Global Business Case Study - Management Assignment Help

Assignment Task

Question 1 

Complete the Harvard Business Review’s Assessment: Are You a Compassionate Leader? Quiz. 
Once you have read the results of this quiz, you need to: 
• Cut & Paste your score on the Compassionate Leadership chart (or take a screenshot of this chart) onto your response to Question 4; 
• Briefly summarise your feedback/results from the quiz; 
• Reflect on these results:
 i. To what extent do you believe your quiz results are (or are not) an accurate indicator of your capacity to be a compassionate leader? Give reasons for your answer. 
ii. To what extent do you believe compassionate leadership is (or is not) an important component of effective global business leadership? Give reasons for your answer

Part C - Global Business Case Study 
(Preferable question 1 and 2) if possible give answer of 1st and 2nd question  

You are required to read the attached Global Business Case Study – SAP. 

You then need to respond to two (2) of the questions below. Each question is worth 20 marks. 
Your response to each question should be 1½ - 2 pages in length (800 words). 

Question 1 Within 20 years of their establishment, SAP made the successful transition from a start-up company delivering one software package, to ‘the world’s leading provider of e-business software’. 
a)    Which of Bartlett and Ghoshal’s four typologies for global business (in Barlett and Beamish, 2014) best describes the SAP approach to their business? Briefly describe this typology and give your reasons for why you believe this is the best fit for SAP? 

b) SAP employed multiple entry modes to facilitate their global expansion. Identify the entry modes they used and discuss the reasons for their selection. 

Question 2 There were two strategies critical to SAP’s global success – Internationalisation and Research & Development. Describe each of these strategies in terms of how these supported SAP’s growth into international markets. 

Question 3 ‘Recently, rumours have surfaced suggesting a possible relocation of SAP’s 
main operation from Germany to the United States.’ Identify and discuss the pros and cons of such a move and how this applies to SAP’s global business strategy. 

Global Business Case Study – SAP 

Profile, History and Status Quo 
In 1972, five former IBM employees had the vision of a standard piece of application software for real-time data processing. To make this vision a reality, they founded a company called System Analysis and Program development, later known as SAP, in Weinheim, Germany. After only a few months of development, the company successfully released the first version of its software to interested clients.

Within its first year, the company built up the necessary customer base, including the German branch of Imperial Chemical Industries in Östringen, to generate over 620,000 DM (approx. 317,000 EUR) in revenues. Over the following years, SAP software solutions became increasingly advanced, allowing customers to handle purchasing, inventory management and invoice verification. By the end of 1976, SAP and its 25 employees had generated 3.81 million DM (1.95 million EUR) in revenue. 

The next decade ushered in major growth for the German-based company. After moving their headquarters to Walldorf, SAP GmbH was founded and efforts were taken to widen the capabilities of software solutions. These developments ultimately led to the release of SAP R/2 in 1979, enabling material management and production planning for new and existing customers. Thanks to these software enhancements and new server technology integrated into SAP headquarters in 1979 and 1980 the company was able to expand its customer base to over 200 companies by the end of 1981.

On its 10th anniversary, SAP reached the 100-employee milestone and had successfully expanded its customer base to companies in Austria and Switzerland. SAP (International) AG was founded in Switzerland as a starting point for SAP’s efforts in foreign markets. In addition to this new base outside of Germany, the headquarters in Walldorf was expanded to accommodate further employees and provide a new base of operations for further growth. The transition from a private, limited-liability company into the publicly traded SAP AG in 1988 enabled the company to finance its further investments. 

When SAP R/3 was presented to the public in 1991, SAP had long outgrown its initial borders. With over 14 subsidiaries in Canada, China, Australia and other important markets all over the world, SAP had more than 2,200 customers in 31 different countries using its software. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, SAP was one of the first companies to enter the Eastern European market. They released a specialised version of SAP R/2 for the Russian market. Strengthened by fruitful cooperation with software giants like Microsoft and expanding their workforce to over 3,600 employees, SAP reached over 1 billion DM (approx. 510 million EUR) revenue in 1993, establishing themselves as one of the most important players in the software market. 

The end of the century saw SAP rise to become the world’s leading provider of e-business software solutions for companies. Thanks to their overall success on the stock market and further increasing revenues, SAP used strategically suitable acquisitions to add to their product portfolio and thereby in-crease their employee and customer numbers. With the strategy introduced by co-CEO HassoPlattner in 1999, the foundations of success in the Internet-driven days of the new millennium were built. The 
transformation for a simple component vendor to a full solution provider attracted numerous new customers, including the financial service provider MLP, Hewlett-Packard and later, Nestlé signing the biggest SAP contract to date. 

The global financial crisis in the first decade of the new millennium forced SAP to make some cuts in reaction to a declining stock market. During that time, around 3,300 employees had to be dismissed in order to reduce expenses. Nowadays, SAP has recovered from the crisis and employees more than 66,000 employees to serve over 253,000 customers worldwide. Thanks to mostly successful acquisitions, partnerships and newly built subsidiaries, SAP has established offices in 130 countries and annual revenue of over 16 billion EUR. 
The Software Industry 
Very few industries undergo as many changes and developments as the software industry (see PWC 2014). Technological evolution and the fact that more and more businesses and people are relying on software solutions fuels the constant growth of numerous big software companies like SAP, Microsoft and Oracle. Furthermore, mobile devices, cloud technology and other developments are starting to reshape the way software is used and forcing software companies to rethink their strategies. SAP has already acted on those ongoing trends and in 2011 announced the acquisition of Success-Factor, a leading expert for cloud technology. 

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