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 | The problem: The Minor Group has made a success of operations such at The Pizza Company, Swensen’s and Chicken Treat, but it faces tough competition from the likes of Pizza Hut and KFC. What should it do? |
The Minor Group and its flagship company The Pizza Company have successfully made their transition from a purely franchise food operator to an independently branded and owned business. Pizza accounts for half of the Group’s food revenues, and the Pizza Company is the market leader in Thailand.
However, the battle is far from over. Pizza is a very competitive market, with Pizza Hut and Narai Pizzeria pressing to expand both the market and their shares. The remaining operations of the Minor Group are still franchised. Swensen’s and Sizzler are popular only in Thailand, with few operations internationally. Chicken Treat has not been as successful penetrating the market as expected. The Burger King franchise is new but shared with Central Food Group and is currently a small operation here.
What should the Minor Group do now to survive and prosper? With limited resources compared to some of its competitors, how should it focus its management and financial energies?
Giving up Sunday golf
On an August weekend, Minor Group company executives gathered to consider some advice from consultants. Normally, the likes of Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey, or The Monitor Company would be able to help them solve their problem. But the "consultants" advising the Minor Group executives on that day were not charging $2000 per day per head. They were "free".
 The distinguished panel of judges had a difficult time indeed. |
The consultants were from ten university undergraduate programmes from Thailand and Singapore. Each year, the Thammasat Undergraduate Business Challenge (TUBC) is held as an English language based case competition to see which team can come up with the best solution to a business problem. This year’s problem was what should the Minor Group do at this stage of their business development in a competitive environment.
Last year, Advance Information Service was facing a similar problem with the entry of a new competitor, Orange, into the mobile phone market. Executives from AIS came to hear what the students had to say about how the company could protect its market share lead.
Why would executives give up their Sunday round of golf just to listen to students who don’t even have degrees yet? The answer is two-fold: first, they can learn something; and second, these companies have a real commitment to developing the human resources of the future.
Market leaders in the food business are successful because of the talent of people and their ability to push their products into the number one position. Remember, the food business is very competitive. There are many substitutes. The products do not magically pull themselves through the marketplace like Microsoft Windows. The Minor Group believes people are its number one resource and competitive advantage. Perhaps some of these students will end up working for the Minor Group one day.
Secrets of success
One of the important keys to the success of TUBC is the business case problem itself. What will the Minor Group do now, protect the Pizza Company’s lead or grow Sizzler faster? It’s real. It’s significant. It’s now.
Acharn Kritika Kongsompong is Associate Director of Thammasat’s BBA International Program and is an advisor to TUBC. She points out that the selection of the case "is not solely TUBC’s choice. We have to get the green light from the company. The company has to participate with us to give us the inside information as much as possible. The nature of the case should not be just marketing related, or just finance related, but cover all the aspects of the organisation."
This year’s event was held at the Amari Watergate and started Friday, August 23rd, late afternoon. Each team of four was essentially sequestered from Friday till Sunday. Students were not able to use outside resources except for a fixed and scheduled time when they could access the Internet to do research. The ten teams were organised into three groups to compete Sunday morning in the preliminary competition.
Weeks before, TUBC had recruited executives from different industries and academics from different institutions to act as the judges for the competition. These people also gave up their Sunday round of golf. Before the competition started, judges were counselled to act normally, that is, to forget the advisors were students and treat them as real consultants.
According to the competition format, each student team gave its presentation, followed by a long question and answer session. In all, each team was on the hot seat for about an hour. At the conclusion of the preliminary round, three winners, one from each of the three groups, were selected to present for the final round on Sunday afternoon.
 The winning team members proudly display their award. From left, team members Tiyasak Ukritnukun and Jamsharan Pudondsha, Dr Kulpatra Siridom, Acharn Kritika Kongsompong, team members Sirimas Anatayakul and Suprinya Sachded. |
The final round was a session open to the public in which members of the audience had an opportunity to grill the student teams with their questions as well. This year’s winner was the Thammasat team.
However, there were no losers in this competition. Everybody won. Phanthipha Jongphae, a member of one of the teams that didn’t make it to the final round, said "I really like the competition. I think the competition gave me more experience to understand about business." Her teammate, Thomas Hansen said, "What was really fun is you get to employ, in a really practical way, the theory you learn at school and be evaluated by actual business people."
Asked whether this team of four would like to enter a competition like this again, even if it meant staying up until 4:00 am working, the answer was a unanimous and resounding "absolutely yes".
What then was the secret to success? In discussions with several people, including the winning team, two factors emerged. First is familiarity with the case solution methodology.
Some business case studies are called "directed", which is where students are given the problem to be solved. That was the situation in this competition. Other cases require students to figure out what the real problem is and how to solve it.
In either situation, solving a case is like solving a crime. You need to examine the facts, find the clues and understand the motives before you can determine who’s guilty or innocent. That takes practice.
The second factor is teamwork. Tiyasak Ukritnukun from the winning team described it as "division of work. A lot of us don’t have the best background in finance, but maybe one of us does."Some of us are weaker in marketing, and some of us are stronger. We put our efforts toward what we are good at individually, and then we work together as a team to come up with an overall strategy that is defendable."
Behind the scenes
As with any serious competition, there is a coach somewhere in the background. There are many strategies to coaching but coaches have one thing in common. They like to win.
Acharn Michael Pfahl coached this year’s team from Bangkok University. When asked about his game plan, he said "I decided to build a team based on a set of strengths. The first strength was presentation; second, the ability to create and think of a strategy based on the information presented; and third, people who can work as a team … egos can be there but they have to be under control."
For the team skills needed in the competition, he said, "the first skill I wanted to develop was organisation. I gave them a white board and had them produce a flow chart of everything they wanted to plan for in the case they were studying. Next, we talked about how to work under pressure beyond the pressure they got in the classroom.
"They not only had to get their own opinions out, but to integrate the opinions of other people, and organise them ahead of time in a way that made sense. They had to create spreadsheet templates so that they could plug in the data that they got, be able to analyse it and act on it."
Individual analytical skills are also very necessary for the competition. Acharn Michael said "Systematic thinking and the tools that we teach in management and marketing now take on added importance. The team has to focus on the question the case writers were asking and apply the proper tools to answer that question. I don’t think there is a single discipline that this case competition doesn’t touch. It’s very integrated."
Regarding the benefits of this kind of competition, his final response was "I think these kinds of competitions foster that innovative thinking that this country needs."
Universities have made an investment to support and participate in the TUBC competition. There is room and board, transportation and an entrance fee for each team. What do the universities get out of it in return?
"We would like our students to apply the knowledge they have learned from their classes to solve the real life case problem," explained Dr Siriwan Ratanakarn, Director of Bangkok University’s International College which, since its inception four years ago has been sending a team. "They get to know the students from the other universities, and how they organise their extra-curricular activities."
What strategies did the students suggest that the Minor Group had not considered before? Perhaps, not all that many. It would be unreasonable to expect students to come up with a truly innovative detailed strategy in 48 hours. The management of the company is thinking about strategic alternatives almost every day of the week all year long.
However, the Minor Group executives did gain some important insights. Students are a significant part of the Minor Group’s target market. As the students discussed their strategies, they talked about the importance of health in choosing a food product. They talked about food cooked in oil as "junk food". Finding out what customers think about your products and your competition’s is never a waste of time for top management of any company.
Extraordinary Group
 TUBC president Thapanee Anatachat |
TUBC is an extraordinary group of Thammasat undergraduates who have the "right stuff". Certainly Thammasat University is the underwriter of the competition and will exert some budgetary control. But the success or failure of the event is under the control of the students.
Like any serious organisation, TUBC has a president. Her name is Thapanee Anantachat. She is short, looks a lot younger than she is, and is firmly in control. She is a CEO in the making. She and her group of seniors form the core management team of TUBC. Younger classmen and classwomen are recruited to help with the actual production.
Thapanee started out, as did the rest of her team, as an under-classwoman helper. They had to prepare nametags, mail invitation letters, take names for the competition’s registration and help "doing whatever needed to be done". In this way, they learned how the competition operated. When she started, only about five schools competed.
Now that this year’s event is over, Thapanee will assemble her team and review what went right and what needs improvement. This year, twenty-six invitations were extended to schools to participate, twelve responded positively, and ten actually showed up. They will reformulate the strategy to expand the competition to more of Southeast Asia’s universities and increase the participation of schools now on the list. They will then organise the election of Thapanee’s successor and transition of leadership. If only the real world was so well organised!
TUBC is a success story on many levels. It is an outstanding example of a win/win experience for all participants. It shows what can be accomplished in a collaboration between business and education, which this country needs more of to exploit Thailand’s human resource potential. It demonstrates the leadership and management capability of the country’s young people, who are very much under-utilised.
terryfrd@ksc15.th.com |