Microsoft Laptops’ Value Chain and VRIO Analysis

Microsoft Laptops’ Value Chain and VRIO Analysis
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Microsoft’s Value Chain and VRIO Analysis
Value Chain
Value chain entails a series of activities that a company performs to deliver a valuable productsam. Since the company introduced the real laptops called Surface Laptops, it has continuously strived to improve them to enhance the user experience. Among the improvements that the organization has had on its laptops include introduction of the Surface Laptop Go, new updates to Surface Pro X and new accessories. As Kyriacou (2020) posits, the company has designed the Surface Laptop Go to extend the Surface lineup by providing a unique design at a more affordable price.
The company continues to make the laptops in a manner that ensures that the users are able to operate even when commuting. The driving goal for all these innovations is to design a Surface for every person, work style, and location. It provides improved resolution for its cameras to allow individuals interested in holding virtual meetings or students who attend virtual classes to be able to have a memorable experience. Fitted with a bright vibrant screen, a fluid and comfortable keyboard, high quality cameras, and mics, the Surface Laptop has evolved to become one of the best laptops. Such improvements are remarkable given that it debuted a few years ago and has managed to match some of the traditional laptop manufacturers.
Value Chain Framework
VRIO Analysis
The VRIO framework analyzes an organization’s internal resources to determine whether the resource offers sustained competitive advantage, has an unused competitive advantage, a temporary competitive advantage, competitive parity or competitive disadvantage. Consequently, a VRIO analysis of the Microsoft laptop helps determine the value that these products offer the market. The company provides value in terms of the raw materials, human expertise, distributional network, performance of the products, and price factor.
1 Valuable
Microsoft’s company provides value in the manufacture of its Surface Laptop in terms of the materials used. The firm has a restricted substances specification, which provides details on substances not allowed in its products, packaging, and supplier manufacturing operations. In terms of the human resources, the company boosts of talented people with a growth mindset. Such a team strives to ensure that the products are innovative and of great quality. Its price is comparable to the competition and at that price, it offers more value in terms of usage of a more advanced operating system, a greater display of 13.5 inches, compared to the competition, which offers a display of 13.3 inches. Unfortunately, the company’s distribution network is not as extensive as that of the competitors, which prolongs the waiting time for its clients. Therefore, Microsoft’s Surface Laptop provides more value for money compared to the competition, which gives the company a competitive age. The fact that the laptops are sold for almost the same price as those of the competitors means that Microsoft has more valuable laptops.
2 Rare
Microsoft's Surface Laptop uses some of the rarest technologies that the competition lacks. While the rest of the companies uses the more common Windows 10, Surface Laptop uses Windows 10 S, which is more advanced. To keep up with the competition, the company has strived to continuously update its Surface Laptop by incorporating newer technological features for enhanced performance and user experience. The main problem with these updates is that they have affected the availability of the laptops. As the company plans to release a new Surface Laptop, it has experienced a component chip shortage, which has pushed back the shipping of new hardware (Bowden, 2022). This chip shortage is likely to interfere with the global rollout. Such a shortage is likely to give the competition a competitive edge because they are also striving to attract more customers and tend to opt for more available materials to update their laptops. Therefore, Microsoft is likely to lose its market share at the global level because users will not be willing to wait for a product that they are unsure of when it will arrive. The company needs to utilize more readily available material when updating its systems to avoid such cases.
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3 Inimitable
Microsoft is a producer of a variety of software products that other companies use to also manufacture their own laptops. However, the Surface laptops has a series of unique features that are inimitable. For example, in terms of display, whereas the Surface Laptop 4 does not provide the current display buzzwords of HDR, Dolby Vision, or DCI-P3 gamut, it still offers some of the most accurate colors of any device available. This vast array of colors is suitable for anyone who wishes to edit photos, videos, and other works that require the use of such a range of colors (Howse, 2021). The graph below shows the way the Surface Laptop displays with Gamut Accuracy compared to the competition. Besides the unique technologies, it also provides the most competitive price that the competition cannot imitate without compromising their quality. The competitors rely on Microsoft’s operating system and so to develop their unique operating systems and still keep the prices low will be quite challenging.
The unique labor skills that the firm offers in terms of personnel who understand the operating systems and its unique features is also inimitable. The firm’s ability to retain these employees has given it a competitive advantage over the competition. Thus, Microsoft ability to retain employees and use unique resources in development of its laptops make it inimitable.
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4 Organization
The firm has a distribution network that does not provide value to its customers because they have to wait for long before accessing the laptops. There are other more organized entities in terms of distribution that are a threat to Microsoft’s operations, which means that its mode of organization is not rare and can be imitated. However, the company is highly organized in terms of its human resources, financial resources, material resources, and pricing of its products. This level of organization is evident in its consistent update of it laptops with the latest available technology that ensures the products remain ahead of the competition. Its ability to match price and quality further puts it ahead because not many companies can produce such quality for the price that Microsoft provides. All these are signs of an excellently organized company driven by the desire to be the best. A summary of the VRIO framework for the laptops is as shown below:
VRIO Framework
Resource

Value

Rare

Inimitable

Organized

Advantage

Strengths

Weakness

Material Resources

Yes

Yes

Yes