Case Analysis Example: Aegis Corporation

Aegis was formed in 1995 by Gretchen L. Jahn and Justin O. Neway to provide process manufacturing software and consulting services to pharmaceutical and biotech manufacturers. The Aegis product helped managers see what was going on during the manufacturing process. The software was also able to allow users to connect to multiple databases simultaneously including electronic data formats and manual inputs taken from paper records and assemble the data. Aegis product, in addition could also allow the user to develop models to evaluate the performance of specific manufacturing processes. Also, there was the need for Aegis Corporation to form alliances with other corporations to see the marketability of its product.

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Aegis formed alliances to ensure that its product was able to be sold out by these alliances that will combine its product with it. To achieve this, its convenient strategy was to incorporate itself in other products offered by other corporations. The agent also sought to partner with companies which had succeeded and its outcome transparency had been seen. It formed an alliance with Honeywell POMS that made POMS a reseller of the Aegis discoverant product. This ensured that by combining the products it would lead to enhancement of each product having the recognition in the pharmaceutical market, and this would help in Aegis gaining credibility and visibility. In addition, the Aegis focused on research of its product. To ensure this, it had to partner with firm corporations which had developed in research especially in pharmaceutical. The companies also had low sales including those from the individuals whom Aegis had worked partnered with. Therefore instead of companies getting interested in Aegis products offer solutions, they were looking for ways in which they would internally improve their products.

Aegis employed the strategy of competitiveness and strong decision-making. In this way, it looked for corporations which were so competitive and which were able to have strong decision-making techniques to ensure that better decisions would be discovered in as far as its product was concerned. Furthermore, Aegis looked for people who had very successful careers and who had also worked for huge companies and had different skills from different areas of their specialization. This ensured that its product was in the hands of experts who were able to promote its marketability.

After a year of partnership and alliance of Aegis with Honeywell and Rockwell, these two companies did not produce any sale of Aegis product. This was due to many factors which Jahn Beg found out. First, companies were struggling because of the economy. Therefore these companies were not able to spend money to make sure that their processes were updated. It also became very hard for these companies to upgrade their software or even their production. Due to this, they decided to reduce expenses by cutting budget and purchase due to the shrinking market. Therefore Aegis products found themselves in the category of items which were not essential to the operations at that particular time.

Another important aspect was the relationship and behavior of communication systems and performance metrics which were set up. Communication was an essential tool between the alliances. Aegis might not have been effectively communicating with its alliance partners. Even though they had specifications on how to meet their expectations, their communication was just confined to situations where one side needed clarification on an issue. Communication between these alliances was cordial, and there was no evidence that the partners had the flow of communication unless when there was a certain problem to be addressed. Therefore, the partner companies set their agendas for sale opportunities.

Even though initially there was contact between engineers to make sure that the technologies were compactible, most communications occurred between sales teams and corporate management. After the loss of personnel, managers started to build high communications levels where they communicated weekly at the joint level which did not allow companies to set agendas and develop sales opportunities at the level that each alliance party needed. Also, the cultural fit that Aegis had with Honeywell POMS had few communication problems, and Aegis believed that they would share information well. Unfortunately, there became a hindrance when one of the Aegis primary contacts left Propack data handling and was taken over by someone who did not take a major role thereby frustrating the Aegis team. Therefore due to failure in communication, the companies focused more on their sales and neglected the Aegis products.

Due to the failure these alliances to sales of Aegis products, the company had to develop lots of options regarding these alliances. Jahn had to make a decision on which alliance strategy to take so as to ensure Aegis products are on sale. Aegis thought that it needed not to make any changes since these were difficult economic times and they had not given enough time for the alliances to produce sales. They also thought that they needed to improve communication and trust for each other with these alliances so as to keep the relationship strong through the hard times. Furthermore, they thought that they had given these alliances sufficient time to prove themselves and did not appear to be successful. One of the best considerations was, therefore, to focus the strength and energy to one alliance partner for successful marketing of the Aegis products.

Another option was to establish a relationship with other partners who were large enough to get the attention but this also would have the same problems as the other relationships it had, and this could also take time to develop. Furthermore, instead of terminating these two relationships, there was a need to restructure the relationships. Thus, being the option that the Aegis need to select since by noting the mistakes they had made, they might be able to carefully correct them. This might include changes in the contract with either Rockwell or Honeywell and their interactions with one another. They had to put together contracts with appropriate incentives to encourage sales. There being only forty employees, they can act as the encourager of sales. The Aegis had to clearly look for areas where they could get capital to finance the staffing resources.

In conclusion, Aegis Corporation, since its software sales fail due to lack of communication and economic difficulties, they need to come up with strong communication and partnership with its alliances to ensure that they communicate on a daily basis and also ensure that there is motivation between them in as much as economic difficulty is concerned. They need to embrace the current situation they are in especially since they can do very less to improve on economy.

References

Paul, O and Winn, J. ( Aegis Analytical Corporations Strategic Alliances, University of Denver