The Walt Disney Company’s Business Activities

The Walt Disney Company is an American multinational mass media and entertainment company with its headquarters at Walt Disney Studios, Burbank in California. In terms of revenue, it is among the world’s largest media conglomerate which is independent. Its mission is to be the world’s leading provider of information and entertainment services.

Walt Disney organization engages in various activities to generate profit. It operates in four business segments including studio entertainment, parks and resorts, Media Networks, and consumer products and interactive media. The studio engagement segment acquires and produces animated motion pictures and live-action, live stage plays, musical and video recordings.  The business activities of the media networks segment are broadcasting television networks, radio networks, and television production and delivery operations (Poter, 2004 p.94). The park and resort unit develops park concepts and attractions and resort properties. The consumer products and interactive media publish games for comic books, magazines, mobile platforms, and books.

The company has cable networks which provide programming services which it sells to television broadcasts and video-on-demand services subscription to generate revenues. It has established a good marketing foundation to maximize its business exposure to the target market (Jenkins & Williamson, 2015 p.67). It achieves its marketing plan by reaching sports fans in more than sixty countries to deliver sports news, live streams, and information updates. It also focuses on human resource tasks to conduct an interview, determine benefits it can offer and hire applicants and to solve interpersonal conflicts in the course of business. This has enabled the company to have a community of employees who balance value and productivity, support innovation, reevaluate the organizations’ values and make maximum use of its resources to generate maximum profits (Hill & Hill, 2012 p. 503).

It also provides customer services to secure new clients and promote referrals. It achieves this by providing individualized services responding to clients’ requests through their subscriptions (Johnston, 2005 p. 1298). For example, it provides repetition to original series, movie programming targeting kids, shows, comedy series, and animated programming. It also connects with clients to offer solutions on faulty networks or programs and issues with bills.

The organization also engages in business activities to grow sales by reaching out prospects to expand customer base while securing repeat sales and maintaining relationships with existing clients. It focuses on matching customer needs with company solutions to create demand in its services (Lowson, 2012 p.36). For instance, it has expanded its customer base to India by establishing a general entertainment cable network for kids with hind language game shows, series episodes, and clips.

The company applies to lean six sigma quality management strategies in delivering its services to eliminate defects, decrease costs, add value to customers, make data-driven decisions and reduce variations (Belekoukias, Garza-Reyes, & Kumar, 2014 p.5346). Being an entertainment service provider, the company uses lean strategies to analyze its service delivery flow to minimize delays thus ensuring potential clients get up-to-date information and access upcoming episodes through its channels. It also uses lean strategies to reduce complexities and only deliver services it is able to manage and to locations, it can reach with its resources hence reduce waste, excess costs and time (Balogun, Hailey, & Johnson, 2016 p. 123). It also uses lean and six sigma strategies to solve problems in service delivery hence produce a return on investment without investing more capital. It ensures each workforce is responsible for their tasks, for example, the researchers, program designers, live streaming cameramen and those in the studio deliver their services to their maximum ability.

The Service Delivery Process

It also applies the strategies to identify business services required by its business units. The senior managers meet with marketing, service providers and other significant business units to understand the competitive marketplace, and the specific services each unit will require to deliver services and achieve organizational objectives (Hill & Hill, 2012 p. 611). It also uses the strategies to identify key stakeholders and priority for its delivery services. Through the process, they validate the key stakeholders, their responsibilities, list of delivery services and level of service to be delivered. Through the process, they solve problems such as complex workforce structure, relationship with stakeholders, and policies which may hinder service delivery.

The company also develops a list of service delivery required from each business activity to set priorities in depending on consumer needs. The company workforce socializes with the customers through service delivery. Through the process, they communicate and understand key areas to improve, improve customer satisfaction, and support engagement. In the service delivery process, the company fosters strong culture to align its employees with its principles, methodology, interactions, and relationships with customers in service delivery (De Ruyter, Wetzels, Lemmink, and Mattson, 2013 p.248).

The company also employs location strategy in its service delivery to improve the efficiency of movement of business information and human resources. It aims at maximizing market reach by availing the entertainments services such as live actions, radio networking, broadcast television networks and parks and resorts to locations where potential customers stay. The company’s operations management focuses on process and capacity design through forecasting, continuous monitoring and behavioral analysis in the service delivery process. Behavioral analysis of its employees and customers serves as a basis in the design and capacity of its service delivery process (Johnson, Scholes & Whittington, 2008 p.104). Continuous monitoring informs the managers to keep or change current service delivery designs. Forecasting helps the service delivery process to expand and grow.

The Walt Disney organization also uses total quality management (RQM) to improve its overall service delivery quality and customer satisfaction. It applies this by ensuring customer feedback, continuous improvement, process action teams, and empowerment. The company also applies lean strategies to reduce touch points in its service delivery process such as unnecessary reporting, reconciliation of services or waiting supervisor to administer orders (Johnston, 2005 p. 1308). It also aids in workflow rearrangement to increase process efficiency and flow in studio entertainment and parks and resorts. The company uses simulation software to optimize configurations and service delivery process without making changes and incurring costs to streamline operations than create extra revenue and value to customers (Lowson, 2012 p. 56).

What should be done to improve the process?

The company can improve the service delivery process by developing a process manual to carry out its daily operation and achieve process standardization which is cost effective. This will help the company to increase consistency, act as a quick reference guide and assist transitioning process from one service to another. It can also improve the process by automating the service delivery process by using interactive voice response (Slack, Chambers & Johnston, 2010 p.49). This will eliminate variations, increase productivity and standardize the service delivery process.

Improving the Service Delivery Process

The company can also reduce failure demand which is caused by failure to satisfy customer needs. Improving value demand in the service delivery process will reduce wastes and increase customer satisfaction, efficiency and free up for new services capacity (Ritchie and Brindley, 2017 p. 300). The company can also conduct a blueprinting exercise to service improvement and innovation. It can achieve this by identifying the target customer segment hence provide a customer-focused basis to track service performance by developing metrics. In the exercise, it can also identify opportunities for service improvement and failure points and map service from the perspective of the customer.

The company operations management can strengthen the skills of the team in customer services such as consistency, empathy, patience, adaptability, and communication (Ritchie and Brindley, 2017 p. 303). It can also focus on improving its customer interactions. The representatives can identify shared interests, listen to customers and reflect their feelings, admit mistakes and ensure follow-ups to improve customer satisfaction such as sending emails. The company can also improve the service by enhancing customer service strategy by getting personal to make customers access real people but not automated online responses by giving relevant responses in Twitter and Facebook. It can also give a way for customers to provide feedback through email or phone surveys to understand its weaknesses and strengths hence act accordingly (Santa, Hyland, & Ferrer, 2014 p.969). It can also improve employee engagement to boost their productivity in service delivery.

The company can also improve service delivery by improving customer and employee satisfaction, and meeting expectations. It can achieve this by listening to them, communicating feedback, being polite, approachable and friendly and treating them with respect. It can also improve the process by keeping promises and improving trust.

The company can also implement a strategy on its layout design based on consumer organization standards and behavioral analysis. For instants Walt Sidney company consumer products and interactive media places goods in convenient areas to improve efficiency and for cost-effectiveness. It can also focus on job design and human resource which enables the company maintains standardized service delivery process and service quality standards.  It can also improve its supply chain management by using bargaining power and information technology to minimize the costs of the service delivery process.

The company can also combine maintenance approaches to improve effectiveness in service delivery. For instance, it can implement training programs to ensure efficient and effective employees who maintain facility equipment used in service delivery hence reduce the cost of repair. It can also use flexible scheduling and conventional shifts based on current trends to optimize the service delivery process by addressing anticipated demand changes and respond to changes in inventory levels (Danaher and Mattsson, 2014 p.569).

The Walt Disney Company has implemented procurement and supply chain strategies to handle the demand patterns which are rapidly changing and the agile business operating models (Santa, Hyland & Ferrer, 2014 p.979). This makes the organization successful as it can deliver maximum customer satisfaction and achieve its business objectives by collectively harnessing its planning, manufacturing, inventory management, procurement, and logistics functions. It has also implemented strategies on capacity and process technology that makes it run the necessary process efficiently and support production goals including resources and technology (Balogun, 2016 p. 167). This makes the company successful as it can determine and plan its production capacity to meet changing demands and maximize the amount of work its capable to complete in a certain period.

Analysis of the Walt Disney Company’s Success Factors

Walt Disney organization has also implemented a business process re-engineering as a business management strategy to analyze and design its processes and workflows. This has made the organization successful as it has achieved positive changes in its performance measured by service quality, cycle time and cost. It has also boosted its competitiveness in operations through more productive processes. It has also led to radically new designs in the organization that help it to increase profitability and market share, quality, cost ratios and respond better to competitive pressures (Scholes, 2015 p.105). It has also made it successful in job redesign by creating more rewarding and challenging jobs with broader employee responsibilities hence boosted productivity.

The company uses six-sigma as a strategic tool which has enabled it to be successful in elimination of waste and variations in its business processes and reducing defects thus the company has been able to meet the overall quality expectation of its services (Belekoukias, 2014 p.5366). It has also created continuous improvement hence the company has developed new high-quality products.

Walt Disney organization has adopted operations strategy monitoring which has made it successful. It has enabled the company to keep up with changing market trends and stay ahead of the competition. It allows the company to have a sense of direction hence establish realistic goals and objectives which it has been able to achieve. It has also implemented performance metrics which drive its performance, help it make better decisions, and produce good public relations. It has also developed risk management plans which guide it to identify risks and respond accordingly. This has made it successful in terms of efficiency and consistency of its operations and has boosted customer satisfaction. It has also assisted it in improving the company’ brand reputation and protect its resources (Näslund, 2008 p. 287).

Walt Disney Company has developed a product-service mix which has allowed its continued existence, improved society and added new value to customers (Jenkins & Williamson, 2015 p.80). The company is successful in project management which allows it to improve quality control as it ensures projects have enough resources and time to deliver and ensures the quality of the output is tested. The company is successful in inventory management by minimizing stock-outs and its inventory size hence supporting its cost minimization efforts. The approach makes the company successful through its performance in the specific area of operations management. The organization’s services are designed to allow easy mass production at minimal production cost (Slack & Lewis, 2015 p.96).  

References

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Belekoukias, 2014. The impact of lean methods and tools on the operational performance of manufacturing organisations. International Journal of Production Research, 52(18), pp.5346-5366.

Danaher, P.J. and Mattsson, J., 2014. Customer satisfaction during the service delivery process. European journal of Marketing, 28(5), pp.569.

De Ruyter, K., Wetzels, M., Lemmink, J. and Mattson, J., 2013. The dynamics of the service delivery process: a value-based approach. International journal of research in marketing, 14(3), pp.248.

Hill, A and Hill, T (2012). Operations Management Strategic Context and Managerial Analysis. Third Edition, Palgrave Macmillan pp.503-611.

Jenkins, W. and Williamson, D., 2015. Strategic management and business analysis. Routledge, pp. 67-80.

Johnson, G., Scholes, K. and Whittington, R., 2008. Exploring corporate strategy: text & cases. Pearson education, 7(3), pp.104.

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Näslund, D., 2008. Lean, six sigma and lean sigma: fads or real process improvement methods?. Business process management journal, 14(3), pp. 287.

Poter, M.E., 2004. Competitive strategy: Techniques for analyzing industries and competitors (Vol. 198). Free press, pp.94.

Ritchie, B. and Brindley, C., 2017. Supply chain risk management and performance: A guiding framework for future development. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 27(3), pp.300-303.

Santa, R., Hyland, P. and Ferrer, M., 2014. Technological innovation and operational effectiveness: their role in achieving performance improvements. Production Planning & Control, 25(12), pp.969-979.

Scholes, M. (2015). Strategic production-distribution models: A critical review with emphasis on global supply chain models. European journal of operational research, 98(1), pp. 105.

Slack, N and Lewis, M (2015). Operations Strategy and Project management: strategic design and implementation. FT Prentice Hall, pp. 396.

Slack, N., Chambers, S. and Johnston, R., 2010. Operations management. Pearson education, 5(4), pp. 49.