Company: Bigboli Ltd.

About:
Bigboli Ltd.; 40-year-old; leading offline marketplace company; operates as a chain
of display pavilions; targeted mainly at businesses and organizations; caters to
office automation products, housekeeping items, clothing, furnishing, sports,
automobiles, books & stationary, industrial & scientific, construction and building
maintenance related items etc.; established in 1975; caters to diversified categories
of business and institutional customers.
22 display pavilions; employee strength 1450; key competence: core team of
product category specialists and vendor management experts; Organizational
structure: based on functional roles and divided into verticals of supplier
management, product management, human resource, finance & accounts, MIS,
legal and strategy.
Characteristics: like trade fair pavilions; multiple showrooms of different product
categories; buyers come, decide on the product quantity, brand, supplier, variant
etc. and pay part money as advance; inventory in the showrooms is for display and
sample purpose only; nature of products: prices dont change frequently. Value
proposition: Quality goods at minimum possible price, which remain fixed for a
period of 4-6 months. Bigbolis vendor specialists decide on inclusion of products in
the catalogue based on customer inputs and product specialists define the technical
parameters of the products. Product prices are negotiated by Bigboli with eligible
suppliers through a rigorous and transparent process, takes few months to conclude
the final prices. Bigboli does the periodic update of technical specifications. Prices
modified periodically every 4-6 months, and new contracts are worked out with
suppliers. Able to sustain its differentiation its value proposition and outperforming
competitors in B2B space.
Strict compliance system for suppliers, required to adhere to detailed product
specifications, delivery schedules and service commitments, such as carry out the
fulfilment process within a time window of 5-20 days, which depends on the nature
of the product. Random check of supplier facilities, product tests and other possible
actions are followed to ensure good quality product. Any variance can result in
strong penalties for the suppliers. It has built a strong network of suppliers and
regular buyers covered by comprehensive legal contracts to avoid defaults.
Suppliers have adhered to this compliance system and sustained over time.
In 2004, Rattan Sinha as CIO championed IT enablement projects including
automation of supplier inclusion, e-procurement, finance & accounts and buyer
invoicing. In recent years it has been threatened by shifts in procurement strategies
of firms and organizations towards fully online, dynamic methods of price discovery.
In the customer retail market space, players like Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal etc. are
chasing offline retail players aggressively. Nilesh Kant has joined early last year as
CEO of the Bigboli. Kant earlier served as Chief Marketing Officer of a major online
service aggregator firm. Gaurav Singh, Chief Vendor Officer and Joseph, Chief
Product Officer along with Rattan Sinha, and other Heads (Finance, Legal, MIS etc.)
report to Sagar Chander, Deputy CEO. At present there are more than twenty
product categories and each category has several products. The head of category
team reports to Deputy Chief Product Officer who in turn reports to CPO.
Five months earlier, Kant has got approval to run its entire offering online wherein
B2B transactions can happen any time and price can be discovered dynamically.
The buyers can buy from an online product catalogue with offered prices from
suppliers, or call a tendering process online or run a reverse auction. The supplier
can change the price any time. Kant has also got go-ahead to spin off a new outfit
to run online B2B market place. The facility will be operated through Managed
Service Provider. Last month, a major Indian IT company has got into partnership to
develop, maintain and run Bigbolis B2B platform along with front end help desk for
technical complaints.
Kant is considering a strong CRM team to develop a large base of its buyers and
supplier and strengthen its brand.
Last week, Sukensy Consultancy has been hired to work on the roadmap ahead,
human resource strategy, new organisational structure, competency demands,
resource hiring, performance indicators in the proposed structure and detailed CRM
road map. Sukensy has been also tasked to suggest the road ahead for current
offline model and resource mobility between the two models. Kant is very keen to
go fully online and withdraw from offline model in 2-3 years because of massive
digitisation everywhere and specifically firm and organisations embracing digital
processes for efficiency and business facilitation systems getting more and more IT
enabled and integrated. Consider yourself to be the Project Manager of Sukensy
Consultancy who is entrusted with the responsibility of spearheading the
organisational changes for Bigboli. Present a detailed roadmap of the ideal business
strategy to be implemented in the next 3 years as per the above mentioned
business transformation requirements and aspirations of Bigboli.