Meridian Foods: A ₹114 Cr Transformation Case

Strategy
medium45 min0 submissions
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Scenario

Meridian Foods is a mature-stage packaged foods business in India with ₹599 Cr of revenue.

The COO has proposed a ₹114 Cr digital transformation over 4 years. Roughly 65% of core operational processes are still manual or spreadsheet-driven. The business case claims 2.8% of revenue in annual run-rate savings once complete.

Complications the board is aware of:

  • Two previous system implementations were abandoned mid-way
  • Industry studies suggest 70% of transformations of this size miss their stated benefits
  • The proposal assumes headcount reduction that no one has yet discussed with the affected teams
  • The savings are back-loaded: almost none arrive before year 2

The CEO wants to know whether to approve it, shrink it, or reject it.

Supporting data

context

prior failed attempts
2
manual process share pct
65
industry failure rate pct
70

financials

revenue
599
investment
114
programme years
4
claimed annual saving pct
2.8

derived hints

annual saving
17
simple payback years
6.7
Your task

Advise the CEO. Your answer should provide:

  1. Analysis — the business case on the numbers, including payback.
  2. Risks — what makes this fail, and how you would detect it early.
  3. Recommendation — approve, resize, phase or reject, with a specific first step.

State any assumptions you make.

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How you'll be graded

100 points, 60% to pass.

  • business case25
  • execution risk25
  • recommendation25
  • problem structuring25
Hint
Reveal suggested structure

Business case and payback; risk-adjusted return; phasing and gates; adoption as the constraint