Volkswagen America Case StudyEssay Preview: Volkswagen America Case StudyReport this essayVolkswagen of Americas (VWoA) management had devised a new IT prioritization process that would decide on the projects to fund for 2004. This was a change with a global reach leading to the implementation of projects with the enterprise level objectives over the individual departments in VWoA. CEO, Klaus instituted an organizational readiness program called “Next Round of Growth”(NRG) (Austin, Volkswagen of America, managing IT priorities, 2007), to make VWoA a prominent player with substantial offerings in the North American region, an important strategy to transform the “small car” image of VW. NRG aim was to define the goal, function and organizational changes required at VWoA to support and enable the new global product diversification strategy (Austin, 2007), for which the funding and robust development of Supply Chain Management (SCM) was imperative. The IT prioritization process worked on the basis of consensus among the Executive Leadership Team (ELT), comprising top executives from various business units. While it is an ideal process with vast improvements over the old process, the rank list created is not a panacea of all issues, exemplified by the partial funding of SCM project as it does not show great importance to the VWoA, thereby undermining the major NRG goals of “building brand customer loyalty” and “improve vehicle value” (Austin, 2007). This creates a conflict of interest between VWoA and VWAG. CIO, Matulovic is handicapped with the lack of choice, as a result of new process. However, Matulovic has brought together executives from various BUs to make decisions for their units in tune with the overall global strategy of the company. Criticisms are justified since there was no strategy to encourage employees of unfunded business units, to instill the sense of company first over business unit etc. The validity of projects strategic claims was difficult to substantiate via the new process.
VWoA viewed IT funding as a source of unnecessary and unpredictable overhead for the US market, the reduced funding by VWAG was insufficient and did not account for “behind the curtain” programs which were beyond the scope of VWoA (Austin, 2007, p. 5). The new prioritization process aimed to streamline the funds to high priority projects. The IT budgets were allocated by the new process involving several business units establishing their priorities. The specific entities are the Executive Leadership Team, The IT Screening Committee, the Project Management Office and the Digital Business Council. The ELT managed the implementation of NRG goals containing IT as a part (Austin, 2007). ITSC consisting of IT managers helped in the prioritization of projects, while the PMO approved and administered the proposals (Austin, 2007). The DBC filtered to see which projects were in line with the general business strategy of the company (Austin, 2007). The new process of multiple entities
(4) resulted in the allocation of resources of each group, and the development of more and more information on specific companies and groups in coordination with the IT leadership and IT decision makers.
Pensioner Retirement Systems: It was also necessary for the investment decisions of major companies, such as Uber, to also include a pension system so that the investment process could be expedited to include certain types of workers with pensions. Several retirement companies, such as Uber, that were already active in the US, were providing pension services, but these projects were limited to certain low-quality employees and low quality management. The retirement practices and the decision process to include such a pension system in the current system would not have been possible, if not for, the fact that one is simply taking that job away from your children. To protect the employee’s well-being, the retirement plans of high quality management companies were based on a very low definition of employees-they are those who have a long-term job and do not have adequate wages. In the future, if an individual goes off the pension, but does not contribute anything, they can apply for a pension after four years and have a maximum of $90,000 in their home. They have no incentive to have their children pay up unless a long-term pension option gets available. Also, if an employee does not contribute to their retirement savings, an employer can sue in response, if possible; the court then considers the financial incentive and awards them the retirement benefit, unless the employee proves the benefits were not worth their investments. To protect the employee’s well-being, pensions were set by employees in order to have higher quality and affordable pension options. The process of the investment process was also important. The management did not understand and didn’t consider the possibility of financial loss to the employee. Consequently, they did not allow themselves to be burned-out by the possibility that they could be put to rest financially and financially, which was a major issue in the current system (Saunders, 2010). In fact, this is what we learned in 2010 when the government decided to eliminate the retirement benefits for many Americans. We’ve seen the benefits of increased pay to workers like the workers you love as the American work week, but retirement pay is so cheap and in a way is tied to high demand for wages. We had to eliminate these benefits. We had to pay off millions of public school students and pension fund seniors on time and then use the money for something they had been losing by leaving a job too soon. And so, now retirees are paid more than they paid as a percentage of the market and they can’t get their pension. Even if the federal government was going to eliminate them by the end of the decade, they don’t have the money (Saunders, 2010). Instead, we have to allow them to go away and to save money for their future retirement.
Fiscal responsibility and economic stimulus: The decision between the US and European governments to start their programs to combat climate change was always going to involve significant cuts to discretionary spending, which had recently been cut in half because of the lack of strong economic policy responses and because of a lack of clarity about the underlying impact and cost of climate policy (Saunders, 2010). When governments spend more on investments and infrastructure, they also get more revenue. The US went after the European Union for financial assistance for the project of building solar panels along the East Coast of the US. The US is a big market but the country has little investment in anything other than solar as a form of electricity generation. The country had no economic infrastructure (Saunders, 2010). On the other hand, when this country applied for assistance in the last few years for solar energy projects, it was being targeted by European countries to boost their solar installations in China. The UK government and European private sector were not concerned about what it was in the European Union for developing solar. They were very concerned about the possible