1. BALAJI INSTITUTE OF
MODERN MANAGEMENT
ELEPHANTINE CASE STUDY
PRESENTED BY:-
Siddharth Banerjee
Prerna Maheshwari
Alisha William
Binu Krishnan
Varun Chakrawarty
Nikita Banerjee
2. Does your group think Elephantine was really
unlucky ? Why? Why not?
We don't think Elephantine was unlucky.
Rather we think they were negligent with many things-
• No proper market research
• No attention on STP (segmentation Targeting projection)
• They had product oriented approach
• No proper people management hence highly
unprofessionalism
• Lack of awareness creation program among the sales
employees.
• Lack of screening and testing of product
•They know their product is very competitive in the market
and they were so over confident but still after a failure in the
selling process they immediately sold their product with out
trying it again in different way
3. What do you think Whiz – Bang did to make it a roaring
success? Step by step process or activities.
Whiz Bang did a lot of different things which Elephantine
couldn’t do to make it a roaring success.
The difference makers were as follows:-
• They studied the pros and cons of the product with an open
mind
• They started with proper market research
• They were keen observer of STP. Customizing and enhancing
of product
• They did aggressive marketing.
• Effective and Efficient approach should be applied
• They understood the behaviour of consumer requirements (
consumer oriented approach)
• They implemented proper screening and testing of product.
•And they had a failure marketing model of the same product
before them and they successfully re-implement the marketing
strategy
4. Customers
Step by Step Actions
Company Competitor
Collaborat
ors
Market
Segmentation
Customer
acquisition
Customer
retention
Profits
Creating
Value
Capturing
Value
Sustaining
Value
Product &
service Place
Promotion
PRICING
Target
Market Selection
Product &
service
Positioning
Marketing Mix
5. What is wrong with Elephantine? What is right? If
any.
The idea behind creating the new product was right. But
as we know innovation and business analysis goes hand-
in-hand.
The flaws with Elephantine were:-
• They had autocratic style of decision making.
• They had excessive self-interest (Go sell it).
• They were over confident with their product.
6. Lack of
Core
Process
Unorganized People Process
Lack of Strategy
Process
Or
Lack of planning and
Execution
Ill-Execution &
Improper operation
process
The above flow chart stats that:
• Lack of core process
1. Lack of strategy process or Lack of planning and
Execution
2. Unorganized people process
3. Ill-execution process and improper operation process.
7. What concept or philosophy drove Elephantine
management? Whiz- Bang management.
Elephantine Management
• Product Concept Oriented.
• Customers needs were not considered. They
thought there product to be superior and thus would
sell automatically.
• Sales Manager wasn’t involved into decision making
while going forward with production
• they went for production without launching
prototype to get consumer feedback
• Sales team didn't make plan on monthly basis and
went forward for sales for 6 months
8. Whiz Bang Management
•They found an attractive market.
•Understood customer’s needs want and desire.
• Communicated effectively with customers
regarding the product
• All management departments worked in sync with
each other.
• Better understood product usefulness translating
it into a roaring success
•Provided customer satisfaction.
9. What do you think Elephantine learn any marketing
lesson? What marketing lesson did you learn? What
is the moral of the story?
MARKETING LESSONS that we learned from this case study
are as follows :
Always do extensive prior marketing research and product
testing before manufacturing and launching any product .
Innovative creation and business analysis should go hand in
hand.
Innovation is the biggest tool for providing education to
costumers. So that it seems attractive and get adopted by
costumers and provide a brand image.
MORAL LESSONS from this case study are :
Do not accept failure in prior stage of the competition
As in this product failed to satisfy the costumers needs
immediately and it was sold to other party which re-
implemented the business value cycle and earn profit.
10. Is the seller manager competent in his job not to get
firing from the management If so why?
•Firing the sales manager was wrong on the company
prospective as G.M was not able to explains prons and cons of
the product and hence proven to be inefficient.
•As the product was introduced in the market for the first time
so it was different on the part of sales people to sell the product
on the target.
•G.M is also equally responsible for the failure of the product
because as a leader he didn't take the responsibility to monitor
the performance of the sales team in a monthly basis.(As the
product was new)
• ‘Seller manager’ as a low level employee of the company G.M
have the full authority to fire him and here sales managers
calibre is also questionable but as we can’t really differentiate
the level of responsibility it will be unfair if the G.M is firing the
sales manager and this may give a negative impression in lower
level employees
11. If there anybody else in the management needs to
be fired If so who ? If not why not?
According to our group study in this case firing a particular
individual or a particular is never a option.
•As it was an organizational failure rather than an individual
failure every individual of the organization who involved is
this process is equally responsible.
•As this would bring a grim attitude in the organization and as
a group we believe Problems are Opportunities.
• The organization should have learnt from the mistake and
should learn not to give up in the prior stage of compaction.
