Financial Management Plan:
Microsoft Corporation must manage the existing challenges so that it can remain globally competitive. This involves dealing with issues such as flat demand, new competitors and the changing prices of commodities. With emerging markets in other countries, opportunities are expanding and drawing aggressive competition. The stakes are extremely high and many companies are fighting the double challenge of generating growth in revenue and remaining competitive (Bell, 1995).
Making such decisions requires the Corporation to address some critical issues:
Understanding the demand.
Microsoft Corporation must understand the context for all the investment decisions generating profits. However, it is difficult for software companies to make decisions because they are unable to identify the consumer demands that motivate their customers’ order patterns. Severe price fluctuations add volatility to software pricing thus worsening the problem. This often motivates customers to time their buying orders in ways that generate unpredictable demand (Dalrymple & Parsons, 1992).
Product innovation.
Software development is all about being innovative. This requires creativity in extending the already existing products so that they can perform better. Such extended products have proven to attract new customers in the market, as well. According to research, companies generate the most income from products that have already existed. These products have a greater impact in both small and giant corporations. With the world consolidating efforts towards maintaining a green economy, if Microsoft develops new environmentally compliant products, it can be a significant growth as well as a competitive opportunity (Financial Executives Institute, 2005).
Differentiating products through innovative customer service
For Microsoft Corporation to win customers and remain competitive, it must create new products. However, this effort is not enough because it will also require differentiating itself by marketing innovative services. The corporation may add extra value by surrounding the already existing products with valued added services; this may be services such as on-site support (Beaman, 1993).
Marketing Plan:
Marketing plan for Microsoft Corporation’s Products
Microsoft Corporation is developing plans aimed at restructuring its marketing strategies. This move may see many people lose their jobs at the company.
Moving People Around
The changes embraced by the company may shift some of its technical marketing team to other departments. The plans will cut on workers whose skills are irrelevant and whose duties and responsibilities have been duplicated in other departments. This will revamp the organization of the company’s marketing groups because employees will be placed at the right place where they fit in the company (Condrey, 2010).
The above plan to make reviews would cut on overlapping observed in job responsibilities. These changes are also designed in order to assist the corporation in giving the best response to threats from competitors such as Google and Apple, which have been making steps aimed at attracting Microsoft’s corporate-computing customers (Bidgoli, 2010).
Maintaining Market Dominance
Microsoft Corporation has designed new products, which are user friendly to the customers. Products such as Linux have placed the company at the top level in the industry as it is referred to as the “Goliath Microsoft”. The company’s strategy of maintaining its dominance in the soft ware industry has enabled it to have control of operating software for the majority of the computer market (Rothwell & Kazanas, 2003). This strategy has succeeded in propelling the company to become dominate in the market and especially with the newly acquired Linux; Microsoft now has an opportunity to control the network server market. Finally, the corporation has plans to engage its Windows and the Linux operating systems. With this, the company can easily force its key competitors to exit from the market or even merge with Microsoft (Mag, 1992).
Human Resource Management Plan:
Human resources management plan for Microsoft Corporation.
Microsoft Corporation has a human resource group of approximately 1400 workers in over 100 countries. This group of HR employees is mandated to provide services to more than 80,000 employees of the Corporation around the world (Bidgoli, 2010).
Microsoft Corporation had an expectation of combining its HR and IT teams for the purposes of developing high quality solutions for the company. The HR department is subdivided in to distinct entities that have to achieve different objectives for the company. This setup suggests that the company’s
IT department had to work together with HR department, and this left the HR department with no comprehensive knowledge of technology projects (Condrey, 2010).
There were other difficulties existing within the structure and partnership of IT with the company’s business. The two departments, HR and IT experienced hardships because of inconsistency in planning, lack of continuity, inability to make priorities and job duplications. The company’s HR planning process was in a desperate condition that resulting in IT projects, which majority of them was not in line with the company’s initial strategic objectives (Mathis & Jackson, 2011). Microsoft IT did not have the required business driver information, which is effective in evaluating and prioritizing solutions in technology. This implies that the solutions available for the company could be associated with the available budget and time than the value of business. Finally, the HR ended up with a portfolio of over 140 applications serving the functions of HR all over the world (American Management Association, 2001).
Microsoft Corporation had too many employees serving the same function while the areas of need lacked enough applications to deliver the services. The company’s employees experienced substantial difficulties in obtaining HR information and services. There was consistent lack of HR tools and their functionality, as well. In general, Microsoft HR was not strategic as it was expected because the company invested too much time trying to come up with response to the issues around the portfolio of HR systems (Beaman, 1993).
References
American Management Association, (2001). HR focus: American Management Association's
Human Resources Publication. New York: American Management Association.
Beaman, K. V., (1993). Boundaryless HR: Human Capital Management in the Global Economy.
New York, NY: SUNY Press.
Bell, H., (1995). The Wall Street journal: Index, Volume 2. Michigan: Jones & Co.
Bidgoli, H. (2010). The Handbook of Technology Management: Supply Chain Management,
Marketing. John Wiley & Sons
Condrey, S. E. (2010). Handbook of Human Resource Management in Government. New York,
NY: John Wiley & Sons
Dalrymple, D. J. & Parsons, L. J., (1992). Marketing management: text and cases. Minnesota:
Wiley.
Financial Executives Institute, (2005). Financial executive: FE., Volume 21. Michigan: Financial
Executives Institute.
Mag, P. C. (1992). Marketing plan for Microsoft Corporation. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning
Mathis, R. L. & Jackson, J. H. (2011). Human Resource Management: Essential Perspectives.
New York, NY: Cengage Learning
Rothwell, W. J. & Kazanas, H. C. (2003). Planning and Managing Human Resources: Strategic
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