Gene_One_Benchmarking

Running head: Gene One Generic Benchmarking Gene One Generic Benchmarking Amy Jean Anderson Anna Nykiel Elizabeth Vikash Transformational Leadership MBA 520 Professor Gary Riggs May 20, 2009 Introduction Generic benchmarking is a significant tool for companies in the decision making process. The purpose of the generic benchmarking is to recognize potential solution to the problem statements. Company can do it by looking at how companies in the other industries have dealt with similar concerns. In 1996, Gene One entered in the biotech industry with groundbreaking technology that eradicated disease in tomatoes and potatoes. Farmers no longer needed to use pesticides. The win –win situation helped Gene One grow to a $400 million company in eight years. Gene One is in process to go public and realize the annual growth targets of 40 percent. This analysis will research companies that could provide useful benchmarking strategies for Gene One and addressed issues that are also facing the company, will also provide the explanation how the company responded to the issue. Team B will include in this paper the key course concepts and compare and contrast the practices of each company related to those concepts. Step 1 Yahoo! Yahoo! was founded by David Filo and Jerry Yang. Founders wanted to change the way people communicate with each other, find and access information and purchase things. The website stated as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web", later changed the name to Yahoo! They started their guide in a campus trailer in February 1994 Jerry and David found out they were not alone in wanting to find web sites useful. News about their website spread from their friends to what became a loyal audience in the whole world. Yahoo! Enjoyed its first million-hit day in the fall of 1994, translating the Website to almost 100 thousand visitors. Due to the enthusiastic reception Yahoo! became more popular. David and Jerry knew they have great business on their hands. In March 1995, Yahoo! Founders incorporated the business and met with Silicon Valley capitalists. Founders came across Sequoia Capital, the well-regarded firm whose most successful investments included Apple Computer, Atari, Oracle and Cisco Systems. They agreed to fund Yahoo! in April 1995 with an initial investment of nearly $2 million. Jerry and David realized this company has a huge potential and will grow quickly. They began to look for a management team. Yahoo! Founders hired Tim Koogle, a veteran of Motorola and an alumnus of the Stanford engineering department, as chief executive officer and Jeffrey Mallett, founder of Novell's WordPerfect consumer division, as chief operating officer. David and Jerry also secured a second round of funding in fall 1995 from investors Reuters Ltd. and Softbank. Yahoo! launched a highly-successful IPO in April 1996 with a total of 49 employees. Like Gene One, Yahoo! Company faced lack of trained and experienced stuff. Gene One had to meet SOA requirements. The Act required an IPO Board to have at least one member with financial experience, three committees to represent auditing, compensation and nominating. Gene One does not have the people with the business know-how knowledge to design the infrastructure needed to support the IPO. Yahoo! Company, as mentioned above, hired a management team to coordinate task. Yahoo! Founders hired experts and people with experience, previous CEOs and people who had knowledge and skills. In the Gene One Scenario, Gene One Company faced the same problem; the management team did not feel confident in their skills and abilities. The outcome was better than expected. Today Yahoo! is a global Internet communications, commerce and media company that offers its service to more than 345 millions. www.yahoo.com is the leading guide in terms of traffic, advertising, household and business user reach. Yahoo! reaches the largest audience worldwide. The company's global Web network includes 25 World properties. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Yahoo! has offices in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, Canada and the United States. Ford Motor Company. The company made a decision that the Ford Focus needs to be updated. The North American team desired to refresh the existing model of the car. The European team wanted to create a new version of the car. These two groups could not come to a mutual agreement. As the result, each team did what they wanted to do. The North American team updated the existing car, and The European team developed the new model. In the end, Ford could not share parts or take advantages of economies of scale. The lack of coordination across the organization cost the company money. This example shows four critical factors that differentiate companies and cause problems. The company faced lack of ability to coordinate actions and decisions across teams, having organizational structure and systems that support the strategy, involving employees in decision making, and top management's ability to effectively manage change (Lepsinger, 2007). The same communication and coordination problem was faced by Gene One Company. Meeting held on March 8, 2005 showed that leaders and managers have different point of views. They did not stick together, and it seemed like they do not have common goals. Some members were pleased with the IPO process; others were not too enthusiastic about this process. This meeting showed that they are not count on each other and do not believe that they could achieve this project by acting together. Following the meeting, team leaders had their own clicks and informal meetings about other team members and the company’s future. Ford Motor Company did not come to the agreement and did not improve organizational performance and as a result lost money and unity of the company was broken. Gateway I choose Gateway due to they are having problems with the SEC requirements like Gene One is. Gateway did not meet the requirement of forms that needed to be turned in to the government by a certain date, this is very important with the SEC requirements. Gateway states that part of the PC maker's delay stems from an SEC probe mostly related to the company's 2000 financial statement. But most of the lag stems from the company's review of its accounting for bundled AOL Internet services in 2000 and the first quarter of 2001. SEC requirements state that Under the Securities Act of 1933, a company that offers or sells its securities must register the securities with the SEC or find an exemption from the registration requirements. This is a huge part of Gene Ones issues due to they have to now follow the guides of the SEC, which they really haven’t done much research on. The SEC requirements are hard to follow and that’s why I used Gateway as an example due to they have been having trouble for years in follow the strict guidelines. The mission of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation. The laws and rules that govern the securities industry in the United States derive from a simple and straightforward concept: all investors, whether large institutions or private individuals, should have access to certain basic facts about an investment prior to buying it, and so long as they hold it. To achieve this, the SEC requires public companies to disclose meaningful financial and other information to the public. This provides a common pool of knowledge for all investors to use to judge for themselves whether to buy, sell, or hold a particular security. Only through the steady flow of timely, comprehensive, and accurate information can people make sound investment decisions. This is a big thing and timely matter that Gene One has to do in order to have people invest in there company. It seems like Gene One doesn’t know exactly what they are getting into and the investors really aren’t investing in this industry anyways. When reading about Gateways issues with the SEC it made me think that they have no idea what they are getting into and how much time it takes to have the information ready for the SEC requirements. MSI System Integrators In 2006 MSI decided to add financial services to there already IT Company, this is somewhat what Gene One is doing and both are trying to make more money for the company. MSI is implementing the new financial service to help reduce costs of IT services to companies. Gene One is implementing the IPO to get into a new part of there industry. MSI didn’t have a timeline like Gene One but they knew exactly what they were doing, they had a plan unlike Gene One. Gene One is trying to figure out everything with the IPO when they should have had more of a hold on what there structurized plan was. Gene One should have never brought this idea, it was just an idea no plan behind it, to the Board until they knew more about what they were getting into. MSI had a plan and they had the team to work together to get the project completed. Gene One didn’t know what they are getting into and the employees didn’t either. Now not only do they have goals they have to reach in a certain time, they have people working for them that actually don’t know what is expected of them. I feel like the company should have had a better plan into going into the IPO, instead it was a thought that was put into action without any actual plan. Gene One needs to hire someone who knows about IPO’s and how they should be operated if they ever want this to work. Conclusion In this paper Team B has identified the problems of leadership styles faced by Gene One and researched the companies that have faced similar problems. In order to be successful in today’s business, companies must look at their leadership and managements teams. The major factor in achieving success is communication within the organization. As was mentioned above, Yahoo founders hired experienced management team to coordinate task. Owing to this move they succeed. Effective management and leadership build work environment, which motivates employees to be productive and creative. Leadership and management may influence performance, behavior, and set a pattern of values and ethics. Reference Lepsinger, R. (2009) OnPoint Consulting's 2006 Business Execution Round-up: Seven Companies to Learn from as You Reflect on the Year Gone By. Small Business Notes. Retrived on May 20,2009 from http://www.smallbusinessnotes.com/operating/hr/companies2006.html “The history of Yahoo!- how it all started…” (2005) Yahoo! Media Relations. Retrieved May 20, 2009 from http://docs.yahoo.com/info/misc/history.html