Baman Tech (B): Building Competitive Barriers in the Supply Chain

This serial cases comprise Case A and Case B that focus on how Baman Tech (Baman), a catering company can engage in business model innovation in the background of China’s consumption upgrading and Internet era, specifically how to utilize community marketing and omni-channel operations to reach the consumers on the demand side effectively and how to realize efficient operations and supply chain management (SCM) on the supply side. Case A and Case B have the first major problem of Baman in SCM as the dividing line. Case A reviews the venturing experience of Baman. It successfully became an Internet popular brand in the catering industry through a single product strategy and community marketing and satisfied the consumers’ desire to eat authentic Hunan beef rice noodles anywhere and anytime through take-away, home delivery, and retailing services. Meanwhile, the share of customer base between catering business and retailing business and between online channels and offline channels constituted Baman’s “multidimensional battle” business model. As catering and retailing had two distinct supply chains, Baman had increasing inventory costs with the increase in its retailing SKUs so that its supply chain encountered “pain” at the end of 2017. Case B introduces how Baman gradually increase the SCM capability and optimize the supply chain network from supply to delivery in the last two years after realizing the importance of SCM. Some of the practices include establishing a clear supply chain strategy, segmenting and differentiating the supply chains of catering business and retailing business, and continuously improving the operational efficiency at different links of the supply chain, reducing costs and shortening the lead time through multiple approaches. At the end of the case, there is an open discussion: How will Baman manage a larger-scale, more complex and volatile supply chain and further increase its efficiency in the future? The cases focus on a startup company, introduce business model innovations in a more comprehensive manner and how the supply chain strategy and capabilities support the business model innovations, thus providing references to the supply chain and business model innovations of other catering/retailing companies.