Executive Summary
The necessity to integrate into the global market and maintain contact with the customers and business partners, as well as the need to keep the organization’s data secure, requires that the company’s technology should be updated. Herein the necessity for our organization to start a partnership with the Acer Company lies. Since the recent reorganization of Acer, the firm’s record has been stellar, which makes it a wonderful choice for a business partner. Though Acer’s business ethics, labor practices and advertising strategies do not differ from the ones that the rest of major organization follow. The market share, product quality and the rates of growth, on the other hand, are very impressive. They display that the organization can be trusted and that it will provide our company with the security that it requires in the era of cyber communication.
Introduction
In the realm of the 21st century, it is essential for any organization to introduce an efficient system of information management, which incorporates the latest IT advances and, thus, provides enough security for the company data. While the software issue often happens to be in the spotlight of the process, the necessity to equip the organization with proper hardware is quite obvious as well. However, unfortunately, not all companies can be trusted in terms of the efficiency and shelf life of their products. Choosing the safest route for the organization, one must mention the idea of using the services of Acer.
Because of the congruity of the company’s services quality with the existing standards, as well as the economic wellbeing, a unique marketing principle, an original strategy at the helm of research and development and a very strong business ethics, the company seems a perfect choice for our organization to start a partnership with. It is the original approach allowing for a sustainable use of the required resources and, therefore, a consistent growth that makes it such a perfect choice for a business partner.
Business Strategies
Since Acer resorts to lowering its prices as the key towards attracting more customers, its key business approach can be defined as a cost leadership strategy (Valipour and Birjandi 18). Allowing for attracting more customers, the specified strategy, however, means that the company needs to develop a viable approach towards reducing the firm’s costs (Rentz and Lentz 89). In Acer’s case, reducing the costs for logistics, particularly, the transportation procedures, can be suggested.
Quality Concerns with the Product
As far as the quality of Acer’s products is concerned, the result is beyond any criticism. Though the company has a range of competitors, its product is consistently good; it meets the demands of the target customers, complies with the basic standards and provides the clients with the features that they were promised in the promotion campaign. The uncompromising effort to maintain the organization’s reputation as the leader in computer hardware production has made Acer nearly invincible to the strikes of the competitors.
Labor Practices
Supply chain transparency is the key to understanding the company’s labor practices. Being a member of the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC), Acer follows the principles listed in the Electronic Industry Code of Conduct (EICC Code), which requires a complete clarity for the company’s working and environmental conditions specifics.
Business Ethics
As far as the company’s ethics is concerned, the set of ethical principles that Acer is guided by is not characterized by any striking differences from the rest of organizations – in fact, the ethical principles of the company can be viewed as rather ordinary. However, the specified approach does not mean that the company lacks responsibility; instead, the stock ethical concepts should be viewed as a manifestation of the company’s clear and honest intensions, which do not need elaborate regulations to meet the existing ethical criteria. Acer has chosen the principle of corporate responsibility as the basic ethical principle to define the avenues chosen by the organization’s employees in their decisions (Shaw 568).
The aforementioned approach allows for fostering an adequate model of organizational behavior for the staff to comply with; moreover, the principles of corporate responsibility help enhance ethical behavior in the staff by providing them with an opportunity to improve their personal and professional characteristics. Spurred by the adoption of the transformative leadership principles, the approach in question has had quite impressive results so far, the company’s staff delivering their top performance and no major ethical conflicts being observed in Acer.
Market Share
As it has been stressed above, Acer has recently experienced a recovery from a major economic slowdown. As a result of the innovative strategy utilized by its new leaders, the company has landed on the first spot in the top list of the 2014 market leaders. The progress can be explained by the introduction of the Acer Chromebook into the global market. At present, the market share of the enterprise makes 34.1% of the world PC market share (“Acer Ranks #1 for Total, Portable PCs, Projectors” para. 2). The company experienced a 71.2% growth in 2014 (“Acer Ranks #1 for Total, Portable PCs, Projectors” para. 2).
Advertising Strategies
Having only started to recover from its recent crisis, Acer is fixing its major production issues at present, whereas the marketing concerns seem to have been left out. Based on the principles of corporate responsibility, the marketing approach presupposes an honest description of the company’s assets and services. While the organization uses the strategy that was developed by the Acer marketing experts and is a unique, one-of-a-kind approach tailored to the company’s needs, it is far too old for the present-day world. Created in 2000 (Acer Group para. 1), it has clearly worn out its welcome and needs an update.
Internet and Cyber Presence
Being a company that specializes in providing hardware for the needs of Internet users, the company also has a very strong internet and cyber presence. For instance, at present, the organization is working on the design of web applications, which will allow for accessing the Internet from any of the computer related devices. Particularly, the company’s cloud computing approach deserves to be mentioned. A groundbreaking strategy, which makes it possible to create the environment for centralized data storage, the given approach will help the organization manage information in a more successful manner, as well as maintain security of the company’s data.
Product Presence in the General Marketplace
The company has managed to conjure an efficient strategy for advertising its product to a large amount of target customers both online and via traditional media. It is a combination of direct advertising and the indirect promotion that makes the company’s strategy so efficient on the Internet. Apart from the obvious product presence in the target market, the company is going to establish its brand presence in the global market. The above-mentioned goal can be achieved by a major increase in the company’s turnover, which can already be witnessed in India (Kannan para. 3). The incorporation of e-governance techniques allows for making the company’s position as a leader in the target market all the more secure.
Financial Standings
Although the organization has witnessed a major crisis in 2013, its financial standings are rather firm. According to the information that the Acer group released in 2014, the consolidated revenues of the company have made $ 76,724 so far, with the #6,274 of total gross profit (“Regulatory Story” para. 2). Though rather humble, the specified results are much greater than those that Acer showed in 2013; therefore, it can be assumed that the company is recovering from the recent crisis, which it had to experience (“Regulatory Story” para. 2).
Research and Development
Because of the recent concerns with the direction that the company was heading, the R&D department used to be underdeveloped.
The radical change made to the structure of the company, as well as the fact that the new chairmen of the organization finally managed to get the priorities straight, have manifested a new era in the R&D for Acer –at present, the company make a very strong emphasis on introducing innovative products into the market.
Growth
Growth is, perhaps, one of the most controversial aspects of cyber communication Acer. On the one hand, the company has recently been credited for the outstanding progress that it has made over the past few years. The fact that Acer had been in a continuous stagnation up until Acer was reorganized in 2013 by J. T. Wang and Jim Wong, raises a lot of doubts concerning the company’s future efficacy.
The chart below shows that the recent changes introduced by Wong and Wang have spurred the company’s growth to an impressive extent.
The graph provided above shows that the company’s stock price was unreasonably low at the end of 2013. The downfall caused by the improper use of the company’s resources ended in 2014 after a change in the company’s financial policies, as an overhaul conducted in 2014 revealed. The integration of the private clouds storage services into the set of facilities that the organization has to offer has worked wonders.
SWOT Analysis
A closer look at the changes that the company has undergone over the course of its development will reveal that the organization is bound to be a wonderful business partner. It has a few promising options in front of it, and the emphasis on the expansion into the global market results in a stirring operational efficiency, not to mention the fact that the organization has a very tight control over the overseas costs.
Table 1. Acer SWOT Analysis.
Therefore, it can be assumed that Acer is one of the most efficient organizations in 2014, and creating a partnership with it is bound to result in a number of advantages, including technological, economic and financial ones. It is obvious that high competition rates within the target market is the key problem that Acer is facing at present, and the progress of companies such as Lenovo is the major concern for the organization. Nevertheless, the progress that the organization has made over the past year is breathtaking – the firm has managed to regain its position after a year-long hiatus and a dreadful regress that the previous leaders had put the company through. Though Acer has not fulfilled its potential yet, it is obvious that the company is worth considering as a business partner.
It could be suggested that Acer should take a tougher control over the mobile market, seeing that other companies seem to be slowly becoming dominant in the aforementioned area. In order to maintain its top position, the organization will need to make a stronger emphasis on the R&D processes, which had been running at a minimum capacity up until recently. However, because of the recent long break, it would be wrong to expect a radical change in the R&D field.
Conclusion
Though Acer has a few minor issues with its current policies concerning the R&D strategies, as well as the advertising approach, have not been defined yet, the company is clearly geared towards a global success, which makes it an outstanding partner. Apart from the specified characteristics, the company obviously has a lot to offer in terms of its production; the quality–price correlation is impeccable at Acer. Bound to make a major breakthrough in the IT field, Acer is evidently headed towards a triumph, which is its major advantage.
Works Cited
Acer Group. “Corporate Responsibility Policies and Strategies.” Acer. 2014. Web.
“Acer Ranks #1 for Total, Portable PCs, Projectors.” Tribune. 2014. Web.
Kannan, Shanthi. “Acer to Increase Retail and Brand Presence.” The Hindu. 2011. Web.
“Price/Quote: Acer Inc 2353.” Morning Star. 2014. Web.
“Regulatory Story.” London Stock Exchange. 2014. Web.
Rentz, Kathryn and Paula Lentz. Business Communication. 3rd ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. 2014. Print.
Shaw, William H. “Marxism, Business Ethics, and Corporate Social Responsibility.” Journal of Business Ethics 84.4 (2009), 565–576.
Valipour, Hamid and Hashem Birjandi. “The Effects of Cost Leadership Strategy and Product Differentiation Strategy on the Performance of Firms.” Journal of Asian Business Strategy 2.1 (2012), 14–23. Print.