Athleta B Corporation Case Study

As a B Corporation, Athleta has the unique challenge of identifying a competitive strategy that will guide the company to success in the highly competitive athleisure market while also remaining consistent with its mission, vision, and values and supporting its parent company, Gap Inc. This case study was developed to evaluate this challenge through internal and external analysis of the company and to encourage readers to consider Athleta’s future priorities as the company undergoes changes in strategic leadership. The case study begins with a brief overview of the competitive landscape of the Athleisure market and a review of the history of Athleta before diving into the company’s positioning in the market as a company that values sustainability and female empowerment. Athleta’s focus on inclusive sizing, sustainability, partnerships with female athletes, and customer engagement provide strong tools for the company to differentiate itself from competitors. These strengths will be critical for Athleta to utilize in the future as it seeks to become a leading Athleisure brand and a strong brand in Gap Inc.’s portfolio

NRC Health: Automated Phone Survey System

NRC Health is in the business of improving healthcare. They partner with healthcare organizations to gather feedback from their patients to offer insights into how organizations can provide better patient experiences and care. NRC Health tasked the team with creating a proof-of-concept phone survey system to explore how innovative new technologies can provide additional value to their customers at a lower cost while also creating a backup for their existing call system. The team began the project by researching various calling gateway and text-to-speech vendors and delivering a detailed technical whitepaper justifying vendor selection and design decisions. This research was instrumental to the team for creating cost estimates, discovering scaling limitations, and comparing features. It provided the team and project stakeholders with the confidence necessary to pursue the final project architecture. The team then used this research as a foundation for the rest of the project, leveraging technologies available in the AWS ecosystem (notably Amazon Polly text-to-speech) and the SignalWire calling gateway to deliver a proof-of-concept phone survey system capable of handling hundreds of thousands of calls per day. The microservice leverages recent advancements in speech synthesis technologies, enabling NRC Health to offer increased survey customization in multiple languages at a significantly lower cost than voice recordings while preserving the existing call experience. Additionally, the system satisfies NRC Health’s nonfunctional requirements for easy integration and can scale to accommodate growing business needs