Executive Summary:
Since 1973, FedEx believes that speed and reliability of deliveries are effective way to win customers and increase competitiveness in global market. Due to globalization competition, FedEx has invested in company’s information technology in order to cater to market’s needs. FedEx started to launch a series of technological system which provide additional services to customers. To compete globally, FedEx has started its logistics operation to generate positive effect on cash flow.
Although FedEx is an extremely successful company, problems occur when five separate subsidiary companies following the acquisition of Caliber System was formed and managed independently. Besides, there is fierce competition among
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When there are brand followers who provide same kind of services to customers, no product differentiation can be found in FedEx. In this case, the competitiveness has been affected. Whatever FedEx does; sooner or later competitors will duplicate the technology. Besides, by developing new services, that would not be possible without a strong IT capability. Huge cost would be involved when FedEx invest in information technology, it has lead to cost disadvantage. When capital requirements become bigger, it would definitely affect competitiveness.
Besides, another problem is due to the redundancy of operation in FedEx. There are independent operations in five subsidiary companies with completely unrelated names and business logos through separate functions. For example, five subsidiaries have different sales and customer service teams. Moreover, the five subsidiary companies do not share their profit. In this case, function would be overlapping and thus increase the operation costs. Besides, the resources involve are increase too. For example, five times of advertising costs would be involved in five subsidiary companies. When costs become higher, company becomes less competitive in the industries.
Furthermore, when there is different operations among five subsidiaries, customers become confuse. There are multiple marketing group promote services under different parts of FedEx; separate customer service staff
FedEx created overnight delivery service and second-day delivery service in order to satisfy customers’ need in a way that its competitors cannot. Both services guaranteed delivery time to every customer, they willing to pay the premium price. In this case, customers self-select the option based on their preferences, depending on the relative values of prices or their situational needs. If there is an urgent package, the customer can select overnight service. However, a second-day delivery is a cheaper choice for customers if they do not need to send the package right away. However, these services are still not much different from its rival such as UPS or DHL. FedEx has to add capacity control strategy, which allows it to maintain its revenue.
Market dominance, growing market, technology, and globalization are enabling factors for both companies. In a more specific approach, FedEx’s enabling factors are their adaptation to modernization, being able to really take an advantage of technology. Also, their more
FedEx has two major customers who consist of businesses and individual customers. These business customers have accounts with FedEx to arrive at their location to pick up packages daily or weekly. Two-thirds of FedEx’s business comes from these customers so FedEx curves their operations to satisfy this clientele. Since FedEx’s competition is trying to acquire some of this clientele they have begun to operate and market to this clientele more effectively. Individual customers are also in FedEx’s internal environment. These customers represent one-third of their business. With increased competition from competitors FedEx has marketed to this market substantially. They have created boxes that are prepaid for shipment as long as the contents fit into the box. This has effectively increased business amongst individual customers for FedEx.
Studying FedEx, UPS and their competitive relationship in the decade from mid - 80's to mid - 90's gives a good insight for the companies' and industry's future. The two companies have different strategic goals and are operating in the same industry but in different main markets: FedEx is working on "producing outstanding financial returns" and focuses on the overnight air market while UPS is looking for "earning reasonable profit" and its core business is the two-day ground delivery. However, by 1981, the two companies started to have a strong sense
The review for delivery of documents or other small items are up to 870,000 pieces per day; this implies that there are opportunities for shippers using Courier Pak whenever their documents weighted less than 2 pounds. FedEx has to go through the process of opportunity identification in adopting the needs of the customers. Then opportunity organization matching determines whether the identified market opportunity is consistent with the company¡¦s mission statement, i.e. FedEx aims at providing excellent service including Courier Pak to its clients by delivering packages promptly at the right time, at the right venue and received by the right person. It was the first company noticed that the needs of packages were different from the passengers, and emphasized in it to develop a unique system and treat as their core business; while their competitors treat it as a sideline business. From this, FedEx built up good image against its competitors. Finally comes to the opportunity evaluation, which is to evaluate whether the attractiveness of FedEx¡¦s Courier Pak can match with the needs of potential customers using the products. From the case study, we forecast that there are great rooms for Courier Pak to growth.
The US express mail industry is highly consolidated. 85% of the market is served by 3 service providers. There are six second tier players who serve the remaining 15%. FedEx and UPS lead the industry in services and innovation. The following trends have been observed in this Industry.
FedEx is a highly centralized organization, with decision-making for the firm centralized at the Memphis headquarters. While national branches of the company have some autonomy in hiring, head office controls hiring policy. Decision-making on large capital projects is also centralized, because the network structure of the company's distribution means that such decisions have global implications. As a result, FedEx has a heavily-centralized structure where very little power is delegated to local managers. Instead local managers are charged with operating the company's strategy efficiently and effectively.
FedEx’s new product Courier Pak makes sense because of its’ high profit margin and potential to generate new volume. Out of the 3 services that Fed Ex provides, CP yields the highest profit margin at 66% while Priority-One is at 55% and SAS is only at 27%. In addition to this, the company believes that it will be able to boost up sale of CP from 1300 to 6000 packages per day. This shows that CP is the most profitable and huge potential for growth.
FedEx is a logistical service company specialized in transportation, e-commerce and business services. The success of FedEx lies on an efficient information system. The business process is as follows:
FedEx was first established in 1973 as a logistic company with the name Federal Express that be created by founder and first CEO Frederick W Smith. The Headquarters is in Memphis, Tennessee in the US. The company became well known for its fast and reliable delivery service around the world. On its first night of operation FedEx delivered 186 bundles to 25 urban locations in the US with only 389 employees and a 15 Dassault Falcon aircraft. In 1980 FedEx purchased a system for live updates on the packages. In this system, FedEx drivers share the current locations from the trucks to provide updates of the packages to the customers. This information was sent to a central computer of FedEx then the company improved the update system by introducing FedEx.com webpage. This webpage allowed the tracking data to be easily accessible. However, recently, FedEx uses Savvy bundle for packing and tracking the products across couriers. (Baldwin, 2016)
FedEx has not fared as well as UPS in financial performances. FedEx¡¦s total revenue has grown 60% from 1996 to 1999 while their net income has doubled in the same period. FedEx¡¦s acquisition of RPS will challenge UPS for the ground delivery business and affect the sustainability of UPS¡¦s advantage in the ground deliver business. FedEx has been competing well in the higher-end, high-service segment of the package delivery market. Although, digitations of documents and emergence of electronic signatures is threatening the express business which FedEx has the advantage over UPS.
The traditional express industry is threatened by facsimile and electronic mails, which have zero cost. Competition between FedEx and UPS has caused a lower price and more innovations. The industry is quite consolidated and has a very high barrier to
Is this a good vision for FedEx? Why or why not? How vital is IT to this definition of FedEx’S business? Use examples from the case to illustrate your answer.
When it comes to strategy, FedEx has done a great job of staying on top in the market place after all these years. FedEx has built a very powerful empire over the last decade, insuring customers with different global delivery services. Different companies have different strategies that work with their company to reach a specific goal, at FedEx the main strategy for success would be customer service. Customer service would have to be the number one strategy FedEx is mostly concerned with and constantly researching new ways to make it easier and more convenient for customers to deliver packages across the world. To help accommodate customers, FedEx has established online databases to ensure customers of package delivery; customers are able to track packages from the convenience of their homes or offices. Something else that FedEx has established are flights, and freights for those international customers, they have also improved services to and from all over Europe as well as Asia, in
FedEx Corporation, situated in US, is one of the leading supply chain management solution providers in the world. With annual revenues as high as USD33 billion, the company offers incorporated business