ZS | 25: Built on Practical Application-2

ZSAssociates

 

Below is the second installment in the ZS history messages series

_____________________

 

Built on Practical Application.

 

In 1976, Andy Zoltners moved to Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management to teach. He eventually joined the Marketing Department - a move that required a focus on developing marketing models. Prabha continued his research in the menu planning space, but eventually became intrigued with the issues that Andy was pursuing.

 

The following year, Andy’s friend Osama Mikhail brought him a sales force sizing, structuring and resource allocation problem. Realizing that this could be solved as a Multiple Choice Knapsack problem, Andy called Prabha, who was now a professor at the University of Georgia, and asked for help with this, their first client. Prabha and Andy subsequently began to collaborate seriously on a number of projects. A one-day consulting project at P Company confirmed that practical sales force modeling could be successful.

 

In 1978, a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton asked Andy to help with a sales force sizing problem for W Company.  Andy and Prabha carried out their analysis for the project on a mainframe computer at Northwestern’s computer center. (Over time, they became NU's largest user of computing capacity). After sizing the W Company's sales force, Booz Allen asked Andy and Prabha to work on territory alignment. This project did not go as well as the first, because, at the time, it was difficult to visualize alignment solutions.

 

Later that year, Andy won and completed a sales force sizing project with the U Company. U Company remained a client and eventually merged with C Company, and in 2002 the merged company finally was acquired by F Company, which remains a ZS client to this day. Winning clients by finding practical applications for innovative ideas became a hallmark of the ZS approach.

 

To be continued....

--