Global Benchmarking: World Class Performance

Global Benchmarking Plan: Apple part 2
Ronnie Spears
BUS 689DL: Global Benchmarking: World Class Performance
Professor: Alstete
August 6, 2015
Business Comparison: key indicator 
The key indicator in business comparison is the growth in sales and market share as this will translate to bigger profits allowing the company to gain a competitive edge. The cellular phone market has attracted the entry of other new players especially from East Asia with China making inroads by proving cheaper alternatives. There is a need to take into account pricing and technologies since customer are attracted by both aspects. Since the market is increasingly competitive, the differences in attributes perceptions and buying habits differentiate phone makers on one hand, cellular phone manufacturers desire to remain competitive by introducing new features, but since the market is highly competitive lower prices are increasingly forcing companies to be more competitive.
Benchmarking Partner Analysis
The benchmark partner analysis highlights on comparing performance with Samsung which is Apple’s main competitors in the cell phone market. Even though, Apple lagged behind Samsung in sales I 2014, in the first quarter of 2014, the company outperformed Samsung. The market share of Apple in 2013 was 15.5% but then fell slightly at 15.4% in 2014. The highest growth in cell phone sales was in the U.S and China, but some of the customers were those already using Apple products and needed an upgrade especially in the U.S (Gartner.com, 2015).
Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor in 4Q14 (Thousands of Units)
4Q144Q14 Market Share (%)4Q134Q13 Market Share (%)UnitsUnitsApple74,83220.450,22417.8Samsung73,03219.983,31729.5
 HYPERLINK "/newsroom/id/2996817" /newsroom/id/2996817
According to statista (2015), the number of Apple iPhones users in the U.S was 17.5 million in 2010 and 63.2 million in 2014

Benchmarking and Implementation Plan Table  Every corporation needs to remain competitive and assessing both financial and functional aspects plays a crucial role in the benchmarking process. Benchmarking highlights the best practice guidelines to ensure there is better performance while also helping eliminating operating efficiencies. Having identified the need to improve market penetration and functionality of the cell phones, Apple will focus on continuous improvement with the aim of developing performance measures. In any case, the basic operational principles highlighting on having access to the low priced supply components has allowed the company to remain competitive (Vergara, 2012). However, the entry of competitors from Asia with better capacity to manufacture at a faster rate means that there is a need for a more broad-based strategy to ensure profit improvement.
Data collection
The data was collected focused on sales of the Apple cell phones globally comparing the results with competitors in order to identify the opportunities and threats that might affect the company’s performance. The information noted in a data collection plan indicates whether organizational practice has already been performed as stated in the bench mark (Fogle, Loulis, & Neuendorf, 2001). For instance, Samsung’s outperformed Apple with the launch of new products creating a buzz and receiving positive reviews for the Galaxy S6 and new flagship phone (Benchmark monitor (2015). The data analysis is crucial to identify areas that require improvement and this will form the basis to decide on whether to go on with the implementation of best practices identified. In any case, it is through incorporating best practices that Apple, Inc will innovate and compete against imitators. This cannot be possible if the data collected does not highlight performance and practices that need to be incorporated in order to achieve the set goals.
One of the areas that require attention to lift the company’s earnings is better features to ensure that customers can identify with improved value. At the moment the graphics of the Smart Phone have had positive reviews compared to the competitors and this is just one of the aspects that will be taken into account (Zafar, 2014). The employees input through providing suggestions and opinions are necessary to understand how other users appreciate or feel frustrated about the graphical features. The design department is tasked with coming up with better graphical aspects as GPU performance can provide graphics solution that are often overlooked.
The areas identified requiring changing include, improving the sales by dividing the regions ant taking into account market structure and the strength of competitors. At the same time, the cycle time especially in the new markets needs to be better, and since not all places have Apple retail stores this is crucial to improving sales faster. Since data collection also helps to assess performance it was necessary to search for as much information as possible given that strategy alignment with performance is not possible when there is inadequate information. The execution of the sales strategy will also succeed depending on the data analysis highlighting the need to focus on different elements in the benchmarking process. The data gathered need to be useful for comparison and benchmarks facilitate decision-making (Shapiro, 2010).
Approach
The approach is to have more ...