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Case Study

Intelligent SA

By John Stuart Read, Anne-Valérie Ohlsson and François Jäger

7 pages

November 2007

Reference: IMD-3-1912

Intelligent SA was founded in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1998. It specialized in providing companies with complementary solutions to their existing planning and customer relationship management software. From the start, Intelligent was able to sell solutions to blue chip companies, including Philips, Toshiba, Sara Lee and Unilever. The company had grown rapidly, and through conservative management had managed to survive the dot com bubble. It was now time for the start-up to move out of its conservative mode and look at how it could best capture the US$70 million supply chain software market. Three options were possible: 1) Find a larger company to partner (probably be acquired by) and grow with; 2) Grow organically; 3) Raise institutional money to become a larger independent player, potentially acquiring other small players in the space to gain critical mass.

Learning Objective

Look at how start-ups choose growth strategies. Assess the best growth opportunity depending on company size, location, market and objectives.

Keywords

Start-up, Growth, Supply Chain, Enterprise Resource Planning, Vendor-managed Inventory

Settings

2007

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

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