Docs for tomorrow's meeting

[Michelle Toth]

Hi Everyone,

Hope you all had a good weekend.

I wanted to send out my questionnaire and innovation idea write up before our meeting tomorrow.  I think this was a good exercise and it will be really helpful to see what everyone comes back with.

I'm going to spend some more time today on the project.  I feel like it might be helpful to come up with an outline for our written sections, and write down some of the key exhibits that we want to include (Dr. Crane mentions the exhibits he wants to see sporadically through class).  I think this might help us organizationally to be on the same page while writing our individual sections.

See you tomorrow,

Michelle

[Phu Son Le]

Hey Guys,

 

Great insight Michelle.  I’ll have my findings from the interviews in chicken scratches now and hope to write it up. 

 

I’ve started to piece together a draft form of the presentation.  The write up on the my section will be based on the slides.  For me, doing the slides first gave me a template of key points I hope to address so that I have some organization for the writeup.  Comments are welcome.  You guys can add your pieces into the PPT as appropriate.  Thanks.

 

Regards,

Son

[Phu Son Le]

Hey guys,

 

Here is my questionnaire results. 

 

Regards,

Son

[Caroline McCann]

Hello Group,

Attached our my documents.

-Caroline

[Huy Tran]

I guess I will attach my stuff as well...

[Christopher M Harcourt]

My documents- I wrote up the Company analysis in bulletpoint format first, and have not finished transferring it over to paragraph format yet.

-Chris

On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 12:33 PM, Caroline McCann <mcca...@husky.neu.edu> wrote:

[Phu Son Le]

Sorry guys just leaving now.  By the time I get there you guys would be done.  Sorry for last minute bail out.

Sent from my Motorola ATRIX 4G on AT&T

[Christopher M Harcourt]

Here is the FULLY Compiled Questionnaire results
-Chris

[Phu Son Le]

Hi All,

 

I took a shot at the mascot advertisement campaign.  I’ve added a few more slides.  Chris, you can add to it when you have completed the fun foody cartoon characters.  Also, here is the financial analysis of this option as one of our innovative solutions.  Let me know what you guys think.

 

Regards,

Son

[Phu Son Le]

Hi All,

 

Michelle, Caitlin I took a shot at your pieces in trying to figure out a cost of leveraging existing brand power.  Since you are the subject matter experts in this area, please feel free to add anything I may have incorrectly stated.  Attached is the updated PPT and cost analysis.  It appears the cost for mascot and leveraging are very similar.  It was not intentional rather it happened to turn out that way.  This is not set in stone rather a starting point for discussion.  Questions/comments are welcome.

 

Redesign packaging is a bit tough to put some cost benefit analysis together.  I think it touches on COGS and so increases the margins (from 27% to some higher number), but putting together the logic is a bit tricky.  Huy, Caroline, have you guys made any headway here?  I’ll try to think about this one more too.

 

I think we should definitely meet at our regular day and time Monday 11/28 @5:30pm in the same room?  What do you guys think?Thanks.

[Caitlin Carrick]

Hi all, 

Son, that looks great, thanks for sending. I have attached my slides to the powerpoint. I didn't go into the full analysis of increasing online presence yet because I don't think we chose it as one of our "optimal growth plan strategies." I know we chose leveraging existing brands and the mascot but what other strategies (if any) did we choose? 

If I should go into further analysis I definitely can do so. How many options do we want to choose as part of our optimal growth strategy? Increasing online presence would not be terribly expensive and would certainly benefit Smucker's but I want to make sure we are on the same page with how options we are going with. 

I am free to meet tomorrow at 5:30 pm and think that it would be a good idea to get together and go through the presentation/make edits as appropriate. 

Also, I am going to pick up Uncrustables for the class and bring them to the presentation on Tuesday. I'll bring napkins/small plates and a knife so we can share them amongst the class. 

Thanks! 

Caitlin 

[Phu Son Le]

Hi Caitlin,

 

From what I understand, the top three (among our portfolio of innovative strategic options) are: (1) Mascot, (2) Leveraging existing brands and (3) Reduce packaging.  All please correct if I am wrong.  I think you are right that increasing online presence is not one of our “optimals”.  I think I only added an online order management system (under the leveraging brands option) to handle the gift package idea that Michelle wrote in her piece (I put cost of $200k).  So I don’t think you need to do a full financial analysis of the online presence strategic option.

 

Good idea to bring the Uncrustables…we’ll seduce and fatten the professor up!

 

Regards,

Son

[Huy Tran]

Hi guys,

I thought we had discussed after class on Tuesday that our online suite would be the 3rd option; this was because of how Dr. Crane expressed interest in this idea when we had our group meeting with him, and how we thought it would be a good idea to have Smuckers go more tech. 

[Phu Son Le]

OK, then that is my mistake, online suite it is then.  Does everybody else concur? This would mean we need a detailed financial analysis.  Also, we should try to create a new website (not actual website, but a mock website in PPT or something) to show how Smuckers can revamp their website.  It would be good to show a before and after shot.  What do you guys think?  Huy/Caitlin/Caroline can you spearhead this?  I forget who is the expert in online suite presence, sorry.

 

Regards,

Son

[Caroline McCann]

Hi Group,

Attached is the updated PowerPoint.  I added a slide on Industry Trends and also added a slide on packaging changes.  We can take it out if it is not needed. 

Also, Crane mentioned we should include the Innovation Heuristic & the Innovation Screener on a slide.  Can you someone add those?  I cannot seem to locate my copies of them.

I can meet tomorrow at 5:30pm.  See you then!


-Caroline

[Huy Tran]

Hey guys,

I added the innovation heuristic and screener on some slides. 

As for making a mock website, I don't feel like we need to do that because our online suite not only includes a new website for kids, but also includes the online consumer panel as well as the eCookbooks/smartphone apps. If we go ahead and make a design for the new website then we would have to also make another design for the interface for our smartphone apps as well which wouldn't be worth it in my opinion due to the limited time and number of slides. From class I get the feeling he's not as much into being flashy but more into the detail and explanations behind ideas instead. That's just my opinion though.

I won't be able to make it to the 5:30 meeting tomorrow though because of another group project meeting I had scheduled a while back.

I'm still working with Michelle on the competition slide so once that's done it will be added as well.

Thanks,

Huy

[Phu Son Le]

Huy et All,

After thinking about it more after my last email, I agree with you concerning the mock website.  We don't need to create but we should do a financial analysis though.  What do you guys think?

Regards,
Son

[Michelle Toth]

Hi Everyone,

Sorry for just getting on this email chain.  Everything looks really good so far.  I just got home, so Huy and I will send our competition slide at some point tonight and I'll go through and see if there's anything else I can add.  

I do agree that we should have some financials (nothing too extensive) for each of our innovation options. 

I can meet tomorrow, but I know a few people said they have conflicts.  Are there enough of us available at 5:30 tomorrow to make it worthwhile?

Thanks,

Michelle

[Caitlin Carrick]

Hi all, 

I agree that we shouldn't make a mock website/app but I will work on the financials tonight and will have a slide completed hopefully by the end of the night to send out. 

I think we should go through and see who can make the meeting/who cannot make it. Once we have the numbers, we can see if it makes sense to still meet. 

So far: 

yes: 

Michelle 

Caroline 

Son

Caitlin

no: 

Huy 

-Caitlin 

[Jenny Robertson]

hi everyone, 

I am back in Boston on monday night, do we plan to meet again before the presentation?  Should I be preparing anything?

I agree with Huy on the flashy vs. content, but that's also just an opinion.

Thanks, 

Jenny 

[Michelle Toth]

I've attached the updated presentation including the competition slides.  

I switched around a few things and added some organizational slides that I think make it flow a little better, but they can definitely be changed if you all don't agree.  I moved "Enterprise Analysis" down on the contents slide in the beginning, so that we go in depth on Smucker's after the industry/competition overview. 

I also added a contents slide before the innovation section because I feel like this is where the bulk of the presentation time should be spent.  We should really try to make these innovation slides awesome because that's where we put the most work in (and that's really what this project is about).  

I'm available tomorrow after work to finish up anything we need to.

Thanks for all of your hard work on this everyone!

Michelle

[Phu Son Le]

Caitlin,

 

You can use the financial template I put together if you’d like.  I think you would need a cost to setup an online suite (initial startup cost as well as recurring maintenance cost).  Then you would need to project how much increase in business you think we could generate by having the online suite.  We can bounce ideas in tomorrow’s meeting if you’d like.

[Caitlin Carrick]

Son, thank you, I started using the financial template to put the cost analysis slides together. I'm going to bring it tomorrow and we can work through it to make sure I'm doing it correctly/everything is all set. 

Jenny, I hope you had a great trip! It looks like we are meeting tomorrow at 5:30 and we can bring you up to speed then. For the customer analysis slide I used some information from the write up you sent us before you left. We aren't using the innovation idea you were assigned to awhile ago so you won't need to create a slide for the innovation. 

Michelle, I noticed how you started adding your notes to the bottom of your slides, I started adding my notes and will have them finalized tomorrow. It's a good idea if everyone wants to add their notes as well, I think it will make presenting more efficient/easier. 

See you tomorrow! 

-Caitlin 

[Phu Son Le]

Michelle, I like the top 3 strategies slide after our portfolio of innovative ideas.  Yes, I agree, we can re-arrange the slides more during our meeting.  I have some ideas to run by your guys.  As for the Enterprise Analysis, it is really all the slides after the company background (company background is really part of enterprise analysis really).  It is basically everything about the company (who are they, what business are they in, how are they performing etc).  At least that is my understanding.

 

Definitely agree with the comment of making the “innovation slides awesome”.  Chris, will you present some of your fun foody characters on Monday.  I’d like to include that in the slides.

 

Caitlin, we can go through the financial analysis of the online suite and get agreement on the team that the logic is sound (as well as the other two options’ cost benefit analysis).

[Huy Tran]

Hi all,

just made a few minor changes to 2 of the slides, first was on the competition slide I added ($M) for the Revenue/Employee heading, and second was I changed the wording on the increasing online presence slide to say "Creating 'apps' for Smucker's for use in smartphones and tablets" as opposed to iphones and ipads to be more general.

Very minor details but I hope it helps.

Thanks,

Huy

[Huy Tran]

Hey guys,

 

I don't need to meet with my other group tonight so I will be available to meet up for this.

Do you guys want to plan on meeting at 312 Ell again at 5:30 or so? If that room is taken again then we can go across the hall at 302 Ell (combo 5431).

 

Thanks,

Huy

[Caroline McCann]

Hi Huy,

I'm glad you are free to meet.  We will see you at 5:30pm in 312 Ell (or 302 Ell).

-Caroline

[Phu Son Le]

[Caitlin Carrick]

[Phu Son Le]

Hi All,

 

Here is the latest PPT.  I made a little modifications in the financial analysis.  Instead of targeting all supermarket, I chose to target a third of the stores and that cost is spent over three years.  As for the buses campaign, I chose to target 1% of the buses and that cost is spent over three years.  I also added a summary slide of the financials at the end (if we have too many slides, we can take out).  Chris, you can now add the mascot slide and add the mascots where appropriate.

 

I was busy trying to finalize the financials during the end of our meeting and didn’t get the slides breakdown.  I think I am doing the financials slides, right?  Do we have a list of which slides and who is doing it?