Business and All free essay sample

Using published reports, select two CEOs who have recently made public statements regarding a major change in their firm’s strategy. Discuss how the successful implementation of such strategies requires changes in the firm’s primary and support activities. 2. Select a firm that competes in an industry in which you are interested. Drawing upon published financial reports, complete a financial ratio analysis. Based on changes over time and a comparison with industry norms, evaluate the firm’s strengths and weaknesses in terms of its financial position. . How might exemplary human resource practices enhance and strengthen a firm’s value-chain activities? Using the Internet, look up your university or college. What are some of its key value-creating activities that provide competitive advantages? Why? 1. It was Mark Thompson, the former B. B. C. boss who has alreadyweathered an international media scandal  and a  closely-watched round of newsroom downsizing  since becoming the Times Companys new chief executive in November. I took this job not just because Ive been a devoted user of  The New York Times  for many years, but because I believe its one of a handful of global news brands that can not just survive, but thrive in this digital era, he said in the first public comments about his new gig. But if  Times  watchers were expecting any big newsmaking revelations about the future of the company and its venerable flagship, they probably hung up the phone feeling a bit disappointed. Thompson, who in his role as successor to Janet Robinson will be expected to steer the  Times ongoing digital expansion in the face of sinking print revenues, said hes already at work on a new strategy for the company. The specifics however are scarce. He mentioned building up the  Times portfolio of paid digital products and developing its nascent conference business, as well as ramping up mobile and video efforts while growing internationally. (Nothing we havent already heard. ) But thats about it. Ill have much more to say to you on our next earnings call in April, he said. In the meantime, we can assume Thompson is staying the course that chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. , in his temporary role as interim C. E. O. ,  spent most of 2012 laying out for him: A consolidation of resources around the  Times core editorial brand as the mothership becomes smaller and more focused. Financially, the Times Company is already beginning to taste the fruits of those efforts. It reported improved fourth-quarter results today, with net income up 200 percent to $176. 9 million from the same period a year earlier. Executives attributed the improvement largely to the sale of About. om, the online resource unloaded by the Times Company in September. Previously, the company had sold off its group of more than a dozen regional newspapers. (It still owns  The Boston Globe  and  The International Herald Tribune. ) But there was another bit of sunshine in todays earnings report: 640,000 paid digital subscribers to theTimes  and the  IHT, an increase of 13 percent since the end of the previous quarter. Its an absolute key focus, said Thompson of the digital strategy, which is so far seen as a thriving experiment in getting readers to pay for content that used to be free. In 2012, money derived from circulation surpassed that of advertising for the first time thanks to the addition of those paying to read the  Times  and its affiliated publications on web browsers and mobile devices like smart-phones and tablets. Fourth-quarter circulation revenues were up 16. 1 percent. Asked on the call whether the  Times  might start charging more for digital subcriptions, Denise Warren, general manager of nytimes. com, said the company was evaluating the price structure but weve made no decisions at this time. She also said theyre exploring both a premium digital product and an entry-level one. (Perhaps the  college-friendly  NYT Junior that  Nat Ives of  Ad Age  caught wind of? ) If successful, such initatives will help mitigate the reality that print advertising revenues, long the key to a newspapers balance sheet, are declining at a steady clip—5. 6 percent year-over-year in the case of theTimes fourth quarter. The  Times  fiscal year for 2012, though, had 53 weeks compared to 2011, and that extra week fell in the fourth quarter. Excluding the additional week, according to the earnings release, estimated print and digital advertising revenues decreased 10. 2 percent and 1. 7 percent, respectively, largely due to the uneven economic environment, ongoing secular trends and an increasingly complex and fragmented digital advertising marketplace. Analysts dont expect print fortunes to improve this year as buyers, particularly the types of tony national brands that contribute the lions share of  Times  advertising dollars, continue moving to other platforms. The big picture for me is how well they can be a national and a global ad player, said Ken Doctor, a media analyst with Outsell, in an interview with Capital earlier this week. Thats the question for Mark Thompson. On the bright side, even as the  Times  trims its newroom and other areas in an effort to save money (it recently  negotiated more than 20 buyouts and a handful of layoffs), it has a long way to go before its journalistic muscles atrophy to the extent of papers like  The Los Angeles Times  and  The Baltimore Sun. In short, their newsroom is still the gold standard, said Doctor. They still have more than 900 people. Even at 700, not that we want to think of them losing a couple hundred more people, they would still be far and away a major news source. (Doctors  reaction  to todays results, by the way: Unsteady as she goes. The Times, at the beginning of 2013, isn’t being pushed backward; it’s just not making much forward progress. ) Ed Atorino, an analyst with Benchmark, thinks theres still more fat to trim. They have no choice, he told Capital. I understand they have a wonderful staff and Arthur Sulzberger Jr. s trying to ease the pain, but sooner or later theyre gonna have to fess up. Atorinos advice for Thompson: Hes gotta get tough and cut costs. Thompson, for his part, seems open to that. We believe some cost-cutting is inevitable and necessary, he said in his prepared remarks, adding a caveat that may lend some comfort to the reporters and editors at 620 Eighth Avenue: We will work hard to maintain a sizeable and robust newsgathering operation. sks customers to come back to the department store, alluding to heavy losses suffered from sweeping changes made by ousted CEO and former Apple executive Ron Johnson. The 30-second spot, posted to the companys Facebook and YouTube pages, atones for the recent changes believed to be the reason for a steep decline in sales, which resulted in a $12. 99 billion year-over-year decline in revenue for fiscal 2012. During his tenure at JCPenney, Johnson, who was the driving force behind Apples hugely successful brick-and-mortar Apple Store retail chain, made a number of substantial tweaks to the department stores business model. The initiatives, such as bans on sale pricing aut of cash needed to fund its overhaul. One of the big mistakes was perhaps too much change too quickly without adequate testing on what the impact would be,†Ã‚  said Bill Ackman, the principal shareholder of JCPenney’s and the driving force behind Johnson’s recruitment. After staunchly backing Johnson through the early setbacks, he now conceded that the turnaround effort had been â€Å"very close to a disaster. † Ackman regularly said that they were willing to wait for the turnaround to start getting traction. But the bleeding was too much and now Johnson is gone. Back to business as usual? What now? JCPenney’s board has reinstated the previous CEO, Myron Ullman. Hedge-fund manager David Tawil likened the change to â€Å"Elon Musk announcing that Tesla (the maker of electric cars) is changing gears and will now focus on gas-powered vehicles†. And hiring the previ The company’s aggressive discount practices had not only cut into pricing power, they had also diminished the brand in consumers’ eyes. Tired old stores didn’t help. Then, as now, rivals like  Macy’s  were taking away Penney’s business. The previous strategy was a losing proposition in 2011 and it’s still a losing proposition today. The immediate priority for JCPenney is survival. It has to stop the bleeding and have enough financial room to make some choices. Going back to what it was doing before, as some analysts suggest, is not a viable option. What other strategic options are available? Shopping as cheap fun? One possible strategic option would be to transform JCPenney into an organization where shopping is cheap and fun: For instance,  Carol B. Phillips, marketing instructor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, says: â€Å"JCP’s CEO Ron Johnson was †¦ clueless about what makes shopping fun for women. It’s the thrill of the hunt, not the buying. If it was just about buying, we’d all go to Amazon and take what was offered†¦ women love to shop and deals are what make the game worth playing. Customer insights don’t have to be deep and mysterious to be powerful. Sometimes they are as obvious as ‘shopping is fun. ’ It took billions of dollars of lost sales, lost market cap   and over a year of embarrassing ams have joined Yahoos mobile organizations in the Sunnyvale and New York offices, the latter of which is run by Robbie Stein, who headed up Stamped. While the startups have a range of expertise and backgrounds, the broader goal is to help improve Yahoos products. Meyer wants to move toward  her ultimate goal  of making Yahoo part of our everyday routines again by building mobile-friendly services that are more personalized to users. We have all of the content that people want on their phone, we have these daily habits, Mayer said in an interview with  Bloomberg Television  earlier this year.