Introduction & Background
iTeam Inc is based on Walnut Creek, California just outside of San Francisco. It produces, markets, and sells its own line of computer systems, peripherals and consumer electronics to corporate customers and electronics retailers. They house their own research and development team and have historically found success by being a low-cost provider over the past five years. Their sales are currently focused
only in the United States, and they have generally sold mainly locally. Their growth has caused them to expand to a more national scale, and they are now considering sales on a global scale. They have outsourced their call centres to India and Ireland, and have outsourced much of their production to China. This has resulted in a reduction in product quality, though they have continued to grow due to their low prices. Now that they are competing with larger, global conglomerates, they have found that they can no longer be the low-cost provider at this scale. These larger competitors are realizing lower costs due to economies of scale, and already have distribution systems in place throughout the world. iTeam's sales force has always been somewhat lax in that there are few formal sales techniques used. They rely heavily on aggressive individual sales efforts, and they traditionally have not focused
on building relationships with customers or retail partners as it was not necessary with their low prices. Andrew Taylor, entrepreneur and CEO is looking for a strategy to bring iTeam into the future despite these hurdles.
Analysis
iTeam is currently facing several key issues with respect to their growth. These stem from both the internal workings of the company as well as their external environment. This section ...