Case
SyPhone (CLV)
By Arnaud De Bruyn
1. Before beginning any case, students should familiarize themselves with the model being used. Marketing Engineering for Excel comes with tutorials that demonstrate the capability of each model. The tutorial can be found under each model within the ME►XL menu after starting Excel. These tutorials are designed to work with our OfficeStar examples which are located in the My Marketing Engineering directory, usually installed in My Documents during software installation. The data required for this case is located in the My Marketing Engineering directory (usually located within My Documents): SyPhone Data (CLV).xls
2.
Introduction
SyPhone 1 is a cell phone company that sells cell phone contracts to small to medium-sized companies, usually to equip their sales representatives and managers with cell capabilities. A typical contract covers 5 to 500 cell phones and includes phone equipment, support, service, maintenance, and unlimited phone calls for $80 to $100 per month per user. SyPhone finds itself in a highly competitive B2B market, one in which major service providers compete alongside several large resellers. The customer base is very sensitive to price, but only if service quality is high. Typically, a substantial barrier stands against customers switching to competitors, because such a switch would involve changing equipment and retraining users. However, customer switching is a possibility when contracts are about to expire. SyPhone needs to understand the profitability of its customers before generating a renewal bid for them. For new customers, SyPhone also needs to understand their potential profitability before offering them a contract. Historically, SyPhone has offered various discount rates to prospective customers. According to the company database, it appears that those customers who obtained the largest discounts are the least profitable in the