U51062 Semester 2 2011 Strategic Management

• Two books on FedEx are available in the Short Loan Collection at Wheatley Library (the red section neart the Library entrance). Neither are particularly recommended, but we expect them to be heavily reserved:
• Basch, Michael D. (2002) Customer culture: how FedEx and other companies put other customers first  658.812 BAS
• Birla, Madan (2005) FedEx delivers: how the world’s leading shipping company keeps innovating and outperforming the competition  388.044 BIR
• Business Source Complete is always a good starting point. Firstly, click on More in the Toolbar and click on Company Profiles. In the search box enter FedEx to retrieve the Datamonitor company profile. It includes a SWOT analysis and a list of Top Competitors. For most competitors listed a company profile is available: Deutsche Post, Nippon Express, United Parcel Service, TNT, Con-Way, United States Postal service, YRC Worldwide, Arkansas Best Corporation, Japan Post. Profiles are not available for the Royal Mail or ABF Freight Systems. The profiles are concise, but reading them is a speedy way to see what the competitive landscape looks like.
• Continue in Business Source Complete by selecting the Advanced search screen and entering a search express service, selecting SU Subject terms from the drop down menu. At the time of writing we had 1509 hits, but these date back for many years, so just browsing a few pages of results should lead to some interesting recent articles. For a subject such as this one, both academic journals and the trade journals that BSC contains should be helpful.
• Enter FedEx as a search and specify CO Company Entity from the drop-down menu.
• Some of the results are the Datamonitor reports on express logistics, so refresh the Advanced Search screen and enter this as a search term, but scroll down to the box labelled Publication Type and specify Industry Profile.
• Next try the Investext database available on the Thomson One Banker  platform for analysts reports on companies and on the industry. See the Powerpoint presentation for instructions on how to search for companies (off campus users will have to enter their username and password): https//www2.brookes.ac.uk/library/resources/thomsonpowerpoint.ppt
• As described, click on the Research option in the left margin to obtain reports. Make certain that you extensively browse the lists of reports that you find. There is a great deal of luck involved in finding useful reports! There is no standard format. All give advice on whether to buy or sell shares, but vary from one page of insignificant news to reams of financial data. But there are some nuggets in there if you search; it is possible to find wide-ranging reports on the performance of the company, the factors influencing it and the competitive landscape of the industry. Particularly try to find the longer reports. We particularly like reports from JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, but try others too.
• It is also possible to find reports on the industry. Under the Research option in the left margin that you have to use to find the Company reports, you will see the option Conduct Research Report Search. The Powerpoint explains how to use it. Enter express delivery in the text search box. Then select Last 2 years from the Report Date drop down menu. Finally scroll down to the box headed Criteria and click on the Include button to insert your search terms into the search Criteria box. Then, click on Search.
• The results include reports on many leading companies. Look for the reports of 21 September 2010 by Datamonitor Global Road Freight-Competitive Landscape. This includes much of the company information given in the Datamonitor reports mentioned above, but also includes a five forces analysis of the industry.
• Next, look at the Factiva news database. Look at the Powerpoint on using Factiva (off campus users will have to enter their username and password): https://www2.brookes.ac.uk/library/resources/factivapowerpoint.ppt
•  There are endless search strategies you could use. Search for companies in which you are interested:
• 1  Click on the Company index option in the left margin. When it opens up enter e.g. FedEx in the search box and click on the search symbol to the right. When the list of companies appears, click on FedEx Corp and it turns pink and is saved as a search option in pink at the top of the section (click on it again to turn it off).
• 2  Then click on the Subject index option in the left margin and in the list that opens click on the + next to Corporate/Industrial News, then scroll down the list of subject sand click on Plans/Strategy to turn this heading pink and save in the search.
• 3  Run the search. At the time of writing 943 articles are found. This sounds like too much , but they are given in reverse chronological order back to c1989, so there are not so many for recent years.
• 4  If you think there are too many go back to the search screen (click on Modify Search at the top right). At the top of the search screen in the Free text search box , add wc>600, which means word count over 600 (it can be any number you want). You retrieve only larger articles with over 600 words, at the time of writing only 216 articles. Much more manageable.
• Last of all, this is a blog. There are many articles that you might stumble across in these databases. Feel free to share what you find by posting up an entry. Good luck with your assignment!