Apollo Tech Solutions Case Study $-$ Part Three

Sam Arnott was looking forward to his annual summer break and

everything seemed to be going well with Project Moon. The analysts,

working with their counterparts from Apollo, had amassed a huge

amount of internal data and were studiously working their way through it$.$

Allen had appointments for initial interviews with all the senior managers

that needed to be seen and together with her consultant colleague had

arranged telephone conferences with Apollo Advance$$s main customers.

The attendees for the first workshop, due to be held the week of Arnott$$s

return from holiday, had been chosen and Klingner had promised that

one of their ICT experts would be available to attend the critical first two

workshops. Just as Arnott was about to leave on the Friday afternoon,

Allen came to see him $$just to check that he would be available on his

mobile where he was going$.$ Arnott made it clear that in his absence$,$ all

queries should be directed to Jill Davy.

At the start of week four, Arnott returned refreshed from his holiday and

was looking forward to the first workshop at the end of the week. He

called in Davy to check on progress. When she arrived to see him she

seemed a bit nervous, especially when he asked her how things were

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going. It transpired that some of the critical data about customers for the

first workshop looking at $$where are we now?$$ was not available. This

was the task allocated to one of the inexperienced analysts as Allen had

assumed that this would be a relatively straightforward task. All the

analyst had to do was to ask the respective sales managers for three

sets of figures for each customer for the last three years: total sales,

sales by product line and total gross margin.

While all the sales managers in AA who were asked for this information,

diligently gave some figures, it became clear that some of these were

estimates $($as managers didn$$t have any accurate figures$)$ and those that

were based on real information used different methods to calculate sales

and gross margin. Some sales were booked only when the money was

received by Apollo and others when contracts were signed with an

agreed fee, for example. Gross margin was even more complicated as

just about every customer contract was calculated differently from those

including only the cost of providing the product and to those including

varying levels of overheads as well. Of more concern, Davy had only

spotted the large discrepancies in the data late the previous week, when

she had asked the analyst for the information.

This problem was a legacy of the way the Apollo Advance business had

been built up over the years, with many personnel joining Apollo from the

acquired businesses. They had got used to $$doing things their own way$.$

Arnott soon realised that was going to be a major obstacle to progress

and told Davy to quickly convene a meeting of her fellow commercial

accountants to try and find a common methodology of working out these

key figures. He also insisted that Allen should be involved as it was

partly Ferguson & Co$$s fault that this issue had not been highlighted

earlier because of the inexperience of the analyst. Davy and Allen were

to report back to him by the end of the week with a solution. He then

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contacted Klingner and asked for his advice regarding the impending

workshop.

Klingner$$s view was that the workshop should go ahead as it was

important to maintain momentum and he also didn$$t want to signal to

those outside the project team that there were issues. Klingner

convinced Arnott that they could work with the provisional figures that

Davy and Allen had promised him. Moreover, the focus of the workshop

was less about actual answers but more about how the attendees $($some

of Apollo Advance$$s senior managers$)$ viewed the business and how

they responded to the challenges made by the industry expert from

Ferguson & Co$.$ So preparation for the workshop continued. Arnott

hoped that this was the only issue he had to deal with that Monday

morning. It was not to be$.$ His PA came in and said that four senior

managers from AA who had not been invited to the workshop had

individually asked to get a full briefing from him on the project. He was

reluctant to do this but realised that at least one meeting with these

individuals was needed, so he told his PA to set up the sessions in the

next couple of weeks.

While some in Apollo felt they were not being consulted enough, he also

had to deal with more communication issues at the afternoon Executive

Board meeting. He had hoped to give a positive report on progress but

before he could start Irvine $($CEO$)$ complained that in the last three

weeks, Klingner had insisted on seeing him every time he came to the

head office, which was once a week. McPherson also said$268$that both

Klingner and Allen had tried to have $$brief chats$$ to update him. Both

asked Arnott