INTRODUCTION
FedEx can be seen everywhere.
Federal Express is known as FedEx. It is an express transportation company which was founded by Fredrick Wallace Smith in the early 70’s.
FedEx is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, United States of America.
Amidst Smith’s college days, he began to descry that the United States was conforming itself to become a service aligning economy.
It was longing for a candid overnight service driven company, which would be designed to conveyor packages and essential documents.
While giving his Mid-Term papers at the Yale University, he mentioned this idea.
It was completely shunned by his professors, thinking that it would never take shape. But by happy chance, he did not pay heed to such criticism and slogged towards achieving his dream.
He was able to find investors who were willing to invest an amount close to 40 million dollars. His friends and family supported him immensely. He was able to arrange for banking financing too. And by this he was able to start FedEx with 80 million dollars, being the largest company in his era to have been able to raise itself by such a prodigious venture capital.
BACKGROUND
FedEx was roaring high and was killing all its competition by making them weaker with time.
FedEx constructed a super-station at the Memphis, Tennessee.
FedEx planned that it would load all the packages from the United States and would transport and ship it out every night.
At present, FedEx has more than 150,000 workers
Fedex is the fastest delivery service. Faster than me, faster than cheetahs, faster than god… I will let the decisions arise out of mental thought. All my life I have been blind to the facts, FedEx can deliver before they even know they delivered. Only when I walk in the distribution centers, I will understand the velocity at which these valiant men and women work to get the services one desires. Like a beehive on speed, the boxes and products are alive. Each with the their own story, a brave and exquisite on the path to satisfaction.
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
In the past there was no thing as overnight express delivery for packages or freight. Then the top 3 competitors in the delivery service industry that held 85% of the market were Airborne Express (AE), United Parcel Service (UPS) and Federal Express (FedEx) and, the remaining market share was among six second-tier companies. In the past few years, the express mail businesses had grown extremely fast due to the ability to provide and fulfill overnight shipping accompanied by next-morning delivery services for both individuals and businesses customers. By 1996, this segment of the expedited shipment delivery had grown to a $16-17 billion dollar industry business in the US alone.
By capitalizing on this strategy, FedEx was able to boost its average delivery volume in 1976 to 20,726 packages per day via its three services, Priority-One, Standard Air, and Courier Pack, compared with an average of 10,521 delivered daily the prior year. Clearly the company’s calculated use of strategically-located hubs, nighttime flight routes, and limited package size allowed the company to carve out a niche by reliably delivering packages on an immediate, overnight basis.
The basis of the analytical report will be comparing Fed Ex and the United Postal Service (UPS). These two companies are the top in their industry. Each company trying to achieve the role of the industry leader they constantly battle head to head combining strategy and brute force. Fed Ex was incorporated in 1971, but did not officially begin operations until April of 1973. Fed Ex started out delivering to only 25 cities and did not start to expand until 1977. UPS was founded in 1907 starting out with a Model T Ford and a few motorcycles. UPS has since grown its fleet into 15,000+ trucks along with a large fleet of aircrafts and services over 200 countries and territories.
Initially, FedEx grew out of pressures from mounting inflation and ecumenical competition. These pressures gave elevate to more preponderant demands on businesses to expedite distributions at a low cost and to amend customer accommodations. FedEx didn’t have a business quandary but, has endeavoured to stay ahead of the com-petition by looking ahead at every stage for opportunities to meet customers needs for expeditious, reliable, and affordable overnight distributions. Lately, the Internet has provided an inexpensive and accessible platform upon which FedEx has visually perceived further opportunities to expand its business scope, both geographically and in terms of accommodation offerings. FedEx is endeavoring to fulfill two of its major goals simultaneously: 100 percent customer accommodation and 0 percent downtime.
Mark Twain once said, “The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds”. This phrase could be applied to Fred Smith and Federal Express. From their beginnings in Little Rock, Arkansas in the early 70’s delivering 186 packages overnight to 25 U.S. cities, to three decades later parlaying it’s $20 billion dollar corporation into no less than five major operation companies. FedEx has become the world’s leader in global express transportation, providing fast delivery of documents, packages and freight shipments worldwide. As a result, the name “Fed Ex” is used in much the same manner as name “Band Aid” has today. Many use this term generically
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 Corp., founded by Frederick W. Smith, began operations in April 1973 and was incorporated on October 2, 1997. FedEx Corp. is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange and headquartered in Memphis, TN. Fedex Corporation was formed in January 1998 with the acquisition of Caliber System Inc. The company reports in four major business segments. FedEx Express provides time-certain delivery within one to three business days serving markets that comprise more than 90 percent of the world 's gross domestic product. FedEx Ground provides low-cost, day-certain service to every business address in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico
Without a doubt, FedEx has grown thru a series of good management decisions, key acquisitions and some very beneficial strikes and bankruptcies. It has been well established that Federal Express’s first actual day of operations was April 17, 1973, but many do not recognize how several key missteps of competition aided in the rapid development of the newly established company (“History – About FedEx”, n.d.).
Facts and Analysis: FedEx formed in 1971, came into being from an idea Smith had when he bought interests in Arkansas Aviation sales. The company has had remarkable success. From growth to diversification, local to international. Freight to Customs, the company does exceptionally well. There are few areas where the company is not ranking number one. FedEx has made some
FedEx is a service business which provide postal service using trucks and airplane inclusive. Company operates in 220 countries. It started its service in China and India, two emerging markets, in 1990s.
FedEx’s quarterly infographic consist of 70,000 team members, 40,000 motorized vehicles, 33 hubs, 27 FedEx smart post distribution centers, 500 pickup and delivery stations, 25 FedEx world service centers and 6,100 FedEx authorized ship center locations & alliance partners. As of 2005, FedEx Ground has opened 11 new hubs and expanded over 500 facilities. In October 2015, FedEx invested $1.2 billion across more than 70 expansion projects during fiscal 2015. In addition, $2.5 million invested in expansion projects for the last five years. The expansions accelerated FedEx has Ground delivery by one day in over than two-thirds of the United States. FedEx delivered 83 percent of packages in three business days or less (Hockett, 2016). In shipping, the goal is getting products to consumers as fast as possible, The FedEx subsidiary, had third quarter revenues of $3.39 billion for the period, which is up 12 percent from last year, while operating income grew 15 percent. FedEx’s quarterly revenue is $11.6 billion and their FedEx Ground average daily volume grew 7 percent in the third quarter, because of business-to-business and home delivery services (Hockett, 2016).
With the air cargo deregulations in 1977, the company was able to use larger aircrafts like Boeing 727s to further improve their operational efficiency and performance, leading to rapid growth of the company. By 1980, it had established its position in the industry and had a growth rate of 40% and became the first company to reach the USD 1 billion revenue-mark within 10 years of inception. Following international acquisitions in 1984, Federal Express started its operations in Europe & Asia. In 1994, Federal Express official adopted ‘FedEx’ as its primary brand and became a symbol of overnight parcel delivery services.