... 23 1992 Associate Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Research Assistant Meredith Lazo wrote this case as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. Copyright © 1987 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685 or write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of Harvard Business School. 1 United Parcel Service (A) The management committee at United Parcel Service (UPS) wrestled with the last item on the agenda. Frank Erbrick, head of the Information Services department, had been invited to make a presentation. Responding to Erbrick’s presentation, Jack Rogers, chief executive, inquired: “So you’re convinced that we can’t locate this talent internally or develop it in the smart computer-trained kids working in our districts?” “Oh, I think we can groom some from the inside, but we also have to get a large number of the senior programmers and middle managers from the outside. The field has gotten very specialized,” replied Frank. Erbrick was interrupted by Operations Vice President Frank Middendorf: “Look Frank, we don’t need people to make the computers...
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...United Parcel Service’s IT Infrastructure: A Case Analysis Russell Baker, Jacksonville University Brian Wm. Dudley, Jacksonville University Sean Holt, Jacksonville University Chris Stockton, Jacksonville University Vanja Vukota, Jacksonville University ABSTRACT This analysis of the information technology infrastructure at United Parcel Service (UPS) begins with a general overview of the company’s information technology (IT) environment to establish awareness of the size and complexity of this corporation. It includes a macro-level breakdown of the technology infrastructure of UPS ranging from the data centers to the PCs currently in operation. The study also more closely analyzes the software and database structure of UPS along with an analysis of the company’s E-commerce activities. It includes an interview with Tom Creech, the North Florida District E-commerce manager at UPS. Finally, research was conducted to evaluate the emerging technologies that UPS is implementing and employing to support the business strategy and maintain its competitive edge. OVERVIEW nfrastructure, data and proprietary e-commerce software elements are the foundation of UPS’s technology success. These tools work together to support its e-commerce strategy, which in turn supports the company’s business strategy. The company’s ongoing investment and research in emerging technologies gives UPS its competitive advantage according to Tom Creech, North Florida District E-commerce Manager. “UPS...
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...United Parcel Service Culture Dusty Atwood Texas A&M University Central Texas November 23, 2014 Organizational Behavior The United Parcel Service, or UPS, is a shipping juggernaut with an annual revenue in excess of fifty billion dollars and nearly fifteen million packages shipped daily. To give you an idea of just how big this shipping giant actually is “UPS looks at the world from the prospective of the world’s largest package delivery company. Two percent of the global GDP passes through our system every day.” (Kuehn 2014) In the field of shipping UPS has remained profitable and relevant in the one hundred plus years since it was founded, but how has it remained amongst the top performers in this field? The organizational culture of the company may be able to answer this. The Cultural Artifacts of UPS The artifacts of the United Parcel Service are many and varied, but one above the rest stands alone, that being the color brown. The color itself has been used in much of the other symbology and artifacts of the shipping giant. UPS uses a specific shade of brown which is called Pullman brown. At the time of UPS’s inception in the early twentieth century the height of luxury cross country travel was done by rail. The most luxurious of all the rail line cars were made by the Pullman Palace Car Company, as such brown was associated with luxury. One addition benefit of the color brown for over the road vehicle that frequently travels unimproved roads is that it easily...
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...David Faskas, Julius Cano, Dan Dragomir, and Tisha Ray FINC 4369 Dr. Jonathan Du February 7, 2011 Analysis of FedEx and United Parcel Service The domestic United States market for package-delivery is a $45-billion dollar market. The air express market is a $25-billion dollar segment of this market. The package delivery industry is very large and highly competitive. Two of the top competitors, FedEx Corporation and United Parcel Service have been racing to gain a larger portion of this multi-billion dollar market for years. Recently with a landmark air-transportation agreement being reached in China, the market for international delivery has boomed. Analysts expect China to become the world’s largest economy within the next few decades. The air-cargo market in China has been growing at a rate of 30 percent per year and is expected to increase for at least 5 years at this rate. With such an important growing market opening to international companies, the opportunity is great. Many risks may also be present with this new venture, but the reward may be great for the company that can take hold of this market share first. Through this analysis I will analyze the goals of each firm, how each firm has achieved or strived to achieve these goals, and how each company has dealt with threats from competitors. FedEx has stated in their mission statement that they have the goal of “[producing] superior returns for shareowners by providing high value-added supply chain, transportation...
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...United Parcel Service: Moving at the Speed of Business 1. What is UPS's business model? Does it move at the "speed of business"? Explain. 2. Who is UPS's target market? What service(s) is UPS providing? 3. Who are UPS's competitors? What are the limits of their business models? UPS has been rated "America's most admired mail, package and freight delivery company" for sixteen consecutive years by surveys conducted by Fortune magazine, and in 1998 was named "world's most admired" in the same category. United Parcel Service (UPS) is one of America's ten largest airlines. It is the largest private user of cellular technology on earth. Its drivers' handheld computers make a million wireless calls a day. UPS also handles about six percent of the nation's daily gross domestic product. The $24 billion company (see Table 1 for historical financial data) has 330,000 employees, delivering 12 million packages a day to seven million customers. Company revenues for the quarter ending March 31, 1999, totaled $6.33 billion, up 8% compared to the $5.86 billion reported for the same period in 1998. Net income for the 1st quarter rose to $499 million compared to the $352 million reported for the same period in 1998, a 42% jump. As the world's largest package distribution company, UPS transports more than 3 billion parcels and documents annually (See Table 2 for industry data). UPS operates more than 500 aircraft, 157,000 vehicles and 2,400 package and sorting centers to provide service in more...
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...Vanessa Hutabarat 29115393 GM 1 – SBM ITB Business Economics KOMPAS (Saturday March 19th 2016) Ekonomi (p.17) Suku Bunga, Tak Hanya BI Rate This article discuss about the phenomenon of the declining BI rate for this last 3 months (January until March 2016). On August 29th 2013, BI rate increasing to 7%, and then increase again on September 12th 2013 to 7.25%. The increase trend keeps going on November 12th 2013 by 7.5% and last increase to 7.75% on November 18th 2014. This phenomenon was caused by the unstable of global economic, including The Fed plan to stop their stimulus in bond purchases. As US economic condition get better, the fed have a plan to increase their risk free which almost zero. The step that The Fed going to take force Indonesia, as developing country, to keep its risk free above 7% in order to attract investor. This fund from investor hopefully will make Indonesia’s financial account surplus in Indonesia’s balance of payment (NPI). The surplus of financial account in NPI will cover the deficit of Indonesia’s current account since ideally financial account add to current account equal to zero. The low number of Indonesia’s export compared to Indonesia’s import more or less affected the deficit of Indonesia’s current account. The low number of export in Indonesia was the result of decreasing number of global demand. This decreasing number of demand resulted the decreasing number of profit. This may cause the exporter to gain loss and to make bank...
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...prepare to discuss the insights you derived from the two firms’ financial statements, financial ratios, stock-price performance, and economic profit (economic value added or EVA). Also, prepare to describe how EVA is estimated, and its strengths and weaknesses as a measure of performance. • If you had to identify one of those companies as excellent, which company would you choose? On what basis did you make your decision? More generally, what is excellence in business? When the United States and China reached an agreement on air-transportation that quintupled the number of commercial cargo flights between the two countries. Only two U.S. all-cargo carriers that were permitted to serve the vast Chinese market were FedEx and the United Parcel Service, Inc. This agreement allowed for the establishment of air-cargo hubs in China and landing rights for commercial airlines at any available airport. Since news broke out both companies’ stock prices had been rising steadily. The FedEx shared price had sky rocketed at a rate nearly five times faster than UPS. The reason for that is that FedEx had the largest foreign presence in China. They had 11 weekly flights, served 220 Chinese cities and FedEx’s volumes in China had grown by more than 50% between 2003 and 2004. The way that I would interpret FedEx’s fourteen percent increase in market value is that investors view FedEx as a potential better company to take advantage of the growth in China. Then I would look into past data in...
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...packages, because of the technology UPS saved 28 million miles and 3 million gallons of fuel each year, what’s more, the customers can track their parcel in every minute through UPS web and the customer representatives are able to check the status of packages and respond customer’s inquiries. 2. UPS used tracking technology and Hired Hand technologies. The tracking technology make customer more trust and familiar with UPS cause customer can see where and how their parcel has been delivered, in the same time, UPS using the tracking technology saved a huge amount of money by reducing the mileages and fuels of delivery trucks’ daily usage. The Hired Hand technologies gain more profit from not only individuals but also manufactures. Because these technologies can provide both track products and help to build weekly manufacturing plans. 1. 2. 3. The UPS’s information system solved firstly road calculation. Without the information system UPS may spend millions more on trucks and fuels, and drivers will take more time to deliver parcels to customers. Secondly, it solved that parcels are hardly to monitor while delivering. If UPS don’t have it, the customers and UPS will not know how and where the parcels are delivered. What’s more, the customer representatives are unable to answer customers any question about their parcels. For manufacturers that use UPS services, it...
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...University of Phoenix Material Two Population Means A tomato farmer with a very large farm of approximately 2200 acres had heard about a new type of rather expensive fertilizer which would supposedly significantly increase his production. The frugal farmer wanted to test the new fertilizer before committing the large investment required to fertilize a farm of his size. He therefore selected 15 parcels of land on his property and divided them each into two portions. He bought just enough of the new fertilizer to spread over one half of each parcel and then spread the old fertilizer over the other half of each parcel. His yields in pounds per tomato plant were as follows: |Parcel |New Fertilizer |Old Fertilizer | |1 |14.2 |14.0 | |2 |14.1 |13.9 | |3 |14.5 |14.4 | |4 |15.0 |14.8 | |5 |13.9 |13.6 | |6 |14.5 |14.1 | |7 |14.7 ...
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...marks) a. Why is it an innovation? What makes it innovative?(compare) b. How is the innovation related to the megatrends? (innovation-megatrends) c. Where in the value chain is the innovation deployed? How does it help a company achieve a competitive advantage? (company) d. How will it affect the industry’s competitive environment? (industry) UPS has also an extensive information system specifically adapted to the needs of parcel collection. Each parcel handled requires numerous data elements that are transmitted over a optic cable network supported by satellite and wireless communication. This network is named UPS net. The storage is necessary for the management of the very complex logistics of the several millions of parcels sent each week having different origins, destinations and recipients. UPS is also working on computer software to simplify shipping red tape, optimize routing strategies and facilitate package tracking. The system also enables customers to locate and track their parcel directly from the Internet. The telematics system with data mining * Competitive Advantage: UPS is a leader in the package delivery services. The company has gained competitive advantage in accessing up-to-date information as quickly and immediately as possible. This information system helps the management of UPS to make decisions which helps the company to sustain its competitive advantage. Due to this information system and IT, UPS is operating...
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...MBA 7200 Financial Analysis Paper: United Parcel Service 20 September 2014 Wilmington University United Parcel Service United Parcel Service (UPS) was founded by 19 year old James E Casey and 18 year old Claude Ryan in Seattle, Washington, August 28, 1907 as a bicycle-messenger service with one bicycle between them and $100 borrowed from a friend to establish the “American Messenger Company” (Hiskey, 2012). Fast forward to 2002 UPS officially establishes an air hub in Louisville, Kentucky with an International hub in Cologne, Germany in 2014. Its headquarters are presently in Atlanta, Georgia. From humble beginnings as a bicycle messenger service, UPS has become a global leader as the largest logistic package delivery service. The number one shipping company service 54 counties in domestic delivery and export services to over 220 countries and territories, including shipping outside the United States supply chains & freight segments in numerous capacities in over 175 countries. (Top 5 Shipping Companies, 2013) In addition they maintain a 99K ground fleet and 266 jet air fleet to include container transport. In the past three years significant developments within the company show a heavy investment project in the Renminbi currency to assist the companies funding growth projects in China, giving them more resources to support supply chains and healthcare logistics solutions. The most significant current event affecting UPS was the computer virus found July 31,...
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...Contents 2. Preparing 2 2.1Your lecture 2 2.2When you 2 3. Writing 3 4. Strategy 4 5.Referencing guidelines 4 5.1 What is detailed 4 Figure 1 3 Figure 2 4 Figure 3 5 (Bazar, 2008) Assignment writing guidelines 1. Introduction 2. Preparing 3. Writing 4. Strategy 5. Referencing guidelines 1. Introduction 2. Preparing 2.1Your lecture notes will give you the basic framework ONLY of the ideas, theories and concepts you will need to complete the assignment. These notes will therefore NOT be sufficient on their own. You will need to make use of the required reading, extra references and any other material you come across in the course of researching your assignment. 2.2When you are taking notes for your assignment, try and `translate' what the author is saying into your own words. Don't just copy out huge chunks from other people’s work, otherwise they will probably end up in your assignment with very little of the wording changed (which is plagiarism). Also try to think about what is being said from your own point of view - do you agree or disagree with the points that the author is making? 2.3 Take down basic points from as many sources as you can manage and compare what the authors are saying as you are reading. There will be both similarities and differences in their views and it helps if you can begin to classify authors together. 2.4 Try and only take down relevant points - authors don't (unfortunately!) write...
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...Two Competing Security Products XXXX INF 220 IS Principle Professor XXXX May 4, 2015 Two Competing Security Products United Parcel Services continue to beat out their competitors due to continued advancement in information systems technology. United Parcel Service use of top notch technology like their Delivery Information Acquisition Device allows the driver to receive signature from their customers and pick-up and delivery information. The customer will be able to view this information as soon as it is transmitted to United Parcel Service network storage and processing. To have this type of rapid information in sixty seconds for customers to view on the Web is amazing. Their networking and telecommunications technology is the element that makes the company the world wide leaders. United Parcel Service provides their customers with convenience from start to finish. If you have their software you are able to print and download labels, this information is transmitted to one of United Parcel Services distribution center who then creates the most efficient delivery route for the parcel. The distribution center considers weather conditions and traffic when creating an efficient route. United Parcel Services encounter challenges when it comes to international deliveries. Some of the challenges faced are culture differences like the currency, time, date and some icon usage that may be offensive to some cultures. Additional there were hardware constraints for...
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...foundation for conducting business today. In many industries, survival and even existence is difficult without extensive use of information technology. No longer can we imagine going to work and conducting business without them. United Parcel Service (UPS), the world's largest company in parcel service has been successful in the competition by using technology. The structure of this discussion is as follows: first, general introduction about UPS; second, we learn about the ways in which UPS use information technology to operate its business, including how does technology help UPS and how successful and what will happen in the absence of this technology; and finally, we summarize the role of information technology for companies in modern times. United Parcel Service (UPS) began its business in 1907 with two founders who are young Americans, Jim Casey and Ryan Claus, coming from Seattle with only asset is a phone and two bicycles. More than 90 years, UPS has been very successful with the slogan "Provide the best service with lowest prices for customers." Today, UPS ships more than 14.1 million parcels and documents in the U.S. and in more than 200 other countries / territories. Information technology has helped UPS maintaining the ability to lead the parcel shipping market although its competitors are quite fierce rivals such as FedEx and Airborne Express. By using of handheld computing device called the Delivery Information Acquisition Device (DIAD) which helps the UPS’s drivers automatically...
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... BACKGROUND OF STUDY Inter modal transport can be described as the transport of merchandise by at least two transport modes with a minimum of one stage being made by train, by truck, or by maritime modes. In other words, it is a cargo unit that is transferred from a transport mode to a another. The optimal combination of modes allows transporters to achieve what is known as economies of scope. In a majority of cases, the first and/or last steps of the cargo itinerary consist in truck transportation and are to be minimized. More than ever, delivery firms' activities are based on inter modal transport to optimize delivery times and, in turn, their overall efficiency. United Parcel Service (UPS) is an enterprise specializing in the collection and the routing of parcels throughout the world. It represents an excellent example of a corporation actively involved in freight distribution and the application of logistics. In 2007, UPS generated incomes around 50 billion dollars and employed...
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