downloading an Android application under the guise of a COVID-19 heat map. The coronavirusapp.site domain initially contained an iframe sourcing directly from infection2020.com (a website from an independent developer for tracking US-based COVID-19 news) and a small banner above that encouraged the installation of the malicious application for real time updates.
The app portrays itself as a Coronavirus Tracker. As soon as it starts running, it asks the user to allow it to conduct battery optimization. The ransomware does this to keep itself running in the background and to make sure that Android does not close the app to optimize battery performance. Once the initial phase is over, the app requests access to Android's Accessibility feature. By integrating accessibility features and services, Android developers can improve the app's usability, particularly for users with disabilities. But it is common for attackers to use this functionality to keep the malware persistent.
Once admin rights are achieved by the app, the attack is launched. As soon as the victim clicks on "Scan Area For Coronavirus," the phone locks itself with a message on the locked screen. It asks for $250 as ransom in the form of bitcoins. Failure to do so, according to the attacker, can lead to the leaking of the victim's private data, including photos, videos, and more.
a. Explain the various types of malware and how is ransomware different from a virus/worm?
b. What precautions should an employer of an SME take to prevent ransomware attacks on a company resources?
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1. Too often, once a project is completed, management attention goes elsewhere and things revert to the way they were. Often the anticipated benefits are not realized or even audited to see if the goals were reached. If there were benefits, they are often not applied throughout the organization. Many pitfalls can happen when process improvement is attempted one process at a time. It is difficult to tell which processes contribute the most to achieving the business objectives or which process is the critical process to improve.
Can business process portfolio management help in such situations and how?
2. India has been a preferred destination for outsourcing industry, thereby providing a boost to the economic growth of India in the last two decades. Companies from across the globe look up to the Indian BPO industry for reliable service for their business requirements. It has contributed to the service sector development as well as infrastructure improvements in nonmetro location in India. The BPO industry, despite its impressive growth and global advantage, is facing several challenges and risks. These risks have a potential to slow down the Indian growth story. The cost advantage has been reducing due to increase in wage parity and other global destinations such as China, Philippines, Malaysia, Brazil etc. growing in reputation as low cost service delivery. BPO industry in India also faces, challenges with the high attrition rates, increasing use of Artificial Intelligence, process automation technologies, volatility of the Indian currency and global economic slowdown. The Indian BPO industry must mitigate the risks and challenges in order to realize its true potential.
In view of the current scenario, categorize the above risks into the people risks, technology risk and process risks. What would be your suggestions to mitigate the risks facing Indian BPOs.
3. AL-RIFAT Call Center, a leading healthcare BPO company based out of Gulf approached HumaraBPO with a requirement to improve their BPO process. The customer's BPO division handles over a million customer calls every month, but their customer satisfaction levels were plummeting downwards. Even their CSAT was as low as 47%. Since the customer was a part of the healthcare industry, it was unacceptable for the company to find a low level of satisfaction from their customers. HumaraBPO's role was to nail down the causes for the low CSAT levels and then to provide a customized BPO solution that would help the company's performance to soar.
At the onset of the project, the BPO team at HumaraBPO decided to dissect the problem and get to the root cause. Through a detailed analysis, they identified some of the critical issues in the process that were affecting the customer's BPO's performance. The following were the requirements of the customer:
There was a linguistic and cultural mismatch between the BPO's personnel and the client's customers. The client's customer base was native Arabs while the BPO employees of the customer (5 male agents and 5 female agents) were not native Arabic speakers. This language barrier made it difficult for the employees to effectively address the culture-specific requirements of the customers
There was a critical need to align the BPO support team with the standard processes that govern BPO functioning. The BPO team also required intensive training in BPO platform management
The BPO's turnaround time lagged over a period of 7 days in contacting their customers after discharge
The support BPO team worked only 5 days a week (Monday to Friday) and only between 9 am to 5 pm. This posed a serious limitation for the customers who wanted to contact our client
The customers wanted to make sure that they were talking to an Arab agent and would ask the BPO employees for their last name
Female patients of our client would submit contact numbers of the male members of their family instead of their own
The customer reach percentage was less than 2%
After identifying the unique problems that were affecting our client's BPO, they deployed one their best teams to implement a customized BPO platform. HumaraBPO's skilled BPO team refurbished the entire BPO process of the customer by adopting the following measures:
1. BPO Service Timings: they increased the support time span by a period of 4 hours. Next, they made the support center available from 7 AM to 7 PM. To match the working week of UAE, they decided to change the work days of the BPO to Sunday to Thursday instead of Monday to Friday. Multiple shifts was also introduced to meet the time demand with WFM.
2. Local BPO Agents: they hired a team of native speaking Arabs to eliminate the cultural gaps.
3. Support Infrastructure: they enhanced the infrastructure for the customer's BPO center and included best-of-breed voice, email and internet facilities. This helped in substantially reducing the turnaround time of the BPO team.
4. Value Added Support Services: they also offered a host of value added services, such as the following:
They extended the 24 hour call support for excess processing requirements during peak hours
The BPO agents were given customized 'Last Names' to suit the caller's country
The DID number was masked based on the caller's country
The BPO agents were given 20% hand-outs
Culture specific provisions were specially created to record rebuttals from the objections raised by the male family members of female patients
The BPO process of the customer was continuously improvised and enhanced based on Lean and Six Sigma methods
The database of the customer was always kept up-to-date
The BPO application was rectified periodically
Within a short time span of just 2 months, they were able to present the following results to our customer. From an unsatisfactory 47% the CSAT galloped to a whopping 85% - 87%.
The turnaround time was improved by 24%.
a. What were the cultural challenges faced by AL-RIFAT call center and how were these specific cultural challenges met by AL-RIFAT call center.
b. What are the advantages of outsourcing call center operations of a hospital to a BPO like AL-RIFAT call center?
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International Logistics & Supply Chain Management
Q1. An international nutraceutical company is eyeing the Indian market for its next expansion plan. While it has anticipated good demand for its range of products in categories like dietary supplements, probiotics, and prebiotics in India, it has yet not decided about importing these products from its existing manufacturing units outside India or setting up an Indian manufacturing unit. Help the company in its supply chain planning & suggest a supply chain strategy for its Indian foray.
Q2. An Indian utensil manufacturer is embarking on an international expansion program by exporting to two countries, Bangladesh & Indonesia. Explain the various factors to be considered in planning the logistics for the exports expansion, and suggest the appropriate choice of logistics strategy (in-house / 3PL / 4PL etc.) for the same.
Q3. An Indian manufacturer of home lighting products has been facing stiff competition in the market due to its higher cost of production which leads to its products being as priced higher than its competitors. The company is therefore exploring sourcing its products from China where several low-cost suppliers are based.
a. What factors must the company consider for procurement from China? How can it best facilitate its procurement on an on-going basis?
b. Explain the role of government agencies in such procurement. What related procedural aspects will the company have to handle additionally for such procurement?
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Q1) Apple is facing a challenge that the latest versions of iPhone launched are not engaging enough for consumers. Consumers feel lack of innovation in the products. Using techniques of new product development elaborate on the steps that Apple must follow in the research and development to add innovative features in upcoming version.
Q2) As a market analyst at AC Neilson, you have been assigned a client from e-Commerce industry. The client faces continuous issues in decline in sale. Which methods of data collection would be appropriate for identifying the issues related with decline in sales? Justify along with sample size. Develop a market research process to understand the reasons for the same.
Q3) ChatGPT is the new AI agent, people are looking at. Several business organizations are trying to incorporate ChatGPT in their work. You have to conduct a research for Microsoft to resolve two business problems-
i) What are the reasons for people to use ChatGPT
ii) What are preventive measures for fighting the competition from Bard? Answer them using following:
a. Choose the appropriate research methodology for conducting the research that would answer the mentioned business problem. Elaborate the same along with justification.
b. You would choose appropriate sample for conducting research. Enlist the characteristics of the respondents, type of sampling employed and the research type with proper justification.
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Services Marketing
1. You stay in an urban set up and in your city, health services for senior citizens are extremely unreliable. How will you plan your service offering? What are the challenges you will face while creating your service offering?
2. You are an entrepreneur who wishes to a cloud kitchen. How will you differentiate your offerings vis a vis your competitors? You are offering your services at a higher price point. How would plan your service offering?
3. Rajat wants to start a ‘C2C’ (customer to customer) model of food service. He has done his research. Rajat realized there is a need to have an option for customers to order it from home makers or families who would be interested in selling their cooked food to others. They are facing two challenges. First, registering new service providers and second, building a loyal customer base.
a. How will you build a service brand?
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Lean Six Sigma
1. Identify any 1 specific concern from any industry during the COVID-19 pandemic situation and depending on the selected approach to address the concern enlist the different tools which can be employed through the DMAIC cycle to narrow down the Key Process Input Variables (KPIVs) that are driving unacceptable output(s). The analysis of the concern (for e.g., if you choose restaurant industry then delivery concern or hospitals then patient handling concern) utilizing DMAIC process must include only tools necessary to resolve the concern. The focus should concentrate on a clear and minimalistic path to resolving the concern. You are free to follow any research, data collection and or analysis methodology that you consider the most appropriate to address the required task.
2. Suppose you are working as a facilities manager in a big mall of a metropolitan city that intends to adopt the lean technique for efficient management, identify any process/activity that needs improvement and create a broad outline in brief using DMAIC methodology.
3. a) Enlist at least 5 Indian companies preferably from different industries or sectors which have implemented Six Sigma in a successful manner. Also, specify at least 1 substantial benefit achieved from implementation by each of the 5 Indian companies.
3. b) Give at least 1 example of each type of waste (8 Mudas) reduced due to the implementation of lean six sigma in that organization. You are free to select any industry or sector.
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New Product Development and Managing Innovation
1. In the context of physical products, what are the different types of product packaging and what needs do packaging help with? Consider the example of Great Point, a nearby super market. As you walk through the aisles of the supermarket, think about and list examples for the 3 different types of product packaging.
2. Ashutosh works as a product manager for a large multi-national video content platform (eg. Tik Tok, Instagram etc.). The company would like to create a new app targeted at older population, aged 60+ years. Ashutosh is entrusted with the development of the new product. Describe the approach across the different steps in generic product design and development process that he should follow.
3a. Using a real-life example from your industry of choice (eg. Automobile, FMCG etc.), explain how innovation is different from invention? Why should companies innovate?
3b. Imagine that you are the product manager of one of the hyper-local delivery aps – eg. Swiggy, Dunzo etc. The management has asked you to use the Kano model and write a report on the different types of product features in the appl. Explain the Kano model and the different types of product features with an example.
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World Class Operations
1) You are the Quality Control Manager of an automobile manufacturer implementing Taguchi’s idea. In this context explain Taguchi’s Loss Function.
2) Quality is one of the parameters for companies to become world class. Examples can be cited of Ikea, Apple etc. In this respect briefly narrate the factors that affect quality of products manufactured by companies like Ikea, Apple etc.
3) A) Assuming that you are the Operations Manager of an automobile manufacturer, implementing Fault Tree Analysis. Briefly explain the steps involved in the implementation.
3) B) With reference to you being an Operations Manager implementing Fault Tree Analysis, explain how is it differ from FMECA?
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Advanced Supply Chain Management
1. You are appointed as head of Global Sourcing. You realize, your organization is carrying out complex global sourcing initiatives, but they are not adequately supported with equally thorough network design. Discuss the factors you would consider designing a global supply chain. Give some industry examples where it was successfully adopted.
2. IT plays a major role in supply chain management in speeding up business processes and preventing bottlenecks. Organizations may have to determine what kind of strategies should be formulated, when to be formulated and how to be formulated for successful IT adoption. Discuss the strategic management framework for IT adoption with relevant examples.
3. You are the manager of a store that sells historical replicas. Given below are the past sales for the last 5 years.
Year 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
Sales 4000 6000 5000 3000 7000
a. Forecast sales for 2023 using a 3-period moving average.
b. Discuss the time-related factors that you will consider in the analysis of a time series.
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World Class Operations
1. You are the Quality Control Manager of an automobile manufacturer implementing Taguchi’s idea. In this context explain Taguchi’s Loss Function.
2. Quality is one of the parameters for companies to become world class. Examples can be cited of Ikea, Apple etc. In this respect briefly narrate the factors that affect quality of products manufactured by companies like Ikea, Apple etc.
3.a. Assuming that you are the Operations Manager of an automobile manufacturer, implementing Fault Tree Analysis. Briefly explain the steps involved in the implementation
3.b. With reference to you being an Operations Manager implementing Fault Tree Analysis, explain how is it differ from FMECA?
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Global Retailing
1. What is the reason a huge retailer like IKEA is investing 500 million Euros in its new outlet in Noida?
2. You are supposed to set up a concept store for jewellery? What is the kind of display that you can think of to increase the sale of this jewellery?
3. Case Study
Nestle to invest Rs5K Cr in India by 2025: CEO Global food and beverages conglomerate Nestle SA is planning to invest Rs5,000 crore in India over the next three and a half years, Chief Executive Officer Mark Schneider said on Friday."On top of that, if we see opportunities for merger and acquisition, we will be happy to explore those," he said.
The investment will be on capex (capital expenditure), setting up plants, and expanding the product portfolio of the company. Nestle operates nine plants in India and is looking at new locations to set up more manufacturing units.
The investment, subject to clearances and approvals, will help in creating jobs.
Sharing the investment plans of the Indian market, which is among Nestle's top 10, Schneider, in a media round table, said: "The plan compares with the Rs8, 000 crore over the past 60 years after we started manufacturing in this country," he said.
Nestle has been present in India for over 110 years. This investment is also for development work, brand building, etc, Schneider said.
In the company had announced an investment of Rs2, 600 crore to augment its and for its factory in Sanand, Gujarat. The maker of KitKat recently entered the pet-food segment in the country with Purina Petcare.
Nestlé India Chairman and Managing Director Suresh Narayanan said accelerating the core business of the company would be a focus area."(The plan) has three pivots, one of which is continuing the strong momentum of growth the company has had in the last 22 quarters," Narayanan said.
Questions:
a. How does Nestle plan to expand in India? What is the strategy and how would it help India in its growth
b. What are Nestles plans for increasing its basket of products? How long has Nestle been present in India and what are its plans?
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