Vitaly Demin Senior Strategy Consultant Read about Vitaly

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June 2010

As a lot of companies today are outsourcing their websites to other organizations around the world, the time has come to rethink the strategy and the plan for the future. The world has never been as dynamic as it is today and if you’re talking about the Internet world, it’s not even possible to keep up with the pace of its progress.

A website today is a completely different asset as it’s been 2-3 years ago. As companies cut physical expenses (travel, marketing prints, etc), the website carries more interface weight as never before. It is becoming one of the top marketing tools as it provides landing pages for online marketing campaigns that replace traditional media advertising.

With so many cases when an outsourcing company cannot react quickly to the changes that your website needs, it makes sense to think long-term. These days companies can make or lose quick profits depending on how quickly they make a certain change on the website. For example, if a certain product is trending on Twitter, the company can re-organize the main pages to feature the product in the best way or quickly build a creative separate page for it so the chances of people buying it go up dramatically.

Also, in case of changing the contractor, the transition process can be a huge pain both from the resource and time stand points. In many instances websites need to be built again from scratch which implies high costs and an extensive time period. Keeping it all inside and having a 100% control over it helps avoid all these hurdles and expenses.

By understanding this reality companies need to reorganize and restructure around their online business and make sure they have a full control. The rules have changed and today outsourcing one of your most important assets to somebody else can be a major strategic mistake.

This eBook is a brief insight into the core of the executive management of Sony Corporation, the core that is unfortunately filled with one of the most perilous human qualities – arrogance.

For a very long time now Sony has been known as an organization permeated by arrogant attitude toward their suppliers, their distributors and now their customers. This culture is felt everywhere in the world. I remember having meetings with Sony people in Moscow Russia when I consulted the largest electronics retailer in the country. These meetings were very adversarial and not a most pleasant experience. Also, as I worked with electronics retailers in Kuwait, Emirates, India, England, US and other countries, the opinions I received about Sony were the same. Nobody liked them and nobody wanted to do business with them because it was just too painful. Obviously, they could not stop carrying Sony products in their stores but some of them did try to reduce the assortment. Sony rarely partners. They dictate.

This work is an attempt to show how corporate arrogance affected the decisions Sony made along the way, the decisions that led to mistakes, mistakes that got them dethroned from the position of being the best and the most admired consumer electronics company in the world.

I hope this eBook helps other companies see a bigger picture of how decisions that are made inside their organizations affect their brand, their customer loyalty and profitable business growth. Very often top managers do not realize that many of wrong decisions are made not due to the lack of knowledge about the problem but due to the mentioned above human flaw – arrogance.

The 2nd edition includes financial updates from 2010 as well as other recent events associated with the Sony organization.

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