Yahoo: Media or Tech? Navigating 5 Years of Change - Essay Sample

Introduction

Yahoo is one of the premier digital media in the entire globe, which has created one of the best experiences that keeps the majority of the people to be connected with what is essential to them, across devices and around the globe. However, for the past five years, the top management has changed over four times, which has made it difficult for the company to have clear objectives and strategies. It is difficult for the organization to decide whether to be a media or a technology company due to a lack of clear goals (Myatt, 2016). The recently appointed chief executive officer of the company has recognized the challenges the company is going through and has even written an e-mail to employees coaxing them to continue delivering their services to the organization.

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Yahoo has been recognized to be a former top player in the digital media market, but it is now lagging from its strong competitors such as Google and Facebook. Even after the appointment of the new CEO, it is difficult for her to run the organization in the best manner since she was due to deliver her first child, where the board meeting that was set to discuss the future of the company had to be rescheduled. The domestic problem of the company escalate further after it suffered the loss of its key senior executive, and faced the phasing out of its investment in Alibaba, a Chinese internet company.

Analyses of Strategic Fit Between the Business Vision and the Critical Elements of the Business Strategy

Through experience Marisa Mayer acquired while working in Google, where she worked as the company's twentieth hire, the board and employees had high hopes in her that she will have a vision of confronting the company’s challenges (Carlson, 2013). Marissa Mayer believes there is a real opportunity to help people with their daily habits in terms of what content they read. She is aware of the best strategy to adopt is to become partnerships with other companies such as Apple and Google. The newly developed vision of the company is to build a virtual place where all people can revisit any time for them to enjoy the best experience, which will bring about constant innovation together with modern technology. The developed mission of the company is to be the first choice of everyone around the entire globe, where they can search for news, e-mail, and relevant search content. The newly developed vision of the company is unclear and indecisive, which illustrates a lack of understanding Merissa has about how the company operates. When Merissa attempted to reorganize the organization and its product team, she did it without a well-articulated vision. Merissa had 20 models she could follow, but instead, she could not make a decision, which leads to the whole process being in a stall. Her strategy seems to be based on already other successful companies such as Google and not the one based on the struggling of the company. Her decision to hire flashy executives, especially at a time when the company was going through financial difficulties made the company to increase its burden on the expenditure.

Another difficulty that brought a lot of challenges to domestic wrangles within the company was due to her earlier position in Google, where her obsession with user-experience frustrated some Yahoo senior executives (Hartung, 2015). One of the examples of this fact is where she demanded the company to remove a landing page ad on Yahoo mail simply because she had a thought that the ad is not user-friendly. She failed to recognize how productive the announcement brought to the company almost about $70 million a year.

Analyzes the Overall Business Model for the Determination of How Organizational Value Has Been Established

Yahoo, together with Google, comprises the content and electronic commerce segment. The segment is made up of a section of players who offer search engines and portal for one to enter and navigate the internet. Yahoo has a wide gamut of destinations for information and shopping. The players in the industry sought to monetize the traffic that passes through their offering via advertisement and transaction fees. For the player to have a consolidated competitive position, they often expand to other internet segments. Search sites enable customers to find relevant information on the internet. The strategy Yahoo has created in the portal sector has brought an alignment between customer needs where a customer can easily use the search engine to acquire the necessary information.

Customer Satisfaction Is as Shown in the Following Graph

However, the company has been experiencing stiff competition from its partner, such as Google and Bing, which are also internet advertising space. These companies have been competing with each other bringing a complementary business approach. The effect of this competition is to try to win a considerable number of customers hence an increase in the desire to increase customer satisfaction. However, Google Company has been performing well compared to Yahoo Company and has given the organization a very stiff competition. Yahoo should adopt some of the beneficial strategies that have been implemented by Google company for it to perform well.

The Following Is a Pie Chart Showing Competition Between Yahoo, Google, and Bing

An increase in competition has also had an internal domestic problem with its employee, where some were laid off in early 2008. Even after the company had laid down its employees, it didn't establish the organization value it desired where the revenues declined for a third consecutive year during the 2010 fiscal year (Arghire & Ionut 2009). It was evidence that Google had given Yahoo stiff competition where the company had to reach its breaking point, and selling the company was the only remaining option left.

Recommendations

It is quite clear that the situation of Yahoo company could have been different if Merissa Meyer had listened and come up with the best strategy to revive the organization. Both Merissa and the board are culpable for the challenges experienced in the organization. The best recommendation was for the CEO to first acquits herself with the culture of the organization since you cannot transform a lifestyle that you don't understand. The employment of other executives could have been avoided since it only increased the expenditure of already financial distress company. For the moment she was expecting to deliver, the company should have appointed another acting CEO to ensure that the operation of the company does not slow due to her condition.

The organization should also have ensured that the vision and mission of the organization are in line with the customer needs and satisfaction and can establish the organization's value. Yahoo lacks a brand vision, and the company should perfume internal branding where it can change the outlook of its products and services for them to be more competitive with other giant companies. The company should seek executives within the company to stop hiring them from outside. The reason behind this is that people inside the company were not pleased with this action. When employees feel that the company does not appreciate them well for their efforts, they lose interest in working as well. The company should stop the culture of no work from home. This is because even though free food was provided, which was done with a clear motive to make people work, the initiative was heavily criticized within and outside the company hence not bringing the positive result as was expected.

Yahoo should further its research and development by internalizing sophisticated technology and adapt those processes that focus on new service and implementation. The company must first identify those services that are implementable and have significant benefits to the whole organization. The implemented strategies should shift the customer from desktop to mobile services. Yahoo must create a budget that monitors performances over time, and that ensures revenues are adequately used.

Creation of Organizational Value

One of the first things that Merissa did to the company was to announce the review of the hiring of employees that the company was making. This practice was similar to Google, one of the well-performing companies. This action, if implemented, can create value for the company by ensuring that the employed staffs are people who are qualified and acquitted with the services offered by the company. This would create value for the company through the reduction of workers who have no impact on the progress of the company. It would also ensure that the company has no minimal or excess employees at a given time, and the number is optimal, which would result in better utilization of resources.

Internal sourcing of higher employees, such as executives, could reduce the amount of advertisement that is incurred when the process of hiring is through outsourcing of employees outside the company. The amount that would have been used to advertise could be transferred to other productive sectors of the organization hence creating the value for the company. Internal hiring also motivates employees to feel associated with the company hence the desire to work more for the betterment of the organization.

Conclusion

The challenges experienced in the Yahoo organization could be avoided if proper mechanisms were employed to facilitate the process of ensuring the company is doing like the other giant company. This could have started by the company first coming up with a vision and mission that will guide the company in improving its services and becoming globally one of the best internet companies. The executive chosen should be people who have a history of implementing changes that revive a company. Merissa Mayer had a good vision of the company but lacked the general knowledge about the whole process and how to run it. It is essential for the company to promote the employees who are within the organization and have a history about the company. This will enable the new executive to adopt changes quickly since they have the knowledge of the organization. The organization should reinstate to the position of its potential and align itself with other giant companies such as Google.

References

Arghire, Ionut (November 18, 2009). "Yahoo to Be Shut Down in Early 2010". Softpedia. Archived from the original on October 5, 2012. Retrieved May 23, 2012. https://blogs.constantcontact.com/yahoo-shutting-down-accounts/

Carlson, N. (2013). The Truth About Marissa Mayer: An Unauthorized Biography. Retrieved January 30, 2017, from Business Insider: https://web.archive.org/web/20130826220210/http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-biography-2013-8?page=2

Hartung, A. (2015). How Bad Leadership Doomed Yahoo: CEO Mistakes Are Costly. Retrieved January 31, 2017, from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2015/12/06/how-bad-leadership-doomed-%20yahoo-ceo-mistakes-are-costly/#76ebe7a46725

Myatt, M. (2016). Marissa Mayer: A Case Study of poor leadership. Retrieved February 01, 2017, from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2015/11/20/marissa-mayer-case-study-in-poor-leadership/#13493fff3b46