The process of making Smart car started in 1994 after a deal was sealed between Daimler-Benz, maker of Mercedes-Benz and Swatch, Swiss watchmaker. A joint venture of the two companies created a firm known as Micro Compact Car AG whose headquarters were located in Biel, Switzerland. After announcing the deal, three co-directors were appointed to head the new company, which was later to be known simply as the ‘Smart’ after moving to Germany from Biel. The directors were engineer and designer Johan Tomforde and financial administrator Christopher Baubin from Daimler-Benz and swatch marketing manager Hans Jurg Schar. SMH (makers of the swatch watches) contributed 49% of the initial capital of 50 million Swiss francs while Daimler-Benz contributed the remaining 51%. The company comprised of two branches namely MCC GmbH based in a suburb of Stuttgart known as Renningen charged with the responsibility of designing the car. Hayek’s SMH Auto SA, was to Continue reading
Business Strategies
Case Study of Mercedes Benz: The Role of Innovation in Organization Success
Mercedes is one of the companies that stood at the origins of the automotive industry, its name is no longer just a world-famous brand, but a real legend with a million-strong army of fans owning cars of this brand and an even wider audience of those who dream of it. Mercedes is the embodiment of German quality, reliability, and technical excellence, a symbol of high style, elegance, and respectability. Owning a Mercedes-Benz car demonstrates the status of a host who is not used to saving on himself and his safety. It is difficult to imagine such a person acquiring Mercedes spare parts on the market or in doubtful points. The manufacturer made sure that the original Mercedes auto parts were available to car owners wherever they live or wherever they are. Mercedes-Benz has been a classic in the automotive industry for more than a hundred years. The history of the Continue reading
General Issues of Balanced Scorecard (BSC) Implementation in Organizations
For modern organizations, it is essential to have methods for collecting data and making decisions based on the strategic objectives that lead to the achievement of competitive advantage. The balanced scorecard (BSC) represents strategic planning and management that companies use for communicating their intended accomplishments, aligning everyday procedures with the formulates strategy, monitoring progress, and prioritizing projects. In general, BSC is used for measuring and providing feedback to organizations, with data collection being crucial to the provision of quantitative results. This data is interpreted by managers and executives who make further decisions for an organization. The concept of Balanced Scorecard (BSC) was first introduced by Kaplan and Norton who received great praise for their research. The key principle behind the concept lies in finding balance across all functions of an organization since the majority of companies focus on financial measures such as growth and profitability, forgetting about such sectors as Continue reading
Business Level Strategy vs Corporate Level Strategy
Business level strategy is defined as an organizational strategy that seeks to determine how an organization should compete in each of its businesses. In contrast, corporate level strategy is an organizational strategy that seeks to determine what business a company should be or wants to be. At the heart of business level strategy is the role of competitive advantage. This is what sets a company apart from its competitors and gives it a distinct edge. Sustaining competitive advantage will be based on the interplay of the five forces in an industry. According to Porter (1990), these five forces are the threat of new entrants, the threat of substitutes, the bargaining power of buyers, the bargaining power of suppliers and rivalry among firms. By performing an industrial and internal analysis, a firm can then identify its competitive advantages so that it can pursue the right strategy. There are a few major Continue reading
Using Information Technology to Achieve Competitive Advantage
The world has grown more than enough in the context of information technology in such way that organization work more efficiency to enhance and maximize their daily productivity. Storage devices, data protection, cloud application and faster communication are the main advantages that information technology can provide to businesses. IT/IS has big impact in computer application on which nearly every work environment is dependent, therefore, since those applications are computerized and widely used, it is advantageous to incorporate IT into business. Information technology is categorized into major three group known as operation, financial and strategic system. If the operation and financial system are well integrated may result strategic system for other enterprises, however, it depends on the core business objective of the enterprise. For instance, cloud application and cloud storage are advance technology where most of the organizations are not aware of it, organization don’t consider much about technology even though Continue reading
Case Study: Tesco’s US Grocery Market Entry
Tesco is currently the UK’s most successful supermarket with a UK market share in excess of 30% and annual profits of some £2bn. It is the world’s fourth largest retailer. The company has developed internationally over the past 10 years particularly in Central and Eastern Europe and the Far East. International expansion is a key element of Tesco’s strategic development particularly as opportunities for further expansion in the UK become increasingly limited. In February 2006 Tesco announced that it was planning to enter the US retail grocery market. Tesco planned to invest around $400m ( £220m) per annum, over a five year period, in its US venture. This was estimated to be sufficient to pay for between 100 and 150 stores in the first year of operation. Tesco undertook detailed market research including visiting shoppers at home to see what they bought and asking people to keep a food diary Continue reading