Amazon History
Amazon.com, Inc was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos. In 1997, the company went public and headquartered in Seattle, Washington. The organization started its business as an online bookstore like selling textbooks for students.
Throughout the years, the company has sold jewelry, video games, electronics, home-improvement products, and in addition to other goods. Nowadays, Amazon has launched services in streaming media, food delivery, fire products (TV, phone, and software system), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology.
Amazon mission and vision
Every company has their mission statement and vision statement. A mission statement describes a company’s business goals and guides strategic management, a vision statement is about the organizational direction toward desired future plans. Amazon’s mission statement is “offering their customers with the lowest prices, the large selection, and the convenience” The company promises online service to satisfy target customers’ needs.
Amazon’s corporate vision is “to be earth’s most customer centric company, where people can find and discover anything they might want to buy through online” The mission statement has backed up with the organization’s main aim of becoming the best e-commerce company in the world.
Amazon strategic objectives
Amazon is the leader of an e-commerce industry. The competitor strategies are cost leadership and differentiation in the market. The company’s the biggest value is customer satisfaction and it is offering lowest prices as much as they can. Customers are very sensitive on price, they always want to switch from one to another. Amazon also has a customer loyalty, many customers try to purchase from Amazon more often than other competitors.
The company is also focusing on differentiation. They have launched membership service, streaming services ,and fastest delivery system such as video, music, game, drone service, pick-up in amazon store and so on. Due to these differentiations, more customer are willing to buy from Amazon.
Balanced scorecard (BSC)
The balanced scorecard (BSC) provides a framework that the organization’s accomplishment, new strategies, new projects aligned with the strategy, and monitoring on the strategic management planning and closing sections. This is how to measure and achieve the company’s objective. There are four perspectives on BSC: financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth.
First, financial perspective is about higher profitability and revenues including: Return on Equity (ROE) ad Return on Investment (ROI). The ROE is a ratio that measures the ability of a firm to generate profits from its shareholders investment and calculates as net income divided by average shareholder’s equity. Amazon’s ROE is 15% and 13% in 2016 and 2017. In the retail industry the average ROE is 7-8%, Amazon’s ROE is higher than the average.
On the other hands, ROI measures the amount of return/profit of a firm’s investment and calculates as operating income divided by total assets. Amazon’s ROI is 5.02% and 3.13% in 2016 and 2017 and stable percentage is between 3 and 5 percentage. The company is stable, and they invest cash in fixed income securities and AAA rated money market funds.
Amazon
Secondly, Amazon is the biggest online shopping company in the world, which people continue to purchase from them on a repeat basis due to offering lowest prices. The customer also has the loyalty of the company because the customer has high satisfaction with customer service. The company has expanded its business worldwide, they have not only North American customers, but also other countries.
Thirdly, internal business process presents that the business is efficiently and have higher employee engagement such as inventory turnover. Inventory turnover ratio measures how many times the inventory has been sold in a given time. Amazon’s inventory turnover is 8.13 and 8.14 in 2016 and 2017. Walmart’s inventory turnover in 2017 is 8.11.
Lastly, learning and growth is an innovation that the company wants to develop new products and aggressively target the market. Amazon has several projects that they want to continue and develop in the market such as Prime membership services, Amazon device, Alexa, Whole Foods, and Career Choices.
The career choices is an employee program that Amazon pre-pay “95% of tuition, fees, and textbooks (up to $1200) for associate degrees such as mechanics, computer technologies, and nursing” Amazon invests money for student workers whose skill are relevant to a career of the company.
Amazon 4 Projects
4 Projects that will support achievement of the objectives with priorities
Amazon wants to expand and continuing in research and development (R&D), stream services, grocery industry, and new headquarters in Northern America. The R&D is about human resources, new technology, and fast delivery service (drone).
The streaming services are video, music, and games. Grocery is expanding wholefoods stores, Amazon books stores, as well as service pharmacy industry. Last but not least is new headquarters in New York City and Washington, D.C. areas because the company is growing more bigger than they expected. They are looking for new places that can divide departments.
Amazon questions
4) Focus on one project only and develop it as follows:
4.1) Project Charter.
4.2) Identify stakeholders.
4.3) Project scope statement.
4.4) Project Work Breakdown Structure (In Calibre or Excel or MS Project or alternative).