Realigning Performance Objectives – Toshiba

The items from each of the five performance objectives that would need to be focused on and necessary for the laptop manufacturers in realigning their performance objectives are:

Quality – performance, features, reliability and value for money

Speed – new product development speed

Dependability – delivery performance and the ability to keep promises

Flexibility – modified product

Cost – value added, selling price and service cost

An example is the strategic alliance that Toshiba and Microsoft have just recently announced over a week ago (Toshiba, 2015). This new alliance is a sure sign that Toshiba has listened to their customers, leveraged its strong brand, diversified and extended its product line through the development of new products and services. Your last sentence is very well said and suits the course of this new alliance where the “strategic direction is to differentiate and sustain current position in Toshiba's space - adding continued value to its shareholders”.

This strategic alliance is quite impressive where the two companies will “jointly develop solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT)” (Toshiba, 2015). This will be achieved by incorporating the innovative IoT devices from Toshiba with the Azure IoT Cloud infrastructure from Microsoft. This will enable Toshiba to “deliver state of the art sensor-data-driven applications in various market segments starting in calendar year 2015” (Toshiba, 2015).

The innovative offerings from this partnership will start with the transportation and logistics market “by delivering state-of-the-art IoT devices and XaaS, utilizing highly scalable, cost-effective services and technologies combined with a great user experience” (Toshiba, 2015). The last paragraph of the press release is statements from the executive representatives of both organizations and summarizes the competitive advantage of their alliance.

The two performance measures that should be added to the present day operations strategy from the framework point of view are strategic alliance and business integration.

Strategic Alliance

Many companies do not possess the resources and/or capabilities required to satisfy the demand of customers in providing hybrid solutions. The diversification of their business is the reality where offering products and services combined into innovative offerings will result in an increase in revenue and balanced cash flows.

The companies who recognize the benefits of combining their respective top-quality product and/or service lines will leverage each other’s resources and capabilities to deliver solutions through successful partnerships. These strategic alliances will result in attracting new customers and increase the demand with existing customers by providing higher value.

Business Integration

The majority of companies today depend on a very complex mix and sources of information. The goal of business integration is to synchronize and align information technology with operations strategy as technology is increasingly becoming an embedded business function. This would also include the ability through information technology to increase sales and an improved customer service.

One issue would be the integration of data where new systems are brought in to replace older ones when companies merge. The insufficient or missed data when the computer networks are improperly integrated will decrease efficiency and will have a negative effect on customer service.

Additional examples of what customers are expecting from companies through technology would be website design and interaction, social media, automated services, customer problem solving, and the design of new products and services.

Sandy Ennis. C.E.T., PBDM
Author / Business Consultant

References:

Toshiba. (2015, June 3). Press Releases – Toshiba Builds Partnership with Microsoft to Deliver New Internet of Things (IoT) Solutions. Retrieved from http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2015_06/pr0301.htm?from=RSS_PRESS&uid=20150603-3750e