Case analysis of Vermont Teddy Bear company.

1. Vermont Teddy Bear Company
Surajram, Rajasekkaran, Sriram, Subh
raprathim, Kangkan, Sudarshan
, Vikram

2. Summary
• Company Background
– Estd. 1981
– Three product lines
• Teddy Bear
• Calyx Flowers
• PajamaGrams
– Bob Stetzel- joined in November 2009
– Bear-Gram service ( toll free number)
– ‘Simple pleasures’

3. Operations
• Peak sales at 3 periods during the year
– Valentine’s day
– Mother’s day
– Christmas
• Subdued sales during the rest of the year
• 7 IT employees- narrow expertise
– Non-standardized software languages
• Direct marketing ( Telephone, website, radio)

4. Strengths
• Strong core transaction processing infrastructure
• Strong password management
• Strong recovery mechanisms
• Strong internet connectivity
• Best-of-breed applications: Multiple software
packages

5. Issues at hand
• Insufficient documentation & standardization
• Inefficient change control mechanism
• Disorganized approach for support
• Unavailability of information regarding
resources and architecture
• Lack of Operational effectiveness
• Multiple one-off packages & middleware leading to a
fragmented enterprise system
• Unable to deliver customer requested enhancements

6. Issues at hand…
• Application developers inaccessible
• Delay in delivery of goods ( Hoodie-footie project)
• Irregular demand for goods
• Lack of familiarity with customer

7. Middleware
Inventory
management
Database
Accounting
RetailFusionRetail UniVerse
Platinum
IndustryOS

8. Timelines
February Valentine's day ( peak)
March- April Fix bugs that arose before Valentine’s day & laying out a priority plan
May Mother's day ( peak)
June- Novemeber Work on improving systems
December Christmas (peak)
Current stand-
•Development projects put on hold
•Minor tweaks in software being done to ensure smooth operation

9. Possible Solutions
Insufficient documentation & standardization
Inefficient change control mechanism
Disorganized approach for support
Unavailability of information regarding resources and architecture
Unable to deliver customer requested enhancements
Work on building a comprehensive document detailing architecture, list of
software packages, detailed log of revisions/ upgrades.
• Taking stock of own resources
• Protocols for implementing enhancements, maintenance & support

10. Possible Solutions
Lack of Operational effectiveness
Irregular demand for goods
Improve Ecommerce platform
• Better forecasting & SCM
• Better operational efficiency
• Better marketing

11. Possible Solutions
Fragmented IT system with multiple packages & complicated middleware
Use managed services to integrate the entire system
•Easier coordination between functions
•Standardization, resulting in easier maintenance
•Expensive & long-term
To being with, centralize database and standardize, so that
scalability will become easier when implementing managed
services

12. Database
Inventory
management
AccountingRetailManaged
Service2
Managed
Service3
Managed
Service1

13. Possible Solutions
Lack of familiarity with customer
Customer Relationship Management
•Infeasible since there is no interaction with end-customers
as most articles are gifted
Analytics
• Start mapping buyer information to learn patterns and
anticipate , start feeding it into the database that is being
centralized

14. Immediate solutions
1. Centralize database and standardize, so that
scalability will become easier when
implementing managed services
2. Start mapping buyer information to learn
patterns and anticipate , start feeding it into
the database that is being centralized
Long term- Managed services implementation