How IT Companies Should Be Like - Case Study Example

Google Company Name Class Unit Introduction Google is the global leader in IT industry. The company was started in 1995 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The company was launched officially in 1998 and its first official location was in a home basement (Scott, 2008). The company was started with the main aim of coming up with a product that would make it easy to search the web. Before the launch of the search engines, web was much disorganized (Battelle, 2005). The company has other products apart from the search engine which includes Google earth and Gmail. The company was able to grow fast from its humble beginning and received positive media attention. The company has over 20000 employees from 2 in 1998. The search engine is the most successful product by the company (Scott, 2008). Though the company has many products, its search engine is the most favored segment. The company generated 99% of their revenue from advertisements which are associated with its search engine (Argenton & Jens, 2012). The company has been well known in the IT sector due to their success and distinct corporate values. This research paper will show that Google have created a roadmap for what IT companies should be like. Corporate values Google has been able to maintain strong corporate values that were instilled early in its history. The company has three main and distinct corporate values which are; don’t be evil, technology matters and we make our rules (Google.com, 2014). The statement ‘don’t be evil’ refers to Google philosophy where they never tamper with the results. The company established this rule to ensure that ranking in their search engine is based on fair selection. This makes those using Google to have trust in the company in its undertaking. Though the company does not control their search results, they exercise corporate values when it comes to advertisements (Scott, 2008). Technology matters are a statement that refers to the Google commitment to maintaining high edge technology. The company has made heavy investments in infrastructure which have enabled them to have a fast search engine. The company has a large number of Linux based servers which enable it to handle a lot of searches per second. The company had a principle of making their own rules. The main aim was to use unconventional management practices. This has made the Company to have a management that is secretive to the outsiders. The strategy has helped the company to provide all the information that is legally required and avoid situations that can lead to exposure of their strategies and intentions to the competitors. Entrepreneurial innovation Entrepreneurial innovation is another area that Google has utilised. As Google expanded in size, efforts to make its products, competitive through continuous improvement become very expensive. To be able to keep its top position in the IT industry, Google has invested in entrepreneurial innovation (Battelle, 2005). All the employees in the company have been given a chance to participate in innovation. The initiative is due to fact that the core activity of Google business is innovation. Google spends a lot of their revenue in innovations. The company has kept their belief that good ideas can come from anyone in the industry. The role of the management is to give guidance and not to control. This enables the company to have a flat structure which avoids hierarchy. The company also provides the engineering team with same gigantic code. This enables the teams to share and also modify content made by their colleagues. The sharing of code enables the organisation to have an environment where innovation is possible. IT companies should emulate Google is management of innovation. Google uses unconventional practices to manage their innovation. For example, the company allows its engineers to use 20% of their working time in their own innovation. By allowing the employees to have time for creativity, the company has been able to come up with a lot of innovations. Most of the Google ideas have emerged from the employees due to the leadership style that fosters innovation. The company has also been encouraging the company engineers to work in small teams. This has led to an increase in the level of innovation. The company has also been involved in funding projects which are promising in the long run (Argenton & Jens, 2012). Continuous improvement Other IT companies should emulate Google efforts in ensuring that they are always improving their systems. The company engineers have been always working to improve the existing systems and also come up with new ones. The efforts in this area involve working to fine tune the algorithms in order to improve the search engine. The company was the first to come up with personalized search where one could get results based on a previous search. There have been other initiatives by the company which have made it more attractive than the competitors. These initiatives include coming up with local search and vertical search. The advertising services have been upgraded by the company which have protected users from click fraud and enabled keyword refining (Argenton & Jens, 2012). IT firms should be able to deliver more than what is expected of them. Google has proved this by showing other companies that being the best should not make them relax. The company have been continuously working to enhance their systems despite them being in good working conditions. For example, the company developed the spell checker which enabled web search to act as if reading the user’s mind. The company has also been able to develop number search which makes it easy to type using the phone and fewer key entries. The efforts have enabled Google to come up with products that have set the standards in the industry (Battelle, 2005). The continuous improvement efforts by the company are an indication that an IT company should not be satisfied by the way things are operating but should invest in renewal and improvement. Continuous improvement has been the main force that has enabled Google to be the world leading search engine (Argenton & Jens, 2012). Ethics Google is a company that has been able to establish itself as an ethical player in IT industry. The IT industry is sensitive as it involves a lot of personal and confidential information. Consumers can also be exploited by IT companies. Industries in this sector are thus supposed to express a high level of ethics. By being ethical, Google has been able to attract a lot of resourceful employees (Driver, 2006). The company has thus gained reputation from the consumers who have helped in adding value to the company through revenues. The company gives the employees the best treatment making it to be chosen among the best place to work. Google has been able to show responsibility towards the employees and other stakeholders. Though placing adverts in the homepage would earn Google a lot of revenue, the company has resisted the move. This is due to fact that the adverts on the homepage would act as a distraction to the user. The advertisement by Google is carefully and ethically placed to match the page relevancy. The company has also been keen on making sure that they do not use pop up ads which can act as a distraction to the user. Google was among the first companies to go green in its power consumption. The company installed its first massive solar project in 2007 with an aim of reducing reliance on grid power (Argenton & Jens, 2012). Through innovation, the company has been able to reduce power usage in their data centers and servers. By being ethical, Google has been able to succeed in acquiring employees and maintaining them. This is an example of how any IT firm which wants to be successful should be like. The company has shown that it is possible to make profits in an IT firm while at the same time remaining ethical (Driver, 2006). Diversity Another area where Google has set roadmap to other IT companies is diversity, Google has operations globally enabling everyone who have access to internet enjoy their services. Provision of services across the boarders has earned Google reputation and a large market share. The company has also made sure that they use more than 100 languages in their search engines (Argenton & Jens, 2012). Through the use of different languages, Google have been able to benefit from having their services accessed globally. The introduction of Google translator has made it easier for the consumers to access documents irrespective of their language. The efforts by Google to offer their services to countries with different languages show the need for diversity in IT firms (Battelle, 2005). Customer focus For the IT companies, there is a need to focus on the customers in order to benefit. Google has proved this by putting all their efforts towards the customers. The company focuses on customers before they look at the profits. The growth of the company has been largely attributed to be through the word of mouth by satisfied customers. To achieve this, the companies have several features to aid their customers. The search results from Google are ranked through a specifically designed technology, which enables the results displayed to be based on relevancy. Google thus avoids selling search results placement which can compromise the quality of search. The results are thus more accurate and not compromised for company gain (Argenton & Jens, 2012). The company has also refrained from posting ads on the home page that would distract the customers. Though the venture can help the company to make a lot of revenue, Google has refrained from it to make the customer satisfied. The company has also made it possible for the homepage to load easily from refraining to post ads on it which would make it slow. This is a step that other IT companies can emulate to make sure that they always put the consumer first (Battelle, 2005). Excelling Google has been able to show the benefit of excelling in a certain area. Despite the company expansion from its humble beginning, it has not changed their main business which was search engine. Google has been more focused on enhancing search engines which have enabled them to gain eminent success (Argenton & Jens, 2012). The company search engine has been so well developed that the company have surpassed all the competitors. For new IT firms, there is need to put more efforts on their area of specialization and enhance it well. This makes it possible to gain a competitive edge in the industry (Hartley, 2010). IT firms should be more active in their core business as demonstrated by Google. Handling competition IT industry is competitive and hence strategies are needed in order to succeed. As a model company in IT, Google has been able to outdo the competitors due to its innovation. The main competitors to Google are Microsoft and Yahoo and Bing (Argenton & Jens, 2012). The company enormous success has made it to be respected in the IT industry. Google was able to learn from the past mistakes of its competitors and worked in avoiding them. For example, Google was able to avoid mistakes that Yahoo who were earlier in the industry had made. The IT industry requires a firm to learn from others mistakes and work towards the enhancement of its position in the industry (Martin, 2002). When the competitors were making losses and losing market share, Google was making a profit (Olsen, 2003). Another feature of Google that enabled them to expand beyond competitors is the availability of information (Ellison & Sara, 2005). The main aim of search engines is to enable users to have ease of access to the information. Google made sure that they had indexed more information that other companies in the field. The company was the first to enable the customers to view PDF files. This enabled the company to have a wider range of selection in materials as opposed to competitors. In IT, it is important for the company to ensure they have all the services they were established to offer. The company enabled users to translate contents that were not readable in some devices using HTML. Google has been working tirelessly to ensure that they bring all relevant information to the customers. The company sets a roadmap is the way in which IT companies should invest in knowledge workers. This is hiring of employees who are able to deliver on their tasks. The company has most of their employees as Engineers. The hiring by the company is done through a committee which is based on free and fair procedures to get the best candidate. Knowledgeable workers are sources of competitive advantage in IT firms (Battelle, 2005). Conclusion Google is an example of how other IT companies should be like. The research shows how the company has been able to compete with other established IT firms and come out as the leader in the industry. The company corporate values and ethics are outstanding in the industry, which makes it to be among the best places to work. Google puts their customer before profit. This has enabled them to exercise ethics and integrity in their operations. One of the elements that are visible in the research is a Google commitment to innovation. The company has dedicated most of its resources for innovation and continuous improvement. The company has been able to focus on entrepreneurial innovation which enables the employees’ to freely give and work on their ideas. To enable this, the company has given its engineers 20% of their time to innovate and also have avoided hierarchical structure which can compromise innovation. Google is also well known for their commitment to diversity which enables their services to be available globally. IT companies should use Google as an example in their operations. There are a lot of lessons for IT firms to learn from Google way of doing things. References Argenton, C & Jens, P 2012, ‘Search Engine Competition with Network Externalities’, Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Vol. 8, No. 1, p. 73-105. Battelle, J 2005, The Search. How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed our Culture, Penguin Group. Driver, J 2006, Ethics: The Fundamentals, Wiley-Blackwell. Ellison, G & Sara F. E 2005, ‘Lessons about Markets from the Internet’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 19, No. 1, p. 139-158. Google.com 2014, The Google Culture, Viewed 14 September 2014, http://www.google.com/corporate/culture.html. Hartley, R.F 2010, Management Mistakes and successes, New York, John Wiley and Sons. Martin, J 2002. Organizational Culture: Mapping the Terrain, Thousand Oaks, California, Sage Publications. Olsen, S 2003, July 11. Google's Movin' on up - CNET News. Viewed14 September 2014, http://news.cnet.com/Googles-movin-on-up/2110-1032_3-1025111.html Scott, V 2008, Google, London, Greenwood Publishing Group. Read More