Planning and Measuring Performance
Name
MGT/521 Management
Date
Instructor
Planning and Measuring Performance
The Microsoft Corporation, Inc. is a Fortune 500 company, ranked 17th (CNN Money, 2013), that “develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services related to computing” (Wikipedia, 2013). Today computing involves everyday activities; working with a personal computer, a laptop, a tablet computer, a smartphone, or a video gaming system.
According to the Hernandez (2013) website, Microsoft’s operating systems have a total 86.63% of the personal computer market with Windows 8 at 3.17%, Windows 7 at 44.73% and Windows XP at 38.73%. Microsoft and Nokia teamed up to create a market-leading mobile product using Windows (Nokia, 2011) and during the 1st quarter of 2013 accounted for 5.6% of all smart phone sales (Olson, 2013).
Even though 1/10 the size in sales of Android smartphones (Olson, 2013), Microsoft has brand loyalty, brand reputation, and returning customers (Strategic Management Insight, 2013); because planning, standards, and measuring help keep Microsoft mobile viable. Microsoft has a mobile phone goal, to become a top mobile phone operating system seller.
Achieve the Goal
To achieve the goal, Microsoft has a strategic plan, a joint venture with Nokia to create a mobile product and the operational goal is to sell 400 million devices by July 2013 and have 100,000+ applications in the windows store by the end of January 2013 (Farrell, 2012). Microsoft is fighting for the mobile operating system’s future by spending millions of dollars for the publishers of the applications to go live as soon as possible (Farrell, 2012). An operating system is no good if there are no applications available for use with it.
Standards
To make sure Microsoft’s goals are appropriate, standards are required to validate the process. Three commonly used standards will be reviewed: benchmarking,...