Crown Cork and Seal Company free essay sample

In today’s competitive market, no matter how good a company’s current products are, long-term growth depends on new products. A company needs to create effective market segmentation, good target marketing, and an outstanding positioning. This process is the most sophisticated and strategically significant aspect to top managers of the company. In CCS case, there are financial elements from capital budgeting to cash flow analysis, marketing elements based on changes in the market and consumer preferences, and operations elements related to efficient manufacturing. Therefore, the appropriate tools can be used to identify and analyze the key issue include Net Present Value, Google Analytics, and Critcial Path Method. First, NPV is used in capital budgeting to analyze the profitability of an investment or project. For industry analysis, it can show net present value of expenditure. CCS needs to calculate the reliability of future cash inflows of plastic product investment will yield before the company decides to invest in this growing segment. We will write a custom essay sample on Crown Cork and Seal Company or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page In order to conduct NPV, we need the rate of return (i), time of cash flow (t), and the net cash flow (Rt). Next, Google Analytics is an essential tool for CCS to analyze marketing elements. This tool provides important information like bounce rate, click through, and conversion rates. The company can determine where customers are coming from, what they search for, or how long they spend on each page and analyze this information to determine how the company’s plastic products are evaluated. This is the link to use: http://www. google. com/analytics. Last but not least, Critical Path Method is a valuable tool to identify the operation effect of plastic project investment. This tool involves three phases: planning (goal setting, defining the project, and team organization), scheduling (relating people, money, supplies, and activities to each other), and controlling (the firm monitors resources, costs, quality, and budgets Based on analysis from the above tools and Porter’s five forces of competition framework, they show that the key issue of the company is about envisioning the future rather than assuming that the future will be just like today (Ganesh, 2013). CCS should focus on the evolution of technology from metal to plastic, a growing segment and a potential opportunity, to help the firm diversify its products in the industry as well as avoid the threat of substitutes. Three companies that face similar issues or counterpoint issues today include Dell, Sony, and GameStop. Because the stage of the PC industry life cycle can be described as mature and the sale is slow, Dell and Sony need to diversify into other industries or other products (Reed, 2013). For example, Apple not only has PC products but also diversify in smart phone market with its successful product, Iphone. GameStop closed hundreds of locations in 2013 as software sales decreased and more customers began purchasing digital downloads (Tooley, 2013). The video game industry has seen declining sales in recent years, and software distribution is moving to a cloud based model. If software retailers cannot adjust their business model and diversify their product offerings to attract more customers they will become relics of the past. CCS should diversify its product by investing into plastic containers product because the metal products has low profit margins and a rising material costs while plastic product has lower cost and potential high profit margins based on the research and calculations of the above three tools.