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Macroeconomics impact to the success of business
Xerox company turbulent business environment
Macroeconomic impacts on business
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Macro and Micro-Environment
As a multinational, Xerox specializes in technology and services and operates under two different market environments, the macro and microenvironment. In the microenvironment, the company has influence while in the macro-environment the company cannot make market changes.
Micro-Environment
Strengths/opportunities
The changes in the company by adopting business services industry helped the company in enhancing efficiency as well as presenting quality services to its clients. The adoption also led to speeding up business processes that positively reflected in reduction of wastages such as idle time. The acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) also strengthened its position. This was facilitated by the adequate financial background and resulted in better product innovation as well as superior innovation in technology. To gain better competitive edge, the company can focus more on research and development of environmental products
Weaknesses/threats
The initial effects started with the failure by
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Diversification or further investing in the current portfolio would not have been the solution. Understanding the market needs is more than understanding technological advancement because innovation should be market driven. In this case, both strategies could still have been practical but with the customers’ needs in mind. Additionally, increasing production efficiency in retention of current business strategy could also have boosted its revenues by reducing wastage or idle time. Considering not all countries move at the same technological level, the company could still have invested in supplying the outdated products to places such as India or Africa. However, as the CEO there is a need to pursue the best strategy by focusing on what works our best but still have the customers ' mind at heart (Xerox Maps Business Service Strategy,
In our opinion any organization wishes to carry on sharing piece of market and as market leadership, it have to ensure the efficient working of its business functions, if not they obsolete will be out of competitive cycle.
The desired outcomes from reorientation of the company’s business were to reduce risk of increasing prices, decrease costs and increase sales. These desired outcomes have ap...
Xerox has always prided themselves as a customer-focused and employee-centered organization. Their rich heritage has helped with the company’s profitability and growth. Currently, Xerox is a $22 billion annual revenue multi-national business services and document management organization (Xerox, 2014). The mission statement for Xerox is “to become change agents and innovators - using Xerox Lean Six Sigma to constantly search for a better way to meet our customers' challenges and to create business process outsourcing, IT solutions, new technologies, products and services for world class commercial and government clients that enable better results” (Xerox, 2014). Throughout the years, the company has succeeded through the satisfaction it has provided to its customers. They provide quality and excellent product and services. The company values and empowers its employees to be the best in everything they do. Xerox has created inclusion in all aspects of its organizational culture. The current CEO; Ursula Burns, is the first African American woman to be appointed to the position. This promotion at that time was unheard off in the company. She started as a summer intern and worked her way up to her current position. She is a true meaning of diversity in the work place in modern America. Diversity at Xerox means success. This success has placed the company on the fortune 500 list (#131) of company for the year 2013 (Cable News Network (CNN), 2013).
However, expanding into different businesses seems to be one of the strategic directions of the company. This direction is driven by increased competition in their current industry. New businesses, such as logistics, will have wider margins for FedEx and help them to increase revenues and profits. Also, FedEx should continue to expand and invest in the international market because it is growing at a rate faster than that of the domestic market. FedEx spends a lot of money on improving their technology, which has proven to be successful in the past, but their key to success today is expanding into new businesses and the international market.
...ative aspects of diversification, for example through better corporate planning, human recourse management and reaching further synergies between its various business lines.
Adding to overseas sourcing so that lead time could be faster for design and production they could also divide the business up and have different locations for orders and new products to make business faster and
Innovation has rapidly assumed a position of prominence in world competition on a global scale. To compete in this environment, organizations need a level of innovation. As competition becomes more global and time-based, organizations must develop and deliver new and superior products or services in less time. The challenge for modern organizations is to revitalize them so they can successfully and continuously develop newer products and enhance business development.
With this opportunity in rise Kinko´s faces a decision with huge transformation as an organization, meaning restructuring, departments, operations and service functions. Accordingly this decision faces another issue: timing. Either they start pursing the challenge now or lose the opportunity of being first mover advantage and differentiate themselves in the niche market, allowing them to stick key corporate accounts or they might give the preferential occasion to another fast growing market : self owned machines provided by (what they believe is their competition) Xerox and IKON. But where they really providing their same solution? Maybe as an overall outcome (or product), but what they are not providing is Kinko´s Service Solution. This is where Kinko´s can and need to work, in order to provide key differentiation strategy and position themselves in the actual and potential customers mind, building the need for their service and adding value to their brand .
Xerox's "Book In Time" is a revolutionary product, presenting some new opportunities for the company. It is simply a matter of costs. The Book-in-Time equipment allows for a publishing company to produce a 300-page book for $6.90, something which could have been previously reached only for lots larger than 1,000 copies. A significant decrease in publishing costs, given the fact that these cover up to 20 % (including the paper and binding the book), would create the possibility of an increased profit margin.
"This plan provides Xerox with a strong financial foundation, to build on the unique strength inherent in our brand, market position, technology, people and leadership team" -- Anne Mulcahy-President & Chief Operating Office(24/10/00)
Manufacturing businesses and business leaders need to increase their focus on key success factors such as: innovation, productivity improvement, investment in people & skills, and funding. Innovation is not just about retention and development, or the latest technology. It’s also about practical and efficient problem solving and business transformation. In the manufacturing industry, this can be achieved by: refining or exploring new supply and distribution channels, establishing new business offerings, developing leaner organizational arrangements, improving processes, providing a better customer experience, and accessing green, clean technology – high on the agenda for environmentally conscious customers (Performance, 2011)
The case looks at prescriptive strategy as applied to multi-product group of companies. Unilever is based in over a hundred countries where multiple products are being made in each. However, the market is mature which means that growth is stagnant and innovation is almost non-existent. In order to improve on growth and sales, the strategies that are needed look at how to come up with new products that have high profit margins and penetrate new markets. The prescriptive approach was used to come with a strategy to improve growth and profit. In order to improve on innovation, both the prescriptive and emergent strategies can be used since both support innovation. From the case study, not much profit was made when the ‘Path to Growth’ strategy was first implemented (2001-2004). The strategy was initially based on cost cutting. There was a need to also build volumes through existing portfolio of branded products through innovation and marketing. By focusing on increasing sales in developing countries where growth prospects were high and increasing investment in personal care products where profit margins were higher, it was possible to improve the profit portfolio.
There are three premises of corporate strategy, which any successful corporate strategy is built on a number of premises. The first premise is competition occurs on the business unit level, which diversified companies do not compete, only their business units do. The second premise is diversification inevitably adds costs
...lopment industry as well as the strengths and weaknesses within the company. The Business Strategy should reflect the main issues that determine the long-term
In every business offered by any organizations, it is very important to ensure that the customers will always satisfied with services provided. People nowadays are looking for the new technologies, new markets, new ideas and also new inventions. Thus the organization must always keep up with the current changes in demand to ensure that their services are still relevant to the customers. The changes of demand also called as an evolution and to achieve these, the organizations are advised to have a process that we called as “Business Transformation” (“Business Transformation: The Importance of Change,” 2014).