Case Writing Award for Prof. Ralf Seifert

The case series describes the supply chain transformation of Sky Germany, the leading pay TV provider in Germany and Austria.​ In 2010, the company was losing money and facing a lot of operational challenges such as a slow subscriber growth, a high customer churn rate, high fixed costs and frequent product stock-outs. In 2010 Sebastian Hauptmann joined Sky as VP of Logistics to help turn the company around. He had to act swiftly to address short-term problems while developing and implementing the strategy for long-term operational success. He put in place a multi-year strategic supply chain transformation program, a culture of continuous improvements (CI), and a world-class team. By 2014, all important KPI’s had improved significantly, and the company was on the path to turnaround, supported​ by the wide-ranging improvements in supply chain management. In 2016, for the first time in its history, Sky Deutschland reported positive operating results. With his continued success, Sebastian successively increased his responsibilities to become first SVP of Supply Chain, Procurement & CI and then EVP of Operations in 2016. The German Pay TV market remains a large opportunity for Sky Deutschland and rapid technology changes in TV and media present new challenges to the Sky group across Europe. The case study highlights the importance of operational improvements and can be used to introduce core supply chain concepts such as SCOR®, S&OP, CPFR and cleansheet costing. The case will challenge participants to move from concepts to implementation. The A- and B- case together span a timeframe of ca. 4.5 years and are supported by extensive video footage.