Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Microsoft Presentation: Heather Dunn & Dana Hennessey

Four Quadrants: Microsoft Corp.



Green Quadrant
Leadership: Microsoft’s leadership demonstrates the Green (Create) Quadrant by focusing on new products and technology and allocating a large budget towards new products that allow the business to change and grow with customers’ evolving needs



  • Microsoft invests heavily in R&D to create innovative products and improve existing products. In 2010 their R&D budget was 8.2 billion dollars which accounted for 13.5% of Microsoft’s revenue


  • Signed a 3 year pact with the company NetApp to develop new technology related to virtualization, cloud computing, as well as data and storage management systems in response to shifting consumer needs


  • Microsoft recently released a publication called “Building Global Trust Online: Policy Perspectives on Privacy, Safety, and Security,” to document Microsoft’s view on these key issues and ways that Microsoft is helping partner to create a safer Internet.

Culture: the technology industry requires an organizational focus on being flexible and constantly innovating in order to keep up and drive changes in the market and Microsoft’s culture is focused on this need to be innovative




  • 9.3% of Microsoft employees are in R&D


  • Microsoft has 90 innovation centers located across the globe with the goal of connecting people and organizations and give them the opportunity to collaborate on innovative technologies


  • Microsoft does not have any set policies. They encourage their employees to make the right decisions and feel they don’t need to be babysat.

Outcomes: outcomes, or the bottom-line value Microsoft intends to achieve are to increase revenue and strengthen their global brand



  • Increase in Windows and Window’s Live division’s revenue in 2010 up 21.1% from 2009 and overall increase in revenue by 6.9%


  • Microsoft’s innovation centers have received numerous awards from countries like Malaysia, Greece, and Tunisia for their positive results. This positive reputation will help to grow Microsoft’s brand reputation in international markets.

Yellow Quadrant

Leadership: the Yellow (Create) Quadrant is demonstrated at Microsoft Corporation in terms of its leaders by the dynamic presentation style of CEO Steve Balmer. He clearly demonstrates his passion for the company and the employees as well as his desire to motivate performance and have a team mentality



  • CEO Steve Ballmer is well-known for his energetic presentations that are aimed at getting employees excited about being a part of Microsoft







  • When asked by an interviewer what profession he would choose besides his own Ballmer responded that he would have liked to work in education because he likes to encourage and develop talent, an attitude he also takes with his employees

Culture: Microsoft organizational culture is focused on creating community by recruiting networks of veterans and using learning tools to grow and develop the existing workforce




  • Microsoft is a part of “Hiring America’s Heroes” program to assist with job placement and skill training for jobless veterans. This helps to build community within the organization by creating a network of veterans.


  • Microsoft utilizes their eLearning very effectively and employees know and value the resource. Employees are able to tailor training plans based on career paths, ask questions, allow managers to create training plans, create calendars of training, etc. all in a one stop shop.


  • Microsoft implemented a huge organizational campaign to educate all employees on the cloud effort (being able to give the 30 second elevator speech on what it is) – and promoting it with the slogan, “We’re all in,” signifying the company’s commitment to their new cloud strategy.

Outcomes: outcomes the organization intends to achieve are to foster community through philanthropic giving and improve customer satisfaction and consumer interest with an advertising campaign focused on customer feedback.




  • As a result of Microsoft’s focus on philanthropy and giving back to the community Microsoft employees raised more the 96 million dollars in 2010 that was distributed to 16,000 different organizations


  • After consumer frustrations with the Vista operating system and the attack of PC’s from Apple’s advertising Microsoft rolled out the “I’m a PC and Windows 7 was my idea” commercials that demonstrated that Microsoft was tuned in to customer needs and had created a product that satisfied everyone. They term this customer service orientation “customer and partner experience” or CPE



Blue Quadrant
Leadership:
The Blue (Create) Quadrant is demonstrated at Microsoft Corporation in terms of its leaders’ focus on bottom-line results and acquisitions that will help them compete in this highly competitive environment.




  • Microsoft purchases about 6 businesses per year since they began acquiring companies in 1987. In recent years, that number nears 10 company acquisitions a year. For example, with the success of Microsoft’s SQL Server, they purchased Dundas Technology in 2008 in order to enhance the visualization technology for SQL.


  • When the Windows Mobile division released The Kin in the summer of 2010, Ballmer made the executive decision to “kill the Kin” after just a few short weeks after it was released to the public. The poor sales initiated the pull from market and Ballmer decided to instead focus phone efforts completely on their Windows 7 phone, which was released in the Winter of 2010.


  • Microsoft pays close attention to anti-trust laws, especially in the European Union (EU), after they faced the 1993 initial complaint. After paying millions of dollars in fines, they are now helping lead efforts with the EU to regulate Google and have a formal complaint currently filed against them in order to encourage appropriate competition in the EU.

Culture: organizational culture at Microsoft emphasizes trying to get the shortest time to market and competitiveness in order to compete in the ever-changing high-tech industry.



  • Microsoft has a heavy focus on customer feedback on their products. Because their employees are also their customers, they spend time rolling out new products (new Windows, Office, etc) to their employees to get early feedback before rolling the product out to market. Also discussed previously as the “CPE.”


  • One of Microsoft’s leading values that it communicates through their website is that they hold themselves accountable for honoring commitments, providing results, and striving for the highest quality. They pride themselves on Windows 7, which is the fastest-selling and most customer-approved operating system they have ever released. Ballmer first and foremost thanked the customers for their continuous improvement suggestions, which made Windows 7 so successful.

Outcomes: Microsoft posted record revenues in fiscal 2010 of $62.5 billion, an increase of 7% compared with the previous year. This also included double-digit growth in every segment of the organization.



  • The newest results released April 2011 indicate that Bing powers about 30% of searches, making significant headway in decreasing Google’s search share, which slipped 5% in the last month.


  • $16 billion returned to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends.


  • Microsoft Tag sees its biggest month ever this past March, with 5 billion Tags since the January 2009 launch. Microsoft Tag allows you to access information on millions of products by simply using your phone and the barcode. This signifies their continued competitiveness in this newer tech field.


Red Quadrant
Leadership:
the Red (Create) Quadrant is demonstrated at Microsoft Corporation in terms of its leaders’ focus on the long-term success of Microsoft and rolling out quality products to customers.




  • Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s current CEO, focuses on making sure products are competitive before releasing them to market. At a leadership talk he gave at Wharton, Ballmer described this concept in the following statement, "We're going to bet on our long term. We don't do things for the short term. And if we don't at first succeed, we keep trying," he says. "If we don't get what the customers really want, we keep going. It took us three attempts to get Windows right and if we had given up after attempt one or attempt two, Microsoft wouldn't look anything like" it does today.”


  • Ballmer is continuously focused on the cloud effort that Microsoft began and in their opinion, is leading. This came after heavy investing and strong strategy meetings led by Ballmer with the other executive staff in how to make the cloud successful over the long-term. Investment in the cloud began up to ten years ago.


  • Ballmer is asking Europe to construct a “regulatory regime that outlines the responsibilities of companies when using these services.”

Culture: organizational culture at Microsoft has a focus on monitoring projects throughout their life cycle to manage on-time delivery and continuous improvement.



  • After release of products, engineers are encouraged to work as teams to expedite and make the most efficient software updates as possible for customers.


  • SharePoint sites are utilized in order to store key information for different groups and to help track progress of projects that are in the works and make sure standards are uploaded so consistency is present.


  • Microsoft gives their employees slips with technical help phone numbers to its employees that they can give to customers they may interact with on random occasions (on a plane, in a supermarket, etc) if they have any technical questions. This ensures accurate information given to their customers and provides better customer service.

Outcomes: Outcomes, or the bottom-line value the organization intends to achieve



  • Constantly regulating piracy, especially in China. Microsoft has made this a new area for close attention and measures themselves continuously on how they are “beating” this issue. Ballmer has teamed up with President Obama to put pressure on Chinese President Hu Jinato to step up enforcement of intellectual property rights in his country.


  • Climate Counts, a non-profit that raises awareness of climate impact, rated Microsoft at 61 points, noting that Microsoft “has established goals and made efforts towards energy efficiency, reducing the company’s impact on global warming.”


We believe that Microsoft is strongest in the Green and Blue quadrants. They could do the following to either sustain or improve its performance in each of the four quadrants:



• Green:
o Microsoft should continue to partner with other organizations, governments, action groups, etc. to come up with the next best ideas and provide a better tech environment.
o Microsoft could also be sure to evaluate how R&D dollars are spent and make sure that resources are used wisely.


Yellow
o Microsoft may want to continue to benchmark against their top competition for talent so they are not losing out on the brightest engineers who are coming up with the latest new tech products.


• Blue
o Microsoft should continue to listen to customer experience ratings and be sure to not only make improvements to current products, but continuously improve on ratings and software updates as new products are released

• Red
o As important as it is to have long-term vision, Microsoft may need to focus more on the short-term, as the tech industry changes extremely fast. Microsoft has proven in the past that they come in after the competition on products as they were unable to execute projects quickly enough.

8 comments:

  1. I think the fact the Microsoft has such a strong yellow quadrant is very important. The company has come under a lot of fire in recent years because of the success of its competitors (Apple, Google, etc.), and this criticism is all very public. No doubt Microsoft's employees are well-aware of this criticism, and I don't think anyone would be surprised if it negatively affected employee performance and morale. However, the strong culture that Microsoft seems to embody is a good way to combat the negative attention. And having such a passionate CEO (albeit a bit narcissistic if the video clip is an accurate representation) who truly believes in and loves what the company is doing is really important for pushing through adversity. I think Microsoft has done a great job of that.

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  2. One area that seems to not be transparent for Microsoft compared to other companies is their Supply Chain/Operations. Do you have any info regarding this area? Is it a possible weakness for their red quadrant, in terms of efficiency, and for their yellow quadrant, in terms of collaboration with their SC channel partners?

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  3. I didn't realize that Microsoft paid such close attention to their customers. It's interesting, because I wouldn't have thought that their PC division revenues would be affected that much by customer satisfaction, since they have a leading market share on operating systems.

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  4. Nice job! It doesn't surprise me at all that there is a lot of yellow at Microsoft. They have a very strong culture and people seem to take great pride in working there. I think it is important for a technology company to be collaborative in order to bounce ideas off each other in order to produce the "next big thing".
    I think for a while Microsoft got a little bit away from the green quadrant, but recently have been focusing more on it. I think their renewed focus on 'creating' is evident in their successful new products recently released, i.e. kinect. I think if they continue to focus on their green quadrant they could begin to come out with products that are leading the market instead of lagging and trying to catch up with their competitors.

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  5. @Lindsay: The poor media attention over the past few years has definitely taken a toll on the morale of employees, however, Steve Ballmer, CEO, really does take the time to get everyone pumped up about the next thing we're taking on and taking less focus off of the past.
    @Adam: Unfortunately, I do not have specific information on their SC/Operations area. From my personal experience there, I haven't heard any "mishaps" regarding their methods, but again, don't have specific details.

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  6. Very supprised to see just how much they spend on R & D. I'm not familiar with the industry or how much is usually spent by companies in it, but at first glance it seems like some of that money isn't being used as efficiently as it could be considering the amount they allocate.

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  7. I agree with Dave about being shocked on how much Microsoft is spending on R&D but in a way it makes sense.. Microsoft has not really been in the news with anything "game changing" in a while, so I'm sure they're eager to find the next big thing.

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  8. I think Kinect is quite a game changer in the gaming industry; I'm pretty sure they broke some sales records with it. However, given the R&D that is not all that impressive. I was pretty surprised by the Ballmer video, I was under the impression he was all business and not much of a yellow person.

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