Entr Exam Case

Question 1.

Founded in 1988, Datavantage is a retail technology company that helps retail chains worldwide to gain competitive advantage with complete field management retail solutions. Datavantage develope a series of choices for retailers in the world, like specialty retail, general merchandise retail, grocery, department stores, convenience stores, drugstores and others.

Datavantage's success was its foresight of necessities for market success. They could see that to last long in the market, they needed new strategy to survive and sustain. Becoming a company that makes software was only a beginning before being successful. The creation of Store 21, being a complete store management system that provides different kind of service was a huge hit on the market. Besides makings software, they make strong relationship with customers. Also they have a strong sales force and build very good reputation on their services in the market. Also Marvin and Chaz consider XBR that it has the potential in the loss prevention market for retail industry, which helps others quickly identify fraud transactions. It is a low cost but a guaranteed return investment for them. In the beginning they just wants to keep their product and service simple, then they start to improve by giving high quality product and service. That’s success after they push their new strategy to control their own future; moreover with the control of XBR, they became very competitive in the software market.

        The 8 dimensions we can distinguish Datavantage from Entrepreneurial Focus from Administrative (Traditional Management) Focus. That includes strategic orientation, commitment to opportunity, commitment of resources, control of resources, management culture, reward philosophy, growth orientation and entrepreneurial culture.

For strategic orientation it is mostly driven by perception of opportunity. The business field of Datavantage changes fast in the industry and market. They do not have exact business plan because they adapt fast according to market. They have more opportunities and chances of innovation when more problems occur. That is why Datavantage are driven by perception of opportunity.

For commitment to opportunity it is evolutionary with long duration. They hold to every opportunity but it is not compulsory. For example, they created Store 21 and keep it very profitable and long until the next innovation occurs. Basically they created something and last it very long until they can evolution it to the next level.

For commitment of resources they have many stages with minimal exposure. Their business is focusing on software and consulting so they do not meet administrative focus. They have different kinds of products and services not just one product so they are more likely to be entrepreneurial focus.

For control of resources they belong to ownership or employment of required resources. They most important resources they owned are the software systems and their employee. Datavantage is a small company so they can fully maintain themselves and employees.

For management structure it is flat with multiple informal networks. The decision-making is decentralized and each manager has his or her own authority. Other manger can decide besides Chaz and Marvin. They delegate the tasks accordingly but overall, they still want to gain fully control of everything and set fixed areas of responsibility for the employee.