Virtual Organization Business Analysis
In the business world today, businesses are established and created as the demand for their particular specialty increases. The demand for these specialties can come from a multitude of influences. These influences include economic, government, and legal. There are five particular businesses that were established due to the influences talked about earlier. I will talk about each of these businesses, what key economic, government, and legal influences impacted each of the businesses, and my opinion on which company influences had the greatest impact on them.
Huffman Trucking
Huffman trucking is a national transportation company and has approximately 1,400 employees working in 4 locations spanning from Los Angles, California to Bayonne, New Jersey with the main maintenance facility on Cleveland, Ohio. The key economic influence for Huffman is the increase in yearly revenues and customers. The government influence is during World War II, there was a high “demand for carrier services between the factories of the mid-west and from the factories to the port on the East Coast” (2008). H. Huffman, the founder of Huffman Trucking, increased the size of his company to 16 tractors and 36 trailers due to the US Government thus creating a business relationship that exists to this day. The legal influence is primarily to review the multiple types of contracts to include lease, purchase, and shipping.
Kudler Fine Foods
“Kudler Fine Foods is a local upscale specialty food store located in the San Diego metropolitan area. The company has three locations (La Jolla, Del Mar and Encinitas). Each store has approximately 16,000 s.f. of retail space located in a fashionable shopping center” (2008). The key economic influence for Kudler is to create a one stop food shop for gourmet cooking so customers wouldn’t have to go from one side of town to another to find everything needed to cook their meal. Other key economic influences include expanding services, a frequent shopper program, which will increase revenue, and an increase in efficiency. Kudler’s legal influence is to have attorneys for customer accidents, taxes, and leases. As far as government influences, there aren’t any.
McBride Financial Services
McBride Financial Services specializes in loans for purchasing and refinancing homes. Their mission is “the be the preeminent provider of low cost mortgage services using state of the art technology in the five state area of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota” (2008).
Kudler Fine Foods is a store unlike any in the grocery industry. Kudler Fine Foods represents a store that could possibly spark a new era within the grocery world. The owner of Kudler Fine Foods, Kathy Kudler, has watched her dream of owning and operating a grocery store that specializes in fine quality food grow within a short period of time. The success of Kudler Fine Foods can be attributed to the innovative ideas, effective leadership, and organizational structure. The overall mission of Kudler Fine Food's "is to provide our customers the finest in selected foodstuffs, wines, and related needs in an unparallel consumer environment. Our selections coupled with our experienced, helpful and knowledgeable staff, merge to offer each customer a delightful and pleasing shopping outing" (Apollo Group, 2003). Kudler has managed to maintain its mission statement by providing its customers with the best and as a result the company has flourished. "Kathy considers one of her key responsibilities to be that of identification of new gourmet items that can be offered in her stores (Apollo Group, 2003)." Therefore, Kathy is considering plans to contract with local growers of organic produce to yet obtain the best in quality products for her consumers and take her business to the next step. If Kathy makes the decision to contract with local growers then changes could be introduced into the company's overall structural organization. Each aspect of Kudler Fine Food's organizational structure from basic business process to the supply chain and quality control process will be affected by the formation of a contractual relationship with local organic growers.
Sapient is a business consulting and technology Services Company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was founded in 1991 to specialize in client/server application development. Sapient was one of a group of companies (along with firms such as Cambridge Technology Partners and i-Cube) that sought to differentiate themselves from traditional consultants by offering strong technical skills and application development to enable companies to get business value out of technology within fixed-fee/fixed-time contracts and by focusing solely on client's success to achieve long term goals and objectives. In the mid-1990's, Sapient recognized the potential of Internet and started to offer Internet solutions to its clients. Sapient was one of the few e-business integrators from the dot-com era that recognized offshore opportunities early on. It invested in global delivery capabilities in India starting in 2001.The Company has been through significant changes over the past five years, including significant shifts in its client base, offshore staff mix, and target contract size, but the focus on its purpose, core values, Internet enablement and related technologies is unchanged.
Huffman Trucking is a privately held national transportation company with just under 1,400 employees and facilities across the United States. Huffman Trucking has benefited from a relationship with US Government that started in the late 1930's. During the Second World War, shipping of materiel between manufacturers and port cities increased business to the point that Huffman was eventually able to purchase and absorb several other trucking companies (http://aapd.phoenix.edu/CIST/VIP).
Founded in 1986, Pret A Manger is a fast food chain, which produces freshly prepared, natural food with over 250 stores throughout the United Kingdom, France, Hong-Kong and the United States. Unlike most fast-food chains, Pret is a private company; they do not face the same pressure to grow as a public company does. However there are many factors that affect Pret A Manger’s marketplace such as economy, competition, technology, political environment, and the standard of living. This report evaluates major internal and external factors affecting Pret A Manger using various analytical techniques.
Kudler Fine Foods was started by a women, owner Kathy Kudler, who had a passion for cooking and a love for shopping for unique and creative culinary options. Kudler’s entire business plan focuses on the consumer, their needs and their wants, as well as what will provide them with the best customer service available in the San Diego, Metropolitan area. Kudler is constantly receiving new products, offers catering services and online options for shopping, as well as a staff that is educated about the products sold at Kudler Fine Foods locations. The trends at Kudler revolve around healthier living, and healthier eating. Since food trends come and go, Kudler must employ a knowledgeable staff that remains on top of the latest, emerging
Founded in 1936 with a single tractor-trailer, Huffman Trucking (Huffman), a national transportation company, is located in Cleveland OH. Today, Huffman has over 1,400 employees, 800 tractors, expected revenue to surpass $600,000,000 and is still privately held. Huffman has hubs located in Los Angeles, CA, St. Louis, MO, Bayonne, NJ with the central maintenance facility located in Cleveland OH. Their working contracts are primarily with the US Government, automotive parts industry, electronic consumer products, raw materials, and any special customer accommodations.
By exposing readers to a world where workers are underpaid and mistreated, corruption is heavy, and factories control a whole neighborhood, Sinclair shocks readers and explains that the Packington factories “[were] really not a number of firms at all, but one great firm, the Beef Trust” (Sinclair 112). Similar to how the airlines shared information to upcharge passenger tickets and control the airport, Sinclair writes that “every week the managers of [The Beef Trust] got together and compared notes” (Sinclair 112). Stating that these meetings were not to help the workers or consumers, because they judged the effectiveness of workers there and “fixed the price they would pay for beef…..and all the dressed meat in the country” (Sinclair 112). Sinclair also tells readers that the mergers and cooperation not only hurts workers and consumers but also smaller companies. For example, the airlines that grow and try to “bully foreign carriers” (Thomaselli) can be compared to the man who tried to “gather this filth in scows, to make lard out of it” (Sinclair 97) in Bubbly Creek but was stopped when “the packers took the cue, and got an injunction to stop him, and afterwards gathered it themselves” (Sinclair 97). Even though large airlines and smaller airlines both try to cheat to have a winning hand, the monopolies end up on top and can have a more widespread hold on the nation’s travelers and have “80 percent of the nation’s air traffic to be concentrated among four airlines”
Demand for Panera franchising opportunities was very high, which allowed Panera to be picky about where and with whom they would do business. Panera determined where bakery-café locations could be. The franchisees bore the cost of opening new locations, and were required to obtain their ingredients from the home company. Expansion using the franchise model provided many upside benefits for Panera, while limiting the downside r...
Business has been in charge of the upgraded innovation that has generally supplanted the drudgery of most physical work, an outcome in part of the innovativeness of business and its readiness to take and bear the weight of money related hazard. Besides, maybe no establishment in our regular life is more proficient in its operations and more discerning in its association than business. No foundation is more receptive to the requests of its constituents than business.
However, RLK’s competitors are downsizing and outsourcing R&D and exploiting on the cost advantages. If RLK decides to invest more money into R&D and should the new product stall on launch, they face the danger of becoming bankrupt.
When our country was at war, the military identified the need for trucks. Trucks were very important because it was difficult to find away to transport all the supplies, troops, and food. After WW1, this brought an increase in good roads plus an expanding economy. This helped grow the trucking industry. The 1920’s were the years of innovation. The balloon tires were introduced along with the rail road’s that were established “piggy-back” service. The first mechanically refrigerated van was introduced. In 1925, there were 500,000 miles of hard surface roads in the U.S. In 1926, a fully loaded 2 ton truck was driven from New York to San Francisco in five days.
An organizational analysis is an important tool to become familiar with how medical businesses and organizations are able to meet standards of care, provide services for the community and provide employment to health care providers. There are many different aspects to evaluate in an organizational analysis. This paper will describe these many aspects and apply the categories to the University Medical Center (UMC) as the organization being analyzed.
The major issues facing the company comprises of there being multiple businesses with different demands. There are separate levels of performance and success as well as growth chances for each of the sector and the firm needs to tackle with issues in each of these divisions (Dube, J.P., 2004).
The study of trust and control in a virtual organization has had researchers emphasizing on the importance of trust as a necessary condition for ensuring the success of these mentioned organizations (2001, p.277). Although we have been led to believe that this trust is the backbone of the virtual work environment, the author Michael Gallivan has explored the Open Source Software (OSS) movement and has made a case for the contrary. He states that “various control mechanisms can ensure the effective performance of autonomous agents who participate in virtual organizations”. He goes on to say that effective performance can be produced through control, efficiency, predictability, and calculability of processes can occur in the absence
The virtual organization is a network of independent suppliers, customers, and even competitors, generally tied together by computer technology (Roger, 1991). They share skills, costs, and access to markets. It is tend to have flat structures in which information and decision making move horizontally (Judith R.G, 2002). Through the support of modern electronic system, it becomes possible to link people across formal organizational boundaries (Judith, 2002, quoted in S.G. Straus, S.P. Weisband, and J.M. Wilson, 1998).