TAS Case Study

TAS , was conceived by J. R. D. Tata, the late chairman of the Tata Group, in 1957. His dream of selecting and grooming some of the best young talent by providing them opportunities for professional growth, and using that pool of talent as a group resource one that could be tapped by companies across the Tata organization, completes its 50th year of existence this year.
TAS formerly known as Tata Administrative Services has unique way of judging the candidature - Case Study and Group Discussion. The instructions for Case study are:

1. The case study requires to analyze the situation from the time frame that has been mentioned as a part of the case study and not from the time as it stands today. You will have to therefore consider the timeline mentioned in the case study.

2. You can use external data to support your assumptions but all the external data should be relevant to the timeline mentioned in the case study.

3. If you think that some data-points are incorrect in the case study, (as some of you currently think that is) mention the same when you present your case to the panel and also highlight why you think so. This will change all the assumptions and hence the output and therefore it is important to state this upfront before starting the presentation.

The issues and the problem statement need to be identified by you in the case study as per your understanding of the case as the purpose of this exercise is to understand your thought process.

4. Please note that the above mentioned issues are just to give all of you a direction and they are not the ONLY issues you should address. The idea behind the case study is to understand your thought process and hence you are required to put together your thoughts and come up with a plan.

5.The format of the presentation which has been sent to you earlier is a guiding tool, you will get a total of 20minutes to present our presentation, please structure your presentation accordingly.

6. Don’t expect to be grilled only on the case study. It’s very natural. So they will ask any question that will feel like, which may include question on Tata values and ethics.

Case studies topics

The topics are varied in terms of business problems the business house is facing.
There are few cases I remember were discussed in my group:

• You are the manger in XYZ organization. ABC works for you in your division. ABC is much closer to the CEO in the organization. He have been performing very well and parallel achieving his goals. After all, he doesn’t go along well and there have been lot of complaints against them. The HR suggested that he should transfer to another division.
  Please discuss this situation with your team and decide on the flow of action.

• You are the mess manager in ABC Company. There are 20 people who eat in your mess. (12 veg and 8 non veg). The mess serves only vegetarian food and other non-vegetarian are demanding for non-veg food. But the vegetarians feel repulsed by non- vegetarian food due to religious issues and not even ready to have food together at the same table with a person having non-vegetarian food.
  How you will approach this issue?

• You have been appointed newly as manager for a retail firm. And handle both experienced and freshly hired sales persons working under you. However, the experienced sales persons do not sick to the firm timings and come often late and also go as they like. And also the experienced sales person has not beenpermissivenessthe fresh recruits properly, and there have been also complainants done by the fresh recruits. You called other firm mangers to discuss this situation.
  How good you will handle this situation?

• You are a member in the new market and looking out for the best dealers to sell your product. The dealers want more margin from you and even you also wants more margin. Now you have called a meeting of your sales team to discuss on the bear of finalizing the dealers for selling your product. How great you will discuss this?

TAS Case Study 2015-16:

Tata Administrative Services (TAS) Case Study topic for 2015 is about how Harley Davidson has attempted to globalize its business in India. This particular case was taken from Harvard Business Review. This case mainly talks about how CEO Matt Levatich and India country manager Anoop Prakash evaluate the situations and act on the opportunities and challenges posed by entering the Indian market. For this case TAS aspirants need to analyze on Harley Davidson’s leadership style and how they adopted and made changes in company’s business objectives which are relevant to emerging markets like India.

How we help:

We help to analyze the case and present in the format as suggested by TAS:

• Case Overview
• Key Issues
• SWOT Analysis
• Roles & Responsibilities
• Recommended Strategy in Detail

Our Inputs:

General Education consultant will work with you through for preparing you with the final presentation and spreadsheet of the case. The steps would be as:

• Analyzing the case
• Brainstorming session, sharing case notes
• Sharing the worked out spreadsheet with candidate
• One more brainstorming session to finalize the presentation points (the logic of those points coming from worked out spreadsheet)
• Sharing final presentation
• Review the presentation and final draft sharing for presentation to TAS