Case study Sony

For this case study we have chosen to take a look at SONY corp. In this paper we will describe the opportunities and threats we have identified while studying this company from a marketing perspective, while taking into consideration the twelve trends that will radically change how organizations work described in the provided analysis by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

Sony Corporation, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Kōnan Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Sony is one of the leading manufacturers of electronics products for the consumer and professional markets. This can only be attained by a company with extensive experience, expertise, and innovative strategies. But just like any other company, it must adapt to the trends, dictating its workflow or it will fall short. It has to carefully consider what are the threats and opportunities for continuous development and growth in the present as well as over the years to come.

First of all, we need to talk about changes in the demand for talent. At the core of Sony Corporation, with about 114 000 employees, are the employees skilled in technology and programming. An even greater part of their employees consists of people doing repetitive tasks in different departments such as Human Resources or Customer Service. One big opportunity for Sony is, therefore, automation, allowing the company to reduce its personnel and also make use of robotics and A.I. to obtain a higher productivity and make the production process easier and cheaper. Being an electronics manufacturer for a long time, this company will definitely profit from its experience in this field and will not have a hard time adapting to a digital world, but will only have to improve what they already have in terms of technology integrated workflow.

Such an enterprise already has implemented the use of Big Data & advanced analytics, gaining real-time insights into promising new approaches and opportunities, as this tool can be used in a vast variety of areas.

Moreover, there is another opportunity when it comes to engaging with employees’ due advances in cloud computing, consisting in the company being able to work with people from all around the world remotely on different online platforms, making it easier to find talent because the company doesn't have to limit itself to any geographical area. For an international company, this is a big plus.

Taking into consideration the size of Sony corp., we identify a threat too: having a complicated structure, that may be hard to have under control and also make it harder to meet business goals.

When an organization begins to diversify - to add products, services, production technologies, markets, and geographies - it must adopt a divisional structure in order to avoid overcomplicating. As the firm added entertainment and financial services to its original line of electronics products, each product category was grouped into its own division.

When products or services are unrelated (according to production methods or customers), the fitting structure is for each division to be run as an autonomous business, each with its own set of functions. Each division is responsible for its own profitability, and division managers may receive bonuses based on divisional profitability. When the products or services are related, however, then some functions and services can be centralized, resulting in increased corporate synergy.