For this blog I will be creating a business model canvas for the company Facebook. The business model canvas is an important tool that we learnt in Comm 101 so putting what I learnt into practice is important. I chose to make a business canvas model for Facebook because the operations of Facebook and how they make money and what costs they have is not obvious and so thus I will have to use my critical thinking skills.

Key partners:

– Mini game companies which operate via facebook (e.g zynga)

– Thousands of advertising partners (e.g Netflix)

Key activities:

– seeking advertising

– Creating new software on the site (E.g new picture viewing formats, new sharing idea mediums)

– Writing new code for expansion of the site

– trying to find a way to introduce facebook into China.

Key resources:

– Internet

– Skilled programmers

-bandwidth

Value proposition:

– Provides people of any age or gender to a social networking site

– Allows people to share photos with friends

– Allows people to display current personal status (single or married, heterosexual or homosexual etc)

– Allows people to find long lost friends or acquaintances that would otherwise be unfound.

– Allows people to collect infromation on upcoming events (e.g concerts, birthdays etc)

Costumer relations:

– Through the facebook site people/companies can inquire and pay for advertisement slots

– Through the facebook site people/companies can report inappropriate content on the site to be removed.

– through the facebook site

Channels:

– Facebook site

Costumer segments:

– Individuals that are 13 years old and above are legally permitted to have a facebook account. Facebook has many different aged costumers. The services provided to each costumer segment regardless of age are identical. Advertisements however may target people based on their age to effectively target that firm’s costumer segement. However, Facebook as a consumer does not have a particular costumer segment other than people who are legally allowed to have a facebook account and who have access to the face book cite (internet and computer/smartphone).

You can notice that many of the parts of the business canvas model are left quite empty for example, “channels” and “key partners”. This is because Facebook is a service that operates on the internet and requires little tangible resources. Facebook is not a product that needs materials in order to be produced and therefore the resources that it needs are not many. In order for Facebook to exist you only need to have skilled programmers, computers, servers/bandwidth and advertising partners and costumers, no raw materials or machinery are needed. Other than the thousands of advertising partners that Facebook has it does not have many other key partners as it is quite a endogenous product. 

Autistic employee at Meticulon

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/high-tech-social-enterprise-designed-130000969.html;_ylt=AwrTWVW5XYlSi0IAohbwFAx.

applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in human and environmental well-being, rather than maximising profits for external shareholders.

Social enterprise is all about using business knowledge and strategies to maximize improvements  in human and environmental well-being, rather than maximizing profits for external shareholders. Social enterprise is also not charity work but a new way of doing business that allows for maximum profits to be made but in a way which also benefits society and the environment. Meticulon is a perfect example of an innovative social enterprise company that was able to accomplish both of these goals.

What does Meticulon do?

Meticulon hires people with Autism and assigns them jobs within the tech firm to perform jobs that match to the special abilities that many autistic individuals have. For example, many people with autism are vastly superior to neurotypical adults in certain areas such as excelling at detailed computer tasks, detecting errors, and performing mathematical functions.

Why is Meticulon a good example of social enterprise?

Meticulon is able to simultaneously produce maximized profits and remain a competitive compnay while also benefiting/improving society. Meticulon learnt that people with autism have skills that are very valuable to its tech oriented firm. Therefore by hiring individuals with autism, Meticulon became a more efficient and productive company as the individuals with autism can complete the math orientated work much more efficiently than ordinary people and thus labor costs for Meticulon decreased as one autistic individual is as or more productive than several ordinary individuals. Meticulon achieved the first goal of social enterprise: maximizing profits and it also achieved the second goal: improving society/environment. 85% of individuals with autism in Canada are unemployed. Therefore Meticulon hiring people with autism helps solve this societal issue.

http://humanresources.about.com/od/organizationalculture/a/how-zappos-reinforces-its-company-culture.htm

Zappos in well-known for having a great company culture in which employees are happy and perform well as a result. But what are the main reasons why Zappos was able to build such a function team?

First of all, the way in which Zappos hires it’s employees is very different from other businesses. Zappos undergoes a series of interviews and ‘cultural fit’ tests to ensure that employee candidates are a good fit for the company and months can pass between an initial cultural fit interview with an HR recruiter and an actual job offer. This is elaborate hiring process which Zappos undergoes:

If a potential employee fails to pass the cultural fit interview (50% of the weight in hiring), he or she is not invited to meet the hiring manager and other employees.

Interviewers have developed five or six behaviorally based questions that illuminate a candidate’s congruence with each of the Zappos core values. his approach to interviewing allows interviewers to assess a candidate’s potential ability to fit within the culture and to exhibit the necessary skills.

If you are hired by Zappos you have to complete a 4 week course on costumer relations and working in the call center.

This is the process that Zappos goes through when hiring new employees. However, Zappos has other techniques to ensure that the perspective employees are the right fit for the company. Firstly, Zappos does not hire temporary employees. I think this is a very good tactic to maintain a efficiency becuase temporary workers need to learn how the business operates and because they know they’ll be leaving soon they don’t have much incentive to work hard. Secondly, Zappos offers $3000 to employees to leave the company. This financial incentive separates the employees that are truly invested in Zappos and those who are not. This is a good method of achieving the best company culture and increases efficiency.

So if this tactic which Zappos uses to hire employees and establishing a very functional company culture why don’t more companies do it?

1) It’s is expensive. You don’t see the benefits of going through this process until several years after. Lots of companies don’t like to take such risks.

2) Companies are not patient enough to undergo such a time consuming hiring process.

3) Some companies don’t think about the longterm when they hire but more the short term – they want to hire people fast when more employees are needed.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/75340

The main issue with today’s methods of rewarding employees is that employers are focusing too much on a select few of the types of rewarding and not utilizing all of them. The employers are missing one or more of these elements (usually recognition and/or appreciation), and the elements that are addressed aren’t properly aligned with the company’s other corporate strategies.

Sometimes, rewarding systems can in fact encourage behavior that is not optimal for the overall performance for a firm. For example, a firm which compensates its employees for extra working hours (coming in earlier in the morning and finishing work later at night) does not encourage your employees to innovate and create new ways of working that are more efficient, this specific rewarding system just encourages to work longer which often does not result in better results.

So how can an employer decide on which rewarding systems to use that align with the firms goals?

Firstly, the employer should identify the behaviors that are important to the company. Those activities might include enhancing customer relationships, fine-tuning critical processes or helping employees expand their managerial skills. Whatever the case, the employer should first identify what behavior it wants to encourage before applying any rewarding systems.

Compensation is the most often used form of rewarding one’s employees. It is often effective because employees are attracted to higher incomes especially if their current regular wage is relatively low. However, is selling equity to the workers a better form of incentive as the work they put in benefits themselves in the form of dividends? would this be good way to reward one’s employees?

The recognition and appreciation elements of the strategic rewarding system are underused types of rewarding systems in businesses. These two elements rarely receive the attention they deserve from business owners, which is amazing because they’re the low-cost/high-return ingredients. Employees like to know whether they’re doing good, bad or average, so it’s important that you tell them. I believe that employers should use these two types of rewarding systems more often. First of all it is free so it reduces the costs of the firm. Secondly, personally demonstrating the employer’s gratitude for an employee’s good work can be effective due to the gesture being personal while financial compensation is very impersonal.

http://www.informationweek.com/wal-marts-way/47902662

Surprisingly, Walmart dedicates less than 1% of total annual revenue to their IT department, yet the Walmart IT department is one of the most efficient IT groups in the world. Why is this group of IT workers so efficient? What are they doing that others are not?

First of all, Walmart is using Radio Frequency Identification, like many other large retail companies to monitor how many good are being bought off the shelves, which goods are still in inventory and which goods are entering the firms inventory warehouse. I think that the invention of RFID has helped large retail giants such as Walmart in achieving constant sufficient inventory and efficient flow from goods from suppliers to inventory to store shelves. I believe that without RFID tags such companies would struggle in monitoring inventory and result in inefficient flow of goods to the store shelves.

Ok, now we know that the use of RFID is essential to the Walmart’s success in terms of IT but what is it doing that is making it better than other firms in terms Business Technology Management?

Linda Dillman, vice president of Walmart states that “The strength of this division is, we are doers and do things faster than lightning”. “”We can implement things faster than anyone could with a third party. We run the entire world out of the facilities in this area at a cost that no one can touch”. I believe that Dillman is suggesting the Walmart’s BTM team is self sufficient and doesn’t need to have any outside help. Perhaps this is why they are so efficient, because Walmart’s BTM team is self-sufficient and doesn’t employ any outside help it performs all tasks from within in the team their is more effective communication and collaboration than if they were to outsource some tasks.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/business/2013-10-27/get-away-ngos-charities-says-della-casa-move-social-enterprise

Sallyann Della Casa, founder of The Growing Leaders Foundation says that charity systems of NGOs must give way to social enterprise. Della Casa said she wanted to help people move away from the dependency syndrome and handouts and not only teach them how to fish, but how to market and sell it also.

Della Casa believes that companies and people should move away from this whole charity and philanthropy and get into social enterprise which is a hybrid between an NGO and a full profit organisation.

I agree with Della Casa. She makes a good point that charities are not sustainable, as they are funded by “someone writing a cheque”. Della Casa advocates a system where companies address societal issues but using business knowledge to achieve it. Also, doing it this way means that income can be generated and can be reinvested into the company to make even greater societal benefits, E.g increasing jobs or salaries. Even though Della Casa did not make this point in her article, I believe that shifting away from charities to companies which aim to simultaneous advance the social and economic systems will increase efficiency. Firms will naturally be more efficient then charities because they experience more pressures such as competition, this makes them have more incentive to work harder and become more efficient. With greater efficiency greater value is created according to the Harvard Business Review “Creating Shared Value” who states that “value is defined as benefits relative to costs, not just benefits alone. Therefore in respect to this principle, social enterprise is a better alternative to NGO charities to improve both economic and social conditions.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/lufthansa-targets-operational-efficiency-efb-150449403.html;_ylt=A2KJjajDO1JSk0YAY7PQtDMD

Lufthansa adoption of the new EFB tool which helps pilots actively manage the operational efficiency of their flights is an example of how advancements in technology can increase efficiency in firms, reduce costs and thus increase profits. In the industry of air travel, one of the major costs is jet fuel. This new EFB  software is able to pinpoint the available cost savings potential for every instant of the flight and display it to pilots in easy-to-read charts, giving concise information about fuel burn, overall cost and delay. This technology will likely result in more fuel efficient flights resulting in both a benefit to the airline in profits and to the environment in less carbon emissions.

This is a good example of how investments in research and development although expensive can yield beneficial outcomes and are worthwhile investment for firms who can afford it. Although investing in technology can be undesirable in the eyes of the firms for several reasons including: high costs and high risks. Costs of investing in research and development for greater technologies is expensive because you are devoting a large portion of your firm to do research and experimentation. This is expensive because you are paying the salaries and capital for the research to be made but you do not make any revenue during the time of the research, only after a break through has been made can you make and financial gains. This leads to the second undesirable characteristic of R&D – high risk. As just previously mentioned, conducting R&D is expensive however it is also risky as there is no guarantee that the research results in any useful benefit. It is for these two reasons why only established firms with high savings or profits can conduct R&D, and it is because of R&D that allows these large firms to remain as the dominant competitor of the market because they tend to have technological advantages that allow them to be more effective and efficient and therefore providing cheaper prices then smaller firms who can’t afford to conduct R&D and make any efficiency advancements.

Tool that allows for pilots to calculate more fuel efficient routes

http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/sobeys-launches-mission-better-food-135200076.html

This article discusses the new branding and positioning strategies that Sobeys, the second largest Canadian food retailer, is trying to accomplish in order to gain additional market share to overtake Safeway and becoming the leading food retailer in Canada.

Sobeys’ point of difference which makes it stand out in comparison to other food retailers in Canada is their strategy of newly adopting a much healthier and wholesome food philosophy. Sobeys’ main positioning hook is that Jamie Oliver, a famous chef renown for healthy and tasteful recipes will be leading in the selection of foods provided in the supermarket. I believe that Sobeys’ strategy of publicly displaying that Jamie Oliver will be personally tailoring the assortments of foods in the store will be very effective in capturing the attention of Canadian consumers, as Jamie Oliver is a well respected and generally well liked chef. This strategy will hopefully shift public food consumption more towards Sobeys and away from other large food retailers which don’t make much effort in providing healthy wholesome food choices. I find that this new brand positioning of healthy living will be particular successful because more and more Canadians understand the importance of healthy eating and want to purchase and eat more healthy foods. Sobeys’ marketing team have done a good job identifying this unoccupied market and are quickly taking action to capitalize on the opportunity as according to Al Ries and Jack Trout, being the first to occupy a market often leads to many advantages such associating the brand name with the market itself and establishing brand loyalty.

This article also ties into the subject of business ethics. Even though Sobeys might generate plenty of profit from satisfying this specific market segment they are also providing a valuable service to society by providing healthier foods to the Canadian public.

Banking Software helps institutions modernize operations. 

Infosys, a company based in Bangalore, India and Dubai, UAE is a global leader in consulting, technology and outsourcing. Infosys has recently developed an advanced universal banking solution that simplifies banking transformation. This technology can help banks of various sizes to modernize and simplify their operations while maintaining low risk. Not only does this new operating system enhance a bank’s efficiency but also improve costumer experience in all channels.

Infosys serves multiple purposes:

– Its componentized structure makes it easy for banks to quickly target new customer segments.

-The product factory capabilities in Finacle 11E empower banks to create and deploy new products in weeks instead of months.

– The solution’s ready-made integration adaptors and compliance to industry standards ensure shorter deployment cycles and significantly lower total project costs

– Its enterprise class capabilities helps banks break their technology silos and eliminate duplicate applications. This helps banks reduce their cost of operations and simplify their processes

– Multichannel Framework – Enables customers to navigate seamlessly across multiple channels without losing the transaction context.

– Offers and Catalog – Empowers banks to publish instant offers across channels. Graphical product simulators, comparators, customer reviews offer customers a ‘Do It Yourself’ convenience

This case study relates to the operations component to the Comm 101 course. As discussed in class operations is the entire process that a product goes through from the suppliers to the hands of the consumers. One of the main points emphasized in class was that the more intermediary steps between the the source (supplier) to the hands of the consumers the higher the costs will be to produce this product. Therefore the more intermediary steps you eliminate the more efficient the productions process will become and the cheaper the costs of producing the product will be. The introduction of this new banking system is an example of this how these intermediary steps are eliminated to make a more efficient process of the services provided by these banks.

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