Microsoft and Flextronics Work Together

FUTRONICS Inc. is a private company located in Lexington mainly categorized for modems, monitors, disk drives and terminals. It is moreover in to sales and services. This case is about the replacement of Futronics’s central office stores by an outside service provider. In this case supply management manager have an opportunity for investigating selected outsourcing in-house services.

If the company we outsource with has some sort of issue with its equipment or is running behind schedule it will delay our orders and reflect poorly upon our company. If we choose not to do anything we will continue running at inefficient levels costing us more and more money as time goes on.

Strategic alliance is an agreement between two or more organizations to cooperate in a detailed business activity, so that each get benefited from the strengths of one an other, and gains competitive advantage. The formation of strategic alliances has been seen as a comeback to globalization and increasing doubt and difficulty in the business environment. Strategic alliances occupy the sharing of knowledge and expertise between partners as well as the reduction of risk and costs in areas such as relationships with suppliers and the development of new products and technologies. strategic alliance is sometimes equated with a joint venture, but an alliance may involve competitors, and generally has a shorter life span. Strategic partnership is a closely related concept. This article analyzes definition of strategic alliance, its benefits, types, process of formation, and provides a few cases studies of strategic alliances. This paper tries to synthesize the scope and role of marketing functions in the determination of effectiveness of strategic alliances. Several propositions from a marketing perspective about the analysis of alliance process are formulated. On the basis of the propositions, a framework is developed for future research

Outsourcing occurs when a company either buys products or services from outside sources or sends work to outside contractors versus doing it themselves. There are several advantages and disadvantages to outsourcing to include cost savings, sharing risk and developing better leaders internally. There are also some disadvantages like lack of quality control, loss of some management functions and losing the ability to build well rounded leaders in all aspects of the company. In a country like Iraq, the United States military is outsourcing many occupations in an effort to rebuild the Iraqi economy and eliminate the need for military presence at the same time

Outsourcing is a process in which large corporations move various jobs such as: production of goods, online coding, telemarketing, and human recourses to name a few to foreign countries in order to cut down on employment rates, and raise their profit margin. Moreover, the low amount companies pay overseas employees, lower standard of work environment, cutbacks on various fees that are usually found in the U.S., and much more make outsourcing seem very desirable. However, outsourcing can be argued as favorable, or unfavorable depending on the audience, and their outlook on the issue. I personally side with the viewpoint that outsourcing long term is unfavorable for America. I find this issue very interesting, complex, and large because of the

To attempt counteract this cyclical slowdown, EB games have introduced an ever-growing variety of accessories with games to increase the revenue raising capacity of their respective consoles, as well as maintaining the loyalty and attention of a fickle gaming public. Some types of games have been released, with specialty controllers to great success, mitigating the expected lull in sales in the lead-up to new consoles. Recently however, the competition has become slightly skewed. Nintendo’s newfound dominance of the market is causing some headaches for Sony and Microsoft.

Outsourcing has become an integral part of many organizations today. Outsourcing has its advantages and disadvantages that organizations will have to weigh to decide whether or not outsourcing is the best possible solution to their current problems and business operations. Outsourcing refers to the process of hiring external provider to operate on a business or organization function (Venture Outsource, 2012). In this case, two organizations or businesses enter a contract where there will be an exchange of services and payments. This paper will discuss the possible risks an organization may encounter in outsourcing in relation to the use of an external service

As a global leader in the PC market, Lenovo’s success rests on its ability to deliver consumer centric innovations in products that deliver a blend of mobility, performance and price. Design is an infrastructural element that helps define every aspect of a company, including Web site, stores, customer support, packaging, and messaging as well as its products. Lenovo has a well-earned industry reputation for delivering superior quality products. Quality is a fundamental component and commitment to customer satisfaction by delivering products that are of superior quality to comparable offerings from their competitors is the key to Lenovo’s success. In recent years, Lenovo relies heavily on local manufacturing strategies to shorten

With the competition in the video games industry getting more intense, the next steps of the video game companies become more crucial for their positioning on the market. Due to the low product differentiation, the next market leader will be the platform provider that manages to offer an innovative gaming experience and a wider population of buyers that include all demographics. Although the industry is being totally dominated by Nintendo’s console, the industry is still considered to show a

The lesson learned from this is that sometimes it is easier and faster reach a new market via joint venture, even though the profit will be less, but the company can save a lot of money in studying the new market trying to understand the new culture and how they purchase and also it can minimize the risk because there is a national brand supporting the new international brand, which gives confidence and security to the customers.

As we all known, Sony and Matsushita are two of the largest consumer electronic makers in Japan or even in the world. And in this reading, it points out the different strategies Sony and Matsushita use when they were facing the fierce competition in China ----- Matushita was accelerating its pace on stretching the supply chain in China while Sony unexpectedly decided to shift some of its manufacturing business in China back to Japan. In this article, I will discuss the reasons that lead them to make different decision as well as analysize the advantages and the disadvantages of their decision.

Lenovo Group Ltd. (Lenovo) is a Chinese multinational technology corporation that founded in Beijing in 1984. Specifically, Lenovo is one of the top enterprises that produces and sells consumer electronics and computer hardware, with a focus on producing personal computer (PC). Currently, the headquarter of Lenovo is in Beijing, China, with a second headquarter that located in Morrisville, North Carolina, United States. As a multinational enterprise, Lenovo currently have operations in more than sixty countries and has its products sold almost all over the world.1 Becoming a multinational enterprise especially making it to the top of the industry is not an easy thing for any company due to numerous predictable and unforeseen challenges. However, Lenovo has successfully expanded its business and reached to the top. Therefore, the present paper aims to analyze Lenovo’s operational/managerial strategies and provide a better sense of what has Lenovo done for reaching to the current position in the global market.

There are also several disadvantages to outsourcing agreements, which include becoming dependent on an outside supplier for services, failing to realize the purported cost savings from outsourcing, locking into a negative relationship, losing control over critical functions, and lowering the morale of permanent employees.

Acer's dominance as a global manufacturer of IT hardware products can be attributed to the company's extensive electronics component expertise, depth of experience managing global electronics component supply chains, and well-planned acquisitions. Through a series of successful acquisitions, the company has four successful brands including Acer, eMachines, Gateway and Packard-Bell (DiDominico, Kartika, Sibeck, 1996). Of these three strategic areas that Acer excels in, their logistics and supply chain expertise across each of the geographies they compete in continue to deliver the greatest time-to-market and cost gains (Honi, Taring, Po-Young, 2000). Acer is organized into two segments, the device business group and consolidated products and services or other business group. This second group continues to be instrumental in the success of the "divide and conquer" strategies that Acer is successfully using relative to Lenovo. It is also a critical success factors in their success with global markets and local market competitive strategy. The combination of their depth of expertise with electronic components and supply chain prowess in the high technology industry also give the company a formidable competitive advantage against Dell and the troubled PC marker Hewlett-Packard (Honi, Taring, Po-Young, 2000). Despite all these strengths however, Acer continues to struggle with the areas of consumer branding and consumer awareness

Logitech has several internal strengths that has attributed to the company’s success. Logitech has created for itself a strong reputation through its innovative products and excellent customer service. Innovation is Logitech’s top strengths. Because an innovation is cover throughout the paper, I will not be providing detail examples of in this section, but rather be focusing other key factors. Logitech has stood the test of time, the company can quickly respond and adapt to changes in technology or market conditions. Because Logitech’s product and brand is recognized worldwide, the company has a strong channel coverage and efficient worldwide distribution. In 2009, Logitech’s business retail