Introduction
Quality management activities in organizations are undertaken to ensure that quality in its products is achieved and maintained within an unacceptable budget1. It is an activity that is closely dependent on the feedback from the organization’s clients, thus the quality management concept involves establishing channels for relaying customer feedback for which it requires that they function properly through out2.
As a part of quality management, the feedback is taken and incorporated in the design of new products that are aimed at raising customer satisfaction. Quality management spans from creating a design and lifecycle plan for a product or service to its production and distribution.
The activity involves identifying and measuring process elements, doing performance analysis and applying continuous quality improvements on the products, services and systems of production and distribution.
Problem and Motivation
In this paper, Google, the Internet search giant, is analyzed, and recommendations are made on how it can maintain as well as improve the quality of its products.
This is important for the company in maintaining and enhancing its exemplary performance as its pursues its mission, which is to create an Internet resource from which you can access any kind of information disregarding geographical borders3. Thus, the problem and motivation in this paper are quality and quality enhancement respectively.
Provisional title
The provisional title that describes the contents of this paper best is “Safeguarding and enhancing quality at Google”.
Brief Review of the related literature
As stated above, quality management activities in organizations are undertaken to ensure that quality in its products is achieved and maintained within an unacceptable budget.4 The Quality management concept is enriched by eight management principles that are fundamental in improving the performance of an organization.5
One of these principles is customer focus, which emphasizes to an organization its dependency on its customers and, therefore, highlights the need for it to understand and appreciate their current and future needs for which it should set out to meet. 6
When an organization achieves customer focus, it implies that it is necessary to know not only both its internal and external customers, but also their needs and quality standards. Another principle is leadership, which facilitates the establishment of unity of purpose among the personnel in an organization.7 Unity of purpose in an organization is critical in the achievement of its quality objectives and goals.
Involvement of people is another principle that enriches the quality management concept.8 In an organization, there is the need for its personnel from whatever level to be involved fully in benefiting the organization. The next principle is a process approach, which develops the idea that an organization’s objective is better realized when its activities and allied resources are managed as an organizational process.9
The following principle is approaching management as a system so that efficiency and effectiveness in achievement of the organization’s goals are boosted.10 Continual improvement is another factor that enriches the quality management concept.11 This principle stresses the need to pursue continued improvement on its product or service to the organization.
Another principle is a factual approach to decision-making, which emphasizes on the need to base decision-making of the organization on data analysis and information.12 The last principle is the organization having supplier relationships that are mutually benefiting as these increase the ability for it and its suppliers to add value to their product(s) or service(s).13
SWOT analysis is a tool used in the managerial activities of corporate organizations that wish to attain stability and sustainability in the long-term.14 Its use in corporate organization management is aimed at realizing long-term stability and sustainability, specifically in decision-making.
For a given corporate organization, a SWOT analysis procedure takes into account both its internal and external environment to reveal the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The analysis of the corporate organization’s internal environment reveals its strengths and weaknesses whereas that of the external environment reveals its opportunities and threats.
Once the analysis is completed, the SWOT approach is such that a corporate organization will consolidate its strengths, do away with its weaknesses, seize its opportunities and counter its threats. The following is a SWOT analysis for Google Inc., which, as discussed, will reveal the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Aims and objective of the research
In Google’s business model, the company believes in giving users an online experience that eventually leads to strong verbal marketing of the company and continually increasing Internet traffic directed to the company’s products.15
The experience is embodied in services to users that are of the best and highest quality; thus, quality is a key issue in Google. The main aim and objective of the research done here is to come up with recommendations that are directed towards helping the company to maintain and enhance the quality of its products.
Statement of the design and methodology
Through a performance and SWOT analysis of Google, we understand the company’s operating environment, and why it is important for it to manage quality in its products.
Discussion
Company Description
Google Inc. is one of the world’s most successful companies specializing in Internet technology. Originally co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company offers a unique Internet service for which it has established itself as a market leader.16 Its mission is to provide an Internet resource from which you can access any kind of information disregarding geographical borders.17
Google’s business model
Google‘s business model that reflects the company’s mission is unlike that of its competitors. The model stresses on giving users an online experience that eventually leads to strong verbal marketing of the company and continually increasing Internet traffic directed to the company’s products.18
The experience is embodied in services to users that are of the best and highest quality. The business model has led Google to make major acquisitions of and alliances with other Internet technology companies that include Amazon, e-bay, Picasa, Keyhole and You Tube.
Google’s collaboration and mergers with other huge online firms make a part of a strategy aimed at ensuring the company always ahead of its business rivals.19 These acquisitions and mergers have, however, seen the company deviate from its original business model since it has found itself in entirely new markets. Taking into account the source of its revenue, it can be said that Google is mainly an advertising company.
For Google, appealing to its customers means redefining both e-commerce and e-business. Given that its business model stresses on advertisements and provision of services to all the Internet users the company maintains a strategic interest with online markets and firms that attract huge Internet traffic.
Google’s 2010 performance analysis
In 2009, Google Inc. emerged as the worldwide market leader in Internet and mobile search advertising and saw the company ranked fourth by CNNmoney in its list of 100 best companies to work for in 2010.20 Although not spared by the 2008/9 global financial crisis, the company managed not only to register profits but growth as well as during the period.
Google’s 2010 turnover was slightly under $30 billion, which was a 24% increase using 2009 as the base year.21 Given the size of the company, the figure implies that the company registered huge growth.
The growth is attributed to an increase in click volumes by 18% and a rise in the cost per click by about 5%.22 The rise in volume can be itself linked to continued development of the company’s network, remarketing and/or the increased use of the Smartphone and tablets.
A further analysis of the turnover reveals that the share of revenue accrued in the U.S remained at 52% whereas that accrued in the U.K slightly declined in the fourth quarter of the year by 2%.23 However, these had no effect on the overall revenue pattern of the company that remained relatively unchanged.24
Also remaining unchanged was how revenue was split: revenue generated from advertisements on Google’s own websites remained at 66% that from advertisement’s on the company’s third party websites remained at 30% and that from other sources remained at 4%.25
Analysis: Google SWOT analysis
Google’s strengths
Google’s SWOT analysis reveals its market as one of its strengths.26 The marketing strategy in use at Google is unique to it and historically, is one of a kind in online technology. Google does not restrain its business ventures to its search engine but is continuously introducing new products into the market.
One of Google’s target markets is the portion of the world’s youth in search for information, fun, knowledge and who wish to be at per with their different environmental surroundings. The other target market is any individual who uses the company’s search engine as he or she knowingly or unknowingly generates revenue for the company indirectly.
The SWOT analysis reveals Google’s key technologies as another of its strengths.27 One of the company’s key technologies is its search engine whose development process has seen it answer queries more accurately. The software technology incorporated in the search engine enables it perform computations and return results at very advanced speeds. This is unlike traditional search engines whose technology is not as time-sensitive.
The company to examine web content and rank it by level of importance uses Google’s PageRankTM technology boosted by over 200 signals. The architecture of PageRankTM technology is such that it can hold over 500 million variables that in turn can hold 2 billion terms.
Due to this architecture it is thus possible for the company to profile web pages and determine those of importance so that they are programmed to appear first on the result page. Google as extended its technology to include Hypertext-Matching Analysis, which performs a full content analysis of text web pages in an effort to return more accurate results for a given query.
The SWOT analysis reveals quality of its personnel as another of Google’s strengths.28 Google recruitment policy targets individuals of outstanding academic achievements and high experience in the various fields not only of information technology but also of knowledge management.
Top managerial posts at Google are filled with individuals who have an MBA or a PHD in a field that is relevant in enabling the company achieve its mission. To underline further that indeed quality of personnel is another of Google’s strength it can be seen from data collected in 2008 that the company had the highest profit per employee amongst its rivals, which was estimated at $209,624.
This figure is further motivation to the employees who are inherently encouraged by the company’s organizational culture to give out their best for the benefit of the company.
The SWOT analysis reveals Google’s capital base and its revenue streams as another of its strengths.29 10 years after Google was founded its capitalization rose phenomenally to £105 billion which was enough to replace Procter and Gamble from 5th place on the US stock market.
As stated earlier the main source of Google’s income comes from advertisements done on its site and those done on its third party sites. In 2006, Google was estimated as earning about 30% more on an advert than Yahoo or any other of its rivals does.
Google’s Weaknesses
One of Google’s weakness as revealed by the SWOT analysis is the high rate at which the company receives CVs and Resumes. The rate at which Google’s receives CVs and Resumes is staggering.30 These results in large volumes of these documents that make it difficult for the company to recruit the best applicants for available positions.
Another of Google’s weaknesses as revealed by the SWOT analysis is external employee turnover of its senior executives.31 A number of top executives have left Google in favor of Facebook. This exodus of highly skilled personnel from Google can have devastating effects on its future. Furthermore, the company seems not to know how to contain the problem and ironically its proposed measure as aggravated the crisis further.
Another of the company’s weakness as brought out by the SWOT analysis is recruiting a lot of contactors.32 This habit has led to hiring of contractors who only waste the company’s resources. This is an indication of poor staff recruitment plans and poor job description and evaluation plans.
Other weakness of Google are its feeble presence in the social networking market, arbitrary content, too much liquidity, stock problems, material that is heterogeneous, Anglo-Saxon focus, political issues, problems with stock and its inability to generate revenue form You Tube.
Google’s opportunities
An opportunity for Google as revealed by the SWOT analysis is its operating system. Google has set out on a mission to assert its dominance in the operating system market with the Chrome and Android operating systems.33 The approach by Google is to introduce an operating system that uses applications directly from the Internet as opposed to the traditional approach of operating systems that reside on a PC.
Experts who see the Internet as the future of information technology support the approach. This step by Google is seen by some people as a challenge to the current operating system’s market leader, Microsoft.
Other opportunities for Google are new acquisitions and mergers, growth in Internet usage globally, using web content of higher value, reaching new user groups and content, offering a starting point that is easy and more usage of expensive content.
Google’s threats
A threat to Google as revealed by the SWOT analysis is the lawsuits it faces.34 Yahoo, Amazon and Microsoft are some of the companies that have at different times filed lawsuits against Google. One of the lawsuits filed collectively by these three companies saw Google settle it with an amount of $125 million. Another threat that faces Google as per the SWOT analysis is the company’s failure to motivate its contract employees.35
The contract employees are spread in different regions in the world. Other threats to Google are gradually raising competition, privacy issues on content ownership, new technologies, the social networking site Facebook, censorship possibility and the slowdown in ad-spend.
Improvement options
Continual improvement is one of the principles that enrich the quality management concept. The principle stresses the need for a product to be of the best and highest quality. To improve quality in a company like Google, the apt option would be for the company to pursue CQI, which is a recurring process.36
Considering Google’s mission and how it plans to achieve it, a suitable procedure for improving quality in the company should be based on FMEA. To add weight to this decision, we consider that the company is continually developing products whose quality has to be improved with time.
FMEA was first used by NASA specifically for identifying risks and mitigating their effects; however, the procedure has recently become widespread in industries where it is critical in realizing process improvement. With FMEA, potential failures associated with a product are identified beforehand and action plans formulated to deal with them.37
For a given product, the FMEA analysis process begins with identifying potential failures in it. In this step, it is critical to know the set requirements for the product. If potential failures are found, the second step in the procedure is determining the level of severity for each.
This is a process that requires a complete picture of the system. The third step in the analytic procedure is knowing the cause of the failures and working out what is known as the probability of occurrence. The fourth step in the analysis procedure is coming up with controls and weighing their effectiveness.
If the controls are associated with risks, it prioritizes them. The fifth and the final step in the analysis procedure is documenting the action plans formulated to deal with each of the risks identified in the previous step.
Another option for quality improvement available to Google is Six Sigma strategy, which is built from concepts derived from the statistics and quality engineering fields.38 Six Sigma is a strategy whose objective is to enhance business success through managing and improving quality. The strategy being a variant of Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle is implemented through two methodologies, namely, DMAIC and DMADV.
In the DMAIC methodology, the first step in improving quality is defining the problems of the existing system taking into account customer opinions. The second step is performing measurements of the current and existing system and collecting data that is relevant to the problem tackled. The third step is analyzing the data collected in the second step to determine the causes of the problem(s) and their effects.
The fourth step is improving the current and existing system by implementing the recommendations made from studying the problem. The fifth step is controlling future state processes so as to ensure that deviations from the required quality standards are corrected before finding their way to finished product.
In the DMADV methodology, the first step in improving quality is designing goals that reflect or capture the opinions of the customers. The second step is measuring the current system and identifying CTQs. The fourth step is analysis and development of alternatives to the design.
The fifth step is optimizing the design developed and preparing it for verification. The fifth step is design verification where the design is tested, implemented and submitted to the project owners who initiated it.
Recommendations
A recommendation to Google is for the company to adopt an FMEA based approach to quality improvement. The main shortcoming of the FMEA approach is that the activity is quite costly to implement on each and every product. However, considering its benefits and Google’s capital base, cost is not really an issue.
A recommendation to Google is for the company to pursue quality improvement through the Six Sigma approach. The Six Sigma approach is in line with Google’s business model for it is aimed at enhancing business success through giving customers pleasant experiences achieved through products of high qaulity.39
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Footnotes
1 Rose, K. (2005), p. 41
2 Charterd Quality Institute. (2011), p. 1
3 Darwah, K. (2010), p.1
4 Rose, K. (2005), p. 41
5 International organization for standardization (2011), p.1
6 International organization for standardization (2011), p.1
7 International organization for standardization (2011), p.1
8 International organization for standardization (2011), p.1
9 International organization for standardization (2011), p.1
10 International organization for standardization (2011), p.1
11 International organization for standardization (2011), p.1
12 International organization for standardization (2011), p.1
13 International organization for standardization (2011), p.1
14 Investopedia (2011), p.1
15 Darwah, K. (2010), p.11
16 Gamble/Thompson (2009), p.14
17 Darwah, K. (2010), p.1
18 Darwah, K. (2010), p.11
19 Darwah, K. (2010), p.12
20 CNNmoney (2011), p. 1
21 Norris, S. (2011), p.1
22 Norris, S. (2011), p.2
23 Norris, S. (2011), p.3
24 Norris, S. (2011), p. 3
25 Norris, S. (2011), p. 4
26 Darkwah, K. (2010), p.14
27 Darkwah, K. (2010), p.19
28 Darkwah, K. (2010), p.20
29 Darkwah, K. (2010), p. 27
30 Darkwah, K. (2010), p. 27
31 Darkwah, K. (2010), p. 29
32 Darkwah, K. (2010), p. 30
33 Darkwah, K. (2010), p. 33
34 Darkwah, K. (2010), p. 39
35 Darkwah, K. (2010), p. 40
36 Duke Medical University Center (2005), p.1
37 Rex, B. (2002), p.25
38 Knowles, G. (2011), p. 12
39 Knowles, G. (2011), p.10 – p.13