Practice exam 4

Zorgwijs Limburg is a home-care organisation with 1,200 employees that delivers nursing and personal care at home in forty neighbourhoods. Twenty years ago it started with district nursing for the elderly only. For a few years now, GPs have increasingly asked for care for people with dementia. Neighbourhood teams took on those clients step by step, followed courses themselves and built up their own way of working. No decision was ever taken on this: it just grew.

Chief executive Inge Beekman says in the annual report: 'Our strategy is our annual plan. What is not in it is not strategy.' The supervisory board now wants a clear direction for the next ten years. Beekman is thinking of two big steps. First, the acquisition of a small maternity-care organisation in Venlo, so that Zorgwijs can offer 'care from cradle to grave'. Second, closing six small neighbourhood teams and opening three specialised dementia centres.

In addition, the planning department is looking for a new roster for night shifts, because employees complain about too many changing shifts. The staff magazines say that Zorgwijs 'wants to be there for everyone who needs care at home', but employees wonder what that means exactly, and for whom. The chief executive wants the new plan not only to give the organisation direction, but also to motivate employees.

Pulse Studio is a Dutch chain of fourteen boutique fitness studios: 45-minute group classes (indoor cycling and HIIT) in small rooms with loud music and dramatic lighting. Members pay 89 euros per month and can cancel every month. The chain was founded in 2016 and grew by more than thirty percent every year until 2022. Many competitors followed: in Amsterdam there are now more than forty boutique studios within twenty minutes' cycling of each other. Growth in the number of members has fallen to three percent per year. Three medium-sized chains went bankrupt or were taken over last year. The remaining studios attract new members with free trial classes and discounts, so prices have fallen by ten percent on average.

Pulse rents all its studios from a small number of large property investors. In the good shopping streets there is little choice and rents are rising. The well-known instructors are the main draw: two of them have left to open their own studio with their own followers. Members increasingly train at home with a smart exercise bike and an app subscription of 35 euros per month. Ordinary gyms also offer group classes at a lower price.

Founder Mila Verhoeven says: 'Our market is no longer what it was. We have to choose what makes us really different.' She is considering focusing only on premium indoor cycling for 25- to 40-year-olds in the four big cities, with its own app and its own music, and closing the HIIT studios.

Nautilus Systems is a software company from Rotterdam with 120 employees. The company supplies shipping companies with programs that save fuel: the software advises captains on speed and route. Nautilus has seven shipping companies as customers and every customer pays per ship per month.

To sell to shipping companies, Nautilus must hold an ISO certification for information security and be able to link up with the on-board systems of all the large shipbuilders. All serious competitors have this too. In addition, Nautilus has its own forecasting model for fuel consumption, trained on twelve years of measurement data from 400 ships. That model is much more accurate than those of the competitors, who do not have the data. It is hard to copy, because shipping companies only share their ship data after years of trust. Management has given the data scientists their own team with a direct line to the director and rewards them with share options.

Since 2024 the market is changing. The EU is bringing shipping under the emissions trading system, and shipping companies now mainly ask for reporting on CO2 emissions and for help buying and selling emission allowances. Nautilus saw this coming early: a small team followed the legislation from 2022 and talked to customers. In 2025 the company launched a reporting module. However, the rest of the company is still organised around the old product. The development teams, the sales team and the rewards are aimed at fuel saving, and the reporting module runs on a separate system that is not linked to the forecasting model. A recent proposal to reorganise the teams has been postponed by management.

Delta Media Groep from Zwolle is a regional media company with four units. All four are built on the strong local brand and the good relationship with advertisers in the region.

• Dagblad De Delta: the newspaper has 70 percent of the regional market, the largest in the area. The newspaper market is shrinking by 8 percent per year. Turnover 38 million euros, profit 6 million euros.
• Delta Events: organises festivals and trade fairs and is market leader in the region with 35 percent. The market is growing by 12 percent per year. Turnover 12 million euros, profit 1 million euros, and a lot of money is needed for a new venue.
• Delta Online: a news app and podcast platform with 5 percent of the market. The market is growing by 25 percent per year. Turnover 3 million euros, loss 2 million euros.
• Delta Drukwerk: a printing company with 4 percent of the market. The market is shrinking by 6 percent per year. Turnover 9 million euros, loss 1 million euros.

The newspaper supplies content and reach to Online and points readers to the festivals of Events. Director Ruud Haverkamp says: 'The newspaper is our cash cow. I want to put all of its profit into Online, because that is the future. We sell the printing company or we close it.'

Haverkamp also wants to buy Pixel Arena, an organiser of international e-sports tournaments with a young audience and sponsors from the game industry. Delta's management has experience with local journalism, local advertisers and regional events, but not with gaming. A supervisory board member wonders whether management can run this at all.

Indigo Mill is a Dutch premium denim brand, founded in Amsterdam in 2012, with 60 employees and fourteen own stores in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, plus a webshop. The brand is known for sustainably produced jeans at 180 euros. Founder Sanne de Bruin now wants to go to Japan, the home market of the most demanding denim buyers in the world. Japanese customers pay close attention to craftsmanship and often find Dutch sizes too large. Sales run through department stores that have had fixed relationships with Japanese brands for decades. Nobody at Indigo Mill speaks Japanese and the flight to Tokyo takes eleven hours.

There are two options. The first is the acquisition of Kojima Denim Works, a family firm in Okayama with eighty employees, six stores and its own weaving mill and dye house. After forty years the owner wants to stop and asks 14 million euros. Indigo Mill does not need a weaving mill, because it now has its denim made in Italy. The second option is to build up on its own: open its own stores in Tokyo and Osaka, which will certainly take three years.

A Swedish competitor has announced it will open in Tokyo next year. De Bruin is not sure whether Japanese customers will accept a Dutch brand. She says: 'If the first two years disappoint, I want to be able to get out again without much damage.' Her financial director warns that Kojima has a very different work culture, with long hierarchies and little consultation.

Dierenpark Hoogland has been the main attraction of the Veluwe for 85 years, with 400,000 visitors per year. Almost every primary school in the region goes there on a school trip every year, the municipality puts the park on all tourist leaflets, and forty hospitality businesses and three campsites in the area live off the visitors. A local resident says: 'Without Hoogland this is no longer the Veluwe.'

Since 2019, 90 percent of the park has been owned by investment fund Veluwe Participaties, which wants to see profit and dividend. The fund appointed Joost Brandt as director. His bonus is tied to turnover growth. Brandt wants to build a park hotel with 120 rooms and a dinosaur park, for 25 million euros, largely with borrowed money. The fund receives a report twice a year and does not know the details of the plans. A supervisory board member says: 'He knows much more than we do.'

Brandt is combining the construction with a new organisation: the departments of animal care, visitor service and catering will be merged into a number of 'zones'. The plan was announced in an e-mail to the 300 employees. On the shop floor, rumours go round that keepers will have to do till work and that the park will close within five years. The animal keepers feel nobody has asked them anything. Brandt says: 'But I explained it clearly, didn't I?'