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For this Digital Transformation Project we collaborated with Red Bull, the market leader in selling energy drinks and a real marketing giant. I think everybody is quite familar with this multinational, but we will give a short introduction for those who are not.
Red Bull as we know it now was founded in 1987 by Dietrich Mateschitz from Austria. After discovering an energizing drink in Thailand, he decided to commercialize it and to introduce it in Austria and after that Europe. Nowadays his company is selling 5.612 billion cans a year in 167 different countries with 10 000 employees.

For this project we spoke to a sales representative of Red Bull Netherlands and tried to gain some insights into their Information Strategy and the way they make use of IT at the moment. Unfortunately we had to focus us on the department in which this sales representative works (The Field Sales Division) because it was difficult to talk to someone who is higher ranked within the organization.

During the interviews that we had with the sales representative we identified a problem with the current inventory system. The sales representatives of the kind that we spoke to are making use of small storage locations that are managed by one store location manager
and where products and promotion materials are stored. At this moment Red Bull didn’t use IT to follow and update stock levels that are visible to multiple people within the company. So the headquarters and the storage location manager doesn’t have any control, visibility and up to date insights about the stock that is stored at the location. This makes the ordering process inefficient and the system is very reliable of trust in employees.

To solve this problem we introduced a new inventory system that is build on IT applications. We recommended a system that is visible to the headquarters and the storage location manager via the cloud. The system works as follows: Every single time that one of the sales representatives pick their products and materials they have to scan the barcodes with an application on their iPad Mini (this is already present). With this manner, the sales representatives are able to update the stock in an easy way and the data about their pick ups will be uploaded into the central system which is visible to the headquarters and the storage location manager. It could be even possible to set an automatic reorder point, so the storage location manager doesn’t have to order anymore. With this system the issues about control and having no up to date insights about stock levels in this small storage locations would be solved with a few simple IT introductions.

The sales representative that we spoke to was very positive about this idea and the company might want to implement some of the features into their systems.

Group 86,

Jimmy Broere, Dennis Brouw, Xander Roovers & Rick van Sintmaartensdijk

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Trading is anchored in the DNA of human beings and this is exactly what Facebook found out the last few years. The social media giant saw a major increase in people that sell or buy products to or from each other via their platform. This mainly happens in social groups, where people who are interested in certain products gather together to buy a 2^nd hand or new product.

 

When you are a social platform, like Facebook, with 1.5 billion users and 450 million people that are already trading, you see a possibility to extend the features of your platform to attract even more users.

And so does Facebook who introduces Facebook ‘Marketplace’ to enter the market of electronic markets.

With the new feature people are now able to sell and buy products in a more structured way than before. With the ‘market’ button that is from now on integrated in the Facebook applications, people can see and bid on what is sold in their environment and are enabled to filter on price, category and location. Besides this a seller only has to make a picture of the product, give a description, decide on a price and share their location to upload their product to the new marketplace.

 

The new feature sounds great and easy, however the question is if Facebook Marketplace is able to compete with the established electronic markets like Ebay or for example Marktplaats in the Netherlands.

When we compare the first version of Facebook Marketplace, with these existing electronic markets, Facebook definitely has a chance of succeeding in competing.

First of all Facebook starts this electronic market with a huge user base linked to their platform. With Facebook Marketplace the user can have more activities under one roof and going to an external application for selling or buying on a marketplace will be history.

Secondly Facebook creates a certain trust with the link between the seller or buyer and his or her Facebook profile. Trust is an important issue for electronic markets and existing markets are trying to improve this aspect for many years. However the users of their platform will never have such a personal page as the users of Facebook.

Thirdly Facebook Marketplace has a focus on location. On the homepage products in the direct environment will be shown and this distinguishes their electronic market from the existing markets. In which it is possible to filter on location, but they do not focus or stimulate the user to buy or sell a product in the direct environment.

 

Obviously the established electronic markets have more experience in the market and their own user base that comes to their platform to actually sell or buy something, which is not the case for Facebook, where only 450 million people are buying and selling now.

However this looks like a strong extension for a social media platform that has to be innovative to remain interesting for their current and new users.

Sources:

http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/10/introducing-marketplace-buy-and-sell-with-your-local-community/

 

http://www.elsevier.nl/economie/achtergrond/2016/10/zo-wil-facebook-de-strijd-aangaan-met-marktplaats-en-ebay-372931/

 

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Every day a huge amount of data is produced by human beings and companies that are connected to the internet. A lot of this data falls into the hands of companies, who gather the data and who probably analyse the data to get to know more information about their user or customer. Knowing more about the user or customer could add value to their business in several ways. A lot of companies use the data and the information that is gathered by this data to approach the customer in more personalized or accurate way. Other companies adapt their whole business model to the gathered data and sell the data to other businesses who are in need of this data.

An example of the last type of company is Facebook, who arrogated a lot of value and power with the gathering of data.

But what happens when Facebook takes over another company with a lot of customer data in their possession, like Whatsapp. Will their power be too much? Will other comparable players in the market be still able to compete with them in gathering, analysing and selling valuable data

One of the people that is concerned about the value and power of data and what it does to fair competition within certain markets is the top antitrust regulator of the European Union, Margrethe Vestager.
Last thursday she expressed that she is considering to investigate mergers that involve a large amount of data even if the taken over company doesn’t make a lot of money.

The mergers of Whatsapp (by Facebook) and LinkedIn (by Microsoft) are already scrutini

zed and this shows that the European Union recognizes the importance and value of data nowadays.

 

In my opinion it is a good development that the guards of fair competition are now confirming that data is an aspect that influences competition in particular markets. The growth of the amount of data that is available will be exponential and the demand for certain data will be growing too. This means that the distribution of this data needs to be followed and kept in the right proportion. Scrutinizing mergers in which data are involved is a big step in tackling this possible problem.

 

References:

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/298554-european-antitrust-chief-says-user-data-may-factor-into-merger-reviews

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-17/data-may-be-key-in-microsoft-linkedin-probe-eu-s-vestager-says