Case study : Grey hound/laidlaw/First group

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111 RAUT PRATIK
112 SAWANT NIKHILESH
113 SAWANTBHOSLE SAURABH
114 SETHI ANKUR SURESH
115 SHAH ANKIT
116 SHAH ATIT
117 SHAH VANDIT MEHUL
118 SHAHA SAHIL SANDIP
119 SINGH KUMARSAMBHAVA
120 SINGH THAKUR VIKRAM SATPAL
121 VIJAN DEVRISHI

Greyhound Case Study

Introduction
Founded in 1914 by a Swedish immigrant Carl Eric Wickman, Greyhound Lines Inc., today, is the
largest provider of intercity bus transportation, serving more than 3,800 destinations across North
America with a modern, environmentally friendly fleet. It has become an American icon, providing
safe, enjoyable and affordable travel to nearly 18 million passengers each year in the United States
and Canada. Greyhound is currently owned by FirstGroup plc, the leading transport operator in the
United Kingdom and North America.
History
Greyhound Lines, Inc., American corporation that has provided the major intercity bustransportation in
the United States and Canada. Greyhounds headquarters are in Dallas, Texas.The intercity bus
operators Eric Wickman and Orville S. Caesar joined forces, acquired financing, and merged
several bus companies into the Motor Transit Management. A network of lines quickly spread across
the country, through purchase of existing companies and inauguration of new lines. In 1930 Motor
Transit officially became Greyhound Corporation, with the running dog as its trademark. By 1933
Greyhound had 40,000 route miles (65,000 km). In 1961, however, a policy decision was made to
diversify, and in the succeeding decades the company became a conglomerate, expanding into
several new products and services, Greyhounds business operations became international.
In the early 1980s deregulation of the bus transit industry caused Greyhound Corporation to drop
many of its local bus routes, isolating many small towns in rural United States. In 1987 the Greyhound
Corporation (which was later renamed Greyhound Dial Corporation), based in Phoenix, Arizona, sold
its historic bus operations. Greyhound Lines, Inc., based in Dallas, became an independent
corporation devoted entirely to intercity bus transportation. In 1999 Greyhound merged with the
Canadian bus company Laidlaw, Inc., which was subsequently purchased in 2007 by the British
transit operator FirstGroup PLC.

Problems identified
The following major problems have been identified after analysing the case study:
Lesser demand for bus travel
Over the years, the usage of buses for travelling has reduced owing to increase in automobile
ownership and decreased airline fares. From 1960 to 1994, the industrys share of interstate
travel dropped from 30% to approximately 6% of the traffic.
Bankruptcy
Greyhound had filed for bankruptcy protection in 1991 as it was suffering from high debts
since 1987. This was augmented by two violent strikes in 1989 wherein some bus drivers
were shot dead.
Poor HR policies
When Schmieder and Doyle took over Greyhound in 1991, they came up with a plan which
called for significant cost cutting by dropping routes, reducing the fleet and even firing the
employees. Also they spent a lot of money for non-value adding activities such as decorating
the office interiors, first class travel & expensive resorts, hiring consultants & executive search
firms, etc. As a result of such poor policies, Greyhound had to bear the consequences in the
future.
Gloomy customer service
As part of the cost cutting measures undertaken by Schmieder and Doyle, many employees
were fired while many others left the organization due to poor HR policies. The bus terminals
were thus staffed with part-time workers and customer service associates. These part-time
associates were not taking work seriously, had lack of knowledge about the processes and at
times even made fun of the customers. Thus the overall customer service became pretty
gloomy.
Weak financial performance
Greyhound had negative stockholders equity in 2002 and 2003. This clearly showed how
weak the financial position of the company was.
Incorrect strategy
Until the early 1990s, Greyhound tried to be more like an airline by offering reservation
systems and capacity-fixed travel. But the consumers thoroughly rejected such concepts and
brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy.
Improper IT implementation
Greyhounds IT based reservation system called Trips was developed & deployed in very
stringent timelines. As a result, the quality of the system got sacrificed. The system worked
very slowly, had disorganised user interfaces, confusing navigation paths and also crashed
many times. Because of such issues in the reservation system, passengers had to wait for
long for getting their tickets and at times were even manual tickets. This led to passengers
missing their connections and competitors luring them.
Poor backend IT infrastructure
For many years, the Trips IT reservation system made use of outdated technology servers
and network infrastructure. Also the system was deployed across only 22% of the locations.
Improper segmentation & targeting
Greyhound was not able to properly segment and target its customer base. As a result, it
began losing out customers to its rivals.

Proposed solutions
Based on the above problems identified, the following solutions are proposed:
Create demand for bus travel
Greyhound should introduce quality service to its passenger at reasonable rates as compared
to its competitors and the airlines industry.
Promotional strategies
Greyhound should offer different promotional schemes in different geographies and different
customer segments after doing proper data mining & analysis.
Better human relations
The organization should develop good human relations with its employees. It should try to
retain talent and reward its employees based on merit.
Customer focus
Customer should be the prime focus of any company. If customers are satisfied & happy with
the services of the company, then only can the business sustain its operations.
Thorough financial analysis
The company management should base their decision or any plan of action only after
conducting a thorough financial study of the matter in hand.
IT implementation and change management
Greyhound should have implemented its IT systems after conducting a proper analysis of the
technology & the software provided by the vendors. Also it should have defined proper
Service Level Agreements (SLA) with its IT solution service provider. These measures would
have ensured the quality of the implementation as well as optimized the costing of the project.
Strong IT infrastructure
Greyhound should completely automate its reservation system rather than providing computer
based reservation at some places and manual at others. It should have setup strong IT
infrastructure to handle the business transactions load.
Proper segmentation & targeting
The management should have analyzed the passenger data thoroughly using data analytics.
Subsequently they should have properly segmented the customers based on various
segmentation variables like geography, demographics, etc. and then targeted the appropriate
customer segments.


Conclusion
While implementing IT system check whether the customer is ready for it and wants it.In short never
lose customer focus.Also financial prudence is of atmost importance while taking any decision.
References
https://www.greyhound.com/