In the early 1990, two players have emerged dominant in the UK grocery market Sainsbury’s and Tesco.

In 1995, Tesco launched the first ” Clubcard” and customer satisfaction rises because goods are readily available,services can become more personalised and shopping is more convenient.

The launch of the Efficient Consumer Response (ECR)initiative provided the shift that is now apparent in the managementof food supply chains (Datamonitor Report, 2003).

What technologies we can in Tesco stores:

• wireless devices
• intelligent scale
• electronic shelf labelling
• self check-out machine
• radio frequency identification (RFID)

This technologies became a necessity in the nowadays markets due to the increase in products and services. Also the need to apply advanced technologies became of most importance in the communication and cooperation with the suppliers.The adoption of Electronic Point of Sale (EPoS), Electronic FundsTransfer Systems (EFTPoS) and electronic scanners have greatly improved the efficiency of distribution and stocking activities, with needs being communicated almost in real time to the supplier.

The main power of Tesco lies in:

- superior performance in allocating resources to create competences (activities and process critically for competitive advantage)

- most customized and efficient service, based on good costumer relationship management

-makes a significant contribution to the perceived customer benefits of the outcome

- product differentiation (different approach to the service concept,providing good corporate reputation and introducing new premium quality products)

We can see clearly that at Tesco,the IT is the heart of the business process who focuses resources to convert distinctive competence into competitive advantage, and all of these cumulated makes the company one of the biggest player on the market.

Taken into consideration the new data available, the urgently loss reduction, and cost control, the redefinition of the market growth (AOL), and the impossibility to integrate the Unix platform (already proven) due to flaws from the design phase, as well as the easiness for integration, upgrade and small maintenance cost of the Microsoft platform, I would recommend to the group to go for the second (new) alternative.

2. Which are the most relevant criteria for you to make the decision?

For taken the above decision I was mainly concentrating on the information’s provided in the case:

-Imperative cost reduction and profit maximization on the short run

-Increased risk associated to the installment of the Unix platform which already was stalled and unsure due to mistakes in the design phase, which for sure lead to a another cost for customization and implementation

-Skepticism regarding the market analysis, as on this huge downturn we could not afford another mislead as was in the initial case with AOL

As well as the advantages of Windows platform:

Support: in this rapidly changing environment in terms of products, price decreases, technology advancement and development to benefit from the most up to date support, the latest upgrade packages, and take advantage of compatible hardware enhancements

Online services: The services and the way the company is showing his services and products is the image the costumers/clients perceive. The access time, features, presentation, easiness of use and security is critical for an Internet operation.

Reliability/ Maintainability: Need for 24/7 availability, which translates into maximum reliability and availability from both software services and hardware support.

Inter-operability: the majority of systems run on Microsoft platform, so the compatibility with the rest of your applications is higher.

“is an Integrated computer-based system used to manage internal and external resources including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources” . Basically the ERP systems unify the business processes in 1 company, leaving an elementary transition from 1 phase to the next.

What does ERP provides:

-real time informations about the companies operations

-easily track the latest operations and any changes

- keep track of progress in each particularly field

- efficiency and unification within a business enterprise

- increased accuracy of data for long term planning

- decrease the risk of loosing sensitive data

Using an ERP system we can see a more unified, competent, transparent, technical and cost-effective business environment.

But how an ERP system is implemented?

Should we adapt our business to it or shall we personalize the ERP model to our business? There are a lot of pros and cos when we need to decide on this issue, but everything is more or less linked to the best practices modules already incorporated in the ERP packages, and the fact that customization of the ERP modules is costly and time consuming. Studies were made and concluded that companies which implemented industry best practices “decreased mission-critical project tasks such as configuration, documentation, testing and training. In addition, the use of best practices reduced over risk by 71% when compared to other software implementations”. Another opinion about this subject came from Peter Brabeck-Lemathe in an interview in Burrus-Barbey 200o “Nestle is more people oriented than systems oriented. Systems are necessary and useful but should never be an end in themselves …Maybe some organizations are driven by systems. We are not. The I.T. system is there to support an organization and not the other way around. We do not create an I.T. system first and then adapt our organization to our I.T. system”.

Because of the risk associated to the implementation of ERP system, and the complexity of the systems usually companies are forced to adapt their business to the system neglecting to map their current business process. Therefore a thorough analysis of the business process is very important when selecting an ERP vendor and the starting of the ERP implementation. Some cases show as one of the main disadvantage when choosing the ERP is the loosing of the competitive advantage the company has, due to the redesign of the processes to adapt to the ERP modules, and others show the increase of sustainable competitive advantage after a thorough preparation.

So the answer to the question stands into each company by itself, in the analysis and preparation which was done prior to the implementation, in the resources each has for the implementation, and in the particularity of the business.

Next step MDM…..

It Started on 21st of June 2005, when the powerful blogger Jef Jarvis, started his article on buzzmachine with:

“ Dell lies. Dell sucks
: I just got a new Dell laptop and paid a fortune for the four-year, in-home service. The machine is a lemon and the service is a lie.” and launched an internet phenomenon with his Dell Hell blow by blow account, doubled by articles in FT. At that time ( 2005 ) it was announced “For 21 years, Dell has been the business media’s most dearly beloved company. Since Michael Dell founded the company in his University of Texas dorm room in 1984, the company has been hugged and kissed and fondled by crush-struck business journalists (and analysts and investors).”

This was the starting shout of the decline… Dell became a victim of its size. It is practically impossible to maintain an 18 percent growth in a market that is continually falling, unless you enter in new markets, cut cost, increase delivery times, engage into tens of millions of customer contracts and therefore be bound to errors. The problems which came are easily seen in numbers:

-24,000,000 hits on google when u search “dell” plus “problems”

-2,620,000 hits on google when u search “dell” plus “lawsuit”

-2,030,000 hits on google when u search “dell” plus “hell”

or when u compare the stock price with one of their competitor

Print Historical Price Chart for Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ) – MSN Money

But what Dell could have done:

- create immediately a “web-response strategy”, and understand the power of internet ( don’t stay silent)

- admit mistakes and construct on them ( listen)

- improve costumer service control, by paying more attention to the signaled problems, and especially improve communication with the opinion leaders, meaning bloggers ( as Jeff Jarvis said:”We, the customers, bring them great value besides our money: We alert them to problem.” “your customers are your best customer support agents and marketers”) (resolution)

- improve quality control for products as well as for services

After a struggling period Dell succeeded in “listening”,  ” improving” and “reaching” his customers and taught us, at the expense of their “money” the power of Social Media.

The idea was borrowed from the Zuckerberg’s prep school who published for decades a manual with all students and faculty.

“When we started Facebook, we built it around a few simple ideas. People want to share and stay connected with their friends and the people around them. When you have control over what you share, you want to share more. When you share more, the world becomes more open and connected.” Zuckerberg said on his blog.

Making Control Simple

Nowadays Facebook is the biggest Social Network with more then 400 million active users. According to the statistics, the average user has 130 friends, and 500 billion minutes are spent by people per month on facebook.

The main competitors for Facebook are Myspace, Friendster, and Bebo while Google also is making effort to take over the social network market. In this competitive environment Facebook needs to consider the quality, the global scale, usability, functionality, integration and cross-platform capabilities, accessibility, marketing strategies, and personalization of the online services it offers, as well as the overall user experience.

Their Business Model is simple:

- Facebook gives away all of their services free of charge and earns money from marketing services and solutions, mostly from advertising ( the numbers are unknown as the company is private and wants to remain private)

Marketing services include Facebook Social Ads, advanced targeting, content integration, flexible pricing, trusted referrals, and integrated advertising solutions based on company size and budget. Due to it’s flexibility they companies can pay by clicks (CPC) or impressions (CPM). Other marketing services and solutions offered are: Facebook pages, Facebook Insights, Facebook Platform, FAcebook Beacon, Facebook Pools, and acces via Facebook Mobile. Although the company is highly profitable, the usage of the advertising is not so invasive (no large banners) and therefore more pleasing for the end user.

Facebook is meeting some controversy , and it was blocked intermittently in countries like Iran, Syria, China and Pakistan, but also the companies started to block the access of their employees to prevent them from losing time. More and more criticism are coming on the privacy of the users, data mining, censorship and the inability to terminate the accounts without first manually deleting all the content ( although you may try the Suicide Machine).

For Future, except the development of the Google open platform for  application development that can be shared across the web, no real threats are foreseen. Another prove is that Apple adopted the Facebook Mobile Application within the newest and world’s popular cell phone (Iphone). Unless something extraordinary happens, like users panic due to the increased controversial statements, Facebook will continue to grow well into the future.

At the end I would like to ask… what do you think about this….

So if we look back in time we can see that 2 college kids, more then 10 years ago breached the search engines market who was dominated by Yahoo, and the question is how? How are they different? what did they do that it was so good so that they quickly revolutionized the search engine into a tool so useful that a mostly empty screen with just a logo and a search bar becomes the home page of millions?

Three simple steps:

1. They created BackRub

2. Received the first 100000 USD as funding, launched the company and initiated a fund raising.

3.  Developed, went public and

GO we have one of the biggest companies, who  may actually “owns” the Internet.

The top hit of google was the Page-Rank algorithm who changed the internet search from a”Tree search”, to a punctual result. The base algorithm is very easy:

PR(A) = (1 – d) + d * SUM ((PR(I->A)/C(I)) where

PR(A) is the page rank

d is more or less a constant 0,85 (attenuation factor)

PR(I->A)  is the rank of the pages I which have a link to page A

C(I) the number of links of page I

PR(I->A)/C(I) the value that page A receives it from I

SUM (PR(I->A)/C(I))  is the sum of all the values that A from the pages which have a link to it

Google describes Page-Rank:

“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”"

With the search engine in place, g-mail appeared, and slowly took the market with their tactic, as been started as an exclusive club and innovative space storage initiative ( it deletes the Spam) . This was the second step in the process of Domination. In the years after Google took over the rest of the internet experience (markets): – Youtube was acquired in 2006 ( video), followed by Froogle ( for shoopers – Google product Search), and the company who created Blogger ( since 2001), created Google News, Google Maps, Picasa, Google CheckOut, Google trends, Google Chrome, Latitude, Documents, Adwords, Adsense etc…  So what is wrong if a company is so good and they are the first choice in everything? Is Google EVIL? I f we look for the Antitrust case nowadays, this could be a real problems, or not?

What the Department of Justice is thinking:

• Google enjoys monopoly power over corporations that participate in its keyword auctions. This monopoly power is especially great when Google deals with corporations whose operations are largely fixed cost, such as hotels and airlines.
• Google is abusing its monopoly position by overcharging corporations for access to consumers. These charges are passed along to consumers and ultimately result in consumer harm.
• Google is likewise abusing its monopoly position, deterring market entry in areas that would benefit consumers and damaging potential entrants.
  Any one of these would justify regulatory intervention. The second and possibly the third would also justify some form of financial compensation to those who could demonstrate that they had been damaged by Google.

Should the department be able to demonstrate the monopoly power of Google and the abuse of that… could be….  but until then we need to handle it to the guys as they did a great job in getting to be number 1.

The company initial mission, some commentator says it was ” a computer on every desk and in any home, running Microsoft software”. After the founding, in no time the Corporation succeeded in getting a dominant position in the software market.

Nowadays we can see Microsoft been involved in not only operating systems for personal computers, servers or mobile phones but also in video games, development tools and even hardware devices like Xbox 360 and Zune.

After a period of permanent increase of market share, and the launch of a not so competitive product like Vista, the “window” showed up and competition (Apple operating system and Unix) started to flourish. Although many suggested it may prove to be a change in power, the numbers, after the launching of the new Windows 7 in december 2009 showed a different perspective. With the year 2009 ending with a 92% market share on operating systems (Windows 7), and 63% on web browsing (Internet Explorer) , Microsoft secured again the crown.

Many analyst are trying to find a response for the numbers, like the fact that computers are coming with already installed Microsoft features, and the users don’t change it because of commodity or lack of knowledge, but still this is also a part of the aggressiveness of Microsoft strategy.

So now? where to? Does the operating systems market will be named Microsoft in the future? Where does the challenge comes from? Who threatens Microsoft Business Model?

For this everybody is pointing to the Open-Source Movement. Can this replace the Microsoft commercial software development model? It may, as the innovative and exponential upgrade of the open-source systems are becoming more and more accurate, and Client oriented (as it is build by Clients). This image it is seen also in the new Microsoft campaign in which they are blaming “open source” and try to rely their loyal customers against it.

Against all of this forecasts others are pushing forward, and believe Microsoft shares will increase to another level, and see Microsoft as a serial innovative company (cash machine) that will held for a long term.

Which of these opinions will prevail, I believe we shall find the answer to this question in a shorter period then we expect.

In less then 18 months over 3 billion applications have been downloaded from Itunes, and more and more are related to geolocation. What does a geolocation application? Basically it lets you share your location through your social networks, like Facebook or Twitter.

Although SOA (Services Oriented Architecture) are only at the beginning and it will take another 2-5 years to reach maturity, companies and producers are becoming rapidly aware of the business potential.

Foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl are constantly improving, evolving and elaborating new ways to attract users and get costumers (companies promoting themselves through the application), and many others are working on similar ideas like Google or even Facebook ( rumored to launch next month).

Foursquare is a relatively new phone application who reshapes the location based services into a fun and games application. How it works? You download the application onto your mobile ( Iphone, Blackberry, Android, or any other smart phone) you check-in and it allows you and your friends to share your location, facilitate meetings, share info about a place, promote a special events between yourselves, earn medals and ranks for visiting more often some of the places, or other virtual rewards, let’s you see pictures of the places etc.

This is the second creation of Dennis Crowley, after selling Dodgeball – one of the first mobile social service, to google in 2005.

Still evolving and attracting users, Foursquare ( 725,000 users and 22 millions check-in – as of May 29th) hesitates in charging business for dashboard and for now it continues to be free for business. “We’ve been hesitant to just shoot ad copy through our system,” said Tristan Walker, Foursquare’s head of business development. “Once we start to put in generic specials, we’re just another channel to distribute promotions.” (Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/foursquare-plots-its-business-model-2010-2#ixzz0oKGy01nm)

For the near future the company is developing an income model on the location based marketing services targeting 3 different types of business:

- small ( stores and restaurants)

- brands with retail chains ( Tasti D Lite)

- huge multinational marketers ( PEPSI)

Development of an analytics dashboard for tracking customer activity, cost per check-in and other deals are taking shape for future implementation.

Although the benefits and easiness of target directly the Clients, identifying habits and preference are easily seen, Foursquare is in the experimentation phase and until full implementation (become a valid business) is in place other issues must be dealt with: gps accuracy; the value of the data and how to harness the power given; privacy concerns growing higher between users.

If Foursquare is a successful business model, it is definitely starting to prove itself. If they can keep up although they have a lead start, it is only up to them and their continuos innovation. A lot of big names have already put their bets on them (Metro Newspapers, TV Channel Bravo, Vodafone UK, and Financial Times).

Other relevant informations and data:

http://blogs.forrester.com/thomas_husson/10-05-10-stratospheric_levels_hype

http://www.colloquy.com/article_view.asp?xd=7202

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10215732-2.html

http://blogs.forrester.com/tom_grant/10-03-11-i_see_you_you_see_me

http://www.businessinsider.com/foursquare-plots-its-business-model-2010-2

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/whats_next_for_geolocation_apps_apps_apps.php

I want to see good stuff, bad staff, suggestions, complaints about Madrid life, about the school, about teachers….about everything.

Let’s try to make our life easier, enjoyable and to take advantage of this year.