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Die August Faller GmbH & Co. KG ist ein international tätiges Verpackungsmittelunternehmen, welches Faltschachteln, Etiketten, Packungsbeilagen und Kombiprodukte für den Pharmaziemarkt produziert. Des Weiteren wird das Produktportfolio durch Verpackungsdienstleistungen, Pharma-Supply-Chain- und Entwicklungsdienstleistungen erweitert. Um ein weiteres Unternehmenswachstum zu sichern und das Bisherige auszubauen, möchte die August Faller GmbH & Co. KG durch weitere Internationalisierungsmaßnahmen neue Märkte erschließen. Als besonders attraktiv gilt hierbei der chinesische Markt. Diese Arbeit stellt eine Marktanalyse über den chinesischen pharmazeutischen Verpackungsmittelmarkt für die August Faller GmbH & Co. KG dar. Es wird sowohl der potentielle Kunden-, Lieferanten- und Wettbewerbsmarkt analysiert, als auch rechtliche Grundlagen sowie der Unternehmensgründungsprozess beleuchtet. Das Ergebnis stellt eine provinzielle Empfehlung für die August Faller GmbH & Co. KG sowie ein wirtschaftlicher Ausblick Chinas, dar.
As market dynamics move at an ever-faster pace, innovation and business partnerships become crucial for every organization. Companies form partnerships to combine and share resources in order to adapt to high technological change rates and short innovation life cycles. Build with the best is SAP’s slogan to master these challenges together with its partners in driving success for their customers, while helping its partners to innovate and monetize their apps, extensions and solutions. Putting partner innovation at the heart of SAP’s product strategy will create a thriving partner ecosystem, support joint innovation, and better address their customers' problems.
The aim of this thesis, under consideration of the theoretical requirements and the requirements by SAP, is to identify relevant key performance indicators for steering the Partner Innovation Business of SAP. This paper's compilation is primarily based on meetings with employees and managers across different departments like Finance & Controlling, Development, HR and Operations. According to the Balanced Scorecard, the identified indicators are categorized into four different perspectives: financial, partner, process and learning & growth. The findings suggest having a mix of KPIs from different business perspectives as well as leading, lagging, quantitative and qualitative indicators for steering the Partner Innovation Business of SAP. Concerning the early stage of the project, the identified key performance indicators can be taken as a guidepost to develop dynamic and interactive dashboards.
The awareness of fintech has been on the rise, as more banks participate in technological changes, new unconventional companies and start-ups begin to offer fintech solutions to the public, and an increase in fintech exhibitions and fairs can be observed all around the world. Below is a figure obtained from Google Trends, which illustrates the trend of Google searches related to fintech the past 5 years. As Google is known to be one of the most frequently used search engine around the world, the trend depicted will accurately reflect the awareness in fintech.
With reference to Figure 1, a value of 0 indicates that there is insufficient information regarding searches for fintech and a value of 100 indicates the maximum peak popularity for fintech. Therefore, Figure 1 represents the growing attention of fintech since 2015. The ‘note’ in Figure 1 represents an improvement made on Google Trends to collect search results.
Fintech is most known for its disruptive and unconventional impacts it brings to the traditional banking industry. (World Economic Forum, 2017) In light of fintech, the perception of banking today has changed drastically as compared to the past. As opposed to traditional banking that was once the monopoly of the industry, banks these days are following the trend of moving towards digitalisation, in order to remain competitive. (Williams-Grut, 2015) (World Economic Forum, 2018)
Attention for fintech amongst the public, investors and governments grew rapidly since 2014. (Arner) The graph below indicates a flourishing expectation in the fintech investments. (Statista, 2015) From the year 2008 to the year 2020, the value of fintech investments all around the world is projected to grow to a USD$46 billion industry. A market analysis that was done by Deloitte also suggests the same growing trend. (Deloitte, 2015)
Numbers in Figure 2 represent the total value of fintech investments across all segments of fintech. In general, fintech is divided into 4 segments: payments, financing, asset management and others. (Gregor Dorfleitner, 2017) However, there are variations from publications to publications. An industry report conducted by Statista found that digital payments segment in fintech was the largest in 2017, with a global transaction value (TAV) of US$2753.70 billion. (Statista, 2018) Following digital payments was alternative lending, followed by personal finance and lastly alternative financing.
As part of the thesis, an expert survey was conducted. Professionals who are currently working in the fintech industry, in addition, expressed most positivity and expectations in the payment sector of the fintech industry. Moreover, results gathered from another survey participated by members of the public also indicated the most interest in payment/personal banking. Approximately 50% of all responses collected indicated “Yes” for payment/personal banking services. Due to this uprising expectations of the payments sector by experts in fintech, this thesis aims to focus on the payment sector in fintech and to predict trends as accurately as possible. The integration of fintech initiatives into payments has brought about new areas of studies, in terms of business models, types of services, customers as well as the security of data. (Salmony, 2014) Therefore, this thesis aims to address these areas, as well as to offer suggestions to counter threats faced by payments in the fintech industry.
This thesis will be based heavily on business to customers (B2C) fintech products and services. It will consist of an extensive literature review and empirical research on reliable sources of information. Data used in this thesis will be from both primary and secondary sources. Primary data is collected through two surveys. The survey was divided into two target groups- first for the mass market and second only for senior professionals in the fintech industry. The purpose of the first public survey is to understand the preferences and needs of the mass market. The second expert survey was done to understand the strategy of two highly successful fintech company and their future expectations from a professional’s perspective. The experts are current professionals from Murex and Allianz Technology. As for secondary data, it is obtained from credible sources, such as government websites and industrial analysis reports. As certain names and keywords vary from sources to sources, they will be classified accordingly, as accurately and closely as possible. The information used in this thesis is further explained under “Methodology”. Primary data collected and secondary data gathered will be compared with each other to verify their accuracy.
The first chapter of this thesis gives an introduction to the fintech industry. The second chapter will analyse the digital payment environment. This includes the SWOT, PESTEL analyses and advantages and disadvantages. In the third chapter, it will discuss the digital payment industry today. The fourth chapter will be related to primary data findings through surveys and a comparison with secondary data gathered. Future predictions will be covered in chapter five. In chapter six, challenges and suggestions will be discussed to help fintech companies to overcome challenges and remain competitive. Finally, a conclusion will be in chapter seven.
The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to provide an overview on the development, acceptance and the current status quo in the application of the concept of Lean Administration in Germany. In this context, based on an extensive literary and quantitative research, the Japanese concept of Lean Management, its history, principles, related approaches and the according criticisms will be explained. Of particular importance is hereby the concept of Lean Administration, which is intended to transfer the Lean Principles from the direct business divisions to the indirect business divisions of a company. Through the execution of the literary research, it became apparent that the Lean Principles are already well established and acknowledged in many parts of the world. Particularly, manufacturing companies in Japan and Germany create their production systems in accordance to the Lean Approach. In addition to this, the principles of Lean Management are increasingly applied in indirect business areas, predominantly in Japan. But also in Germany, the awareness of the principle of Lean Administration is increasing, although the implementation of the Lean Principles in administrative areas in German companies still appears to be very restrained.
In order to investigate this circumstance in more detail, a quantitative study was subsequently conducted on the topic of "Lean Administration in Germany: Demographic and cultural factors impacting the success of the implementation of the concept“. Therefore, various factors that could have an influence on the acceptance towards the concept of Lean Administration were examined. Particular weight was given to the analysis of the cohesion between age and the level of professional experience of the respective subjects, and the openness towards the application of the concept of Lean Administration. Contrary to the initial hypothesis that both, a young age and a low level of professional experience would have a positive impact on the acceptance towards Lean Administration, the main finding of the statistical analysis is that there is no identifiable relationship between the three variables.
Nevertheless, even though no statistical evidence could be found for the initial hypothesis, the following significant findings could be identified. Accordingly, it seems that particularly subconscious factors have an influence on the acceptance of the concept of Lean Administration in Germany. Due to the habits of common approaches for processing administrative tasks and the fear of uncertainty about Lean Administration in practice, employees often feel insecure or not sufficiently encouraged to try out a new concept in administration. In this context, this bachelor thesis represents an overview and a guideline - especially for managers, department heads and employees in human resources - on the approaches, which can be used to promote Lean Administration in an adequate environment for increasing the resource efficiency in indirect areas in the long term. Consequently, through a well-structured approach and the usage of visual graphics in an appealing design, this thesis explains, what is required to be considered or could be investigated in the future in order to sustainably establish the concept of Lean Administration in German companies.
Um dem Wandel in der Automobilindustrie hin zu geänderten Fahrkonzepten standzuhalten, bedarf es massiver Investitionen in Forschung und Entwicklung, und einer Bündelung von Knowhow verschiedener Marktteilnehmer mit sich ergänzenden Kompetenzen. In diesem Zusammenhang wurde die ehemalige ZF Lenksysteme GmbH als Robert Bosch Automotive Steering GmbH in die Bosch-Gruppe übernommen.
Etablierte Marktteilnehmer müssen unter Umständen drastisch umstrukturiert werden, um Kostensenkungen zu erreichen, was Auslagerungen in Niedriglohnländer zur Folge hat. Längst wird dieses Einsparpotenzial auch in Bereichen hochqualifizierter Arbeit genutzt.
In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden die Internationalisierungsstrategien der kooperierenden Entwicklungsabteilungen der Geschäftsbereiche „Automotive Electronics“ und „Automotive Steering“ der Robert Bosch GmbH beschrieben und verglichen. Im Hinblick auf die im Jahr 2015 stattgefundene Übernahme steht eine Integration und Koordination der Strategien noch aus.
This bachelor thesis examines the emerging concept of re-commerce in the fashion industry with a particular focus on the factors influencing its adoption in the German market. In the context of changing economic dynamics and the increasing importance of sustainability, the thesis analyzes the basic principles of the circular economy in relation to the fashion industry and discusses the role of re-commerce initiatives in promoting resource conservation.
The study uses a comprehensive PEST analysis of the German market to uncover political, economic, sociocultural, and technological factors influencing the adoption of re- commerce. In addition, a detailed market analysis reveals the current state and growth prospects of re-commerce in Germany. This includes an examination of trends, target groups, demand for sustainable fashion and the acceptance of second-hand goods.
Using the case study of the fashion brand Levi's, which has successfully integrated a re- commerce platform, the study shows how established companies can achieve their sustainability goals and discover new business opportunities.
Finally, the paper concludes by summarizing the identified factors and the opportunities and challenges for companies looking to enter the German re-commerce market. The assessment of the potential benefits and risks associated with launching re-commerce initiatives in Germany provides a comprehensive basis for future decision-making. All in all, the German fashion resale market offers promising prospects. The current expansion and future potential of this sector are strongly influenced by consumer behavior and driven by extrinsic factors.
Thus, this work contributes to a deeper understanding of the relevance of re-commerce practices in the fashion industry and provides valuable insights for companies in the German fashion market aiming at sustainable business strategies.
Die OKR Zielsetzungsmethode wurde von Andy Grove als Weiterentwicklung der Methode „Management by Objectives“ von Peter Drucker entwickelt mit dem Ziel ein System zu schaffen, welches Outputs wertschätzt und hervorhebt. Mit der OKR Methode sollen klare, ambitionierte und transparente Ziele formuliert und erreicht werden.
In dieser Bachelorarbeit soll untersucht werden, ob die OKR Zielsetzungsmethode, wenn sie gezielt eingesetzt wird, als Garantie für Unternehmenserfolg gesehen werden kann. Dafür wird zunächst die OKR Methode genauer betrachtet sowie eine Analyse durchgeführt, um die Faktoren herausarbeiten, welche zu Unternehmenserfolg führen. In einer finalen kritischen Betrachtung sollen dann diese beiden Teile zusammengeführt werden um zu einer abschließenden Beantwortung der Forschungsfrage „Verhilft die OKR Methode einem Unternehmen zu größerem Erfolg?“ zu führen.
When scaling, startups face managerial challenges and a downfall in innovation. A growing team and the resulting increased communication and organizational complexity bring issues previously not existing. Accountability Systems can assist startups overcome the mentioned issues and maintain their essence of innovation, vital for their success.
This paper discusses the relevance and benefits of implementing formal managerial systems in a growing startup. By mapping out the interdependence of culture, innovation and growth, it is demonstrated how Accountability Systems can support the preservation of an innovative culture when scaling a startup.
In a time when innovation is often disregarded due to a focus on process efficiency, Accountability Systems can provide a valuable tool for managing transition. This thesis serves as a general evaluation of Accountability Systems and their benefits. It is important to note that this paper is not intended to serve as a directly adaptable guide for startups.
Das Angebot an Social Media Plattformen wächst stetig und ist im privaten Anwendungsbereich bereits weithin verbreitet. Aus diesem Grund ziehen auch Unternehmen die Kommunikation mit Social Media Plattformen in Betracht, um von deren Möglichkeiten, in einem zunehmend digitalisierten Arbeitsumfeld, zu profitieren. Es gibt bereits einige Studien darüber, welche Vor- und Nachteile Social Media in Bereichen wie dem Marketing oder der externen Kommunikation mit sich bringt. Weniger erforscht ist dagegen noch, welchen Nutzen Social Media Anwendungen in der internen Kommunikation haben können. Es gibt mittlerweile mehrere, eigens für Unternehmen erstellte oder auf deren Bedürfnisse angepasste Anwendungen. Die vorliegende Arbeit befasst sich daher mit der Zielsetzung, die interne Kommunikation im Produktionsumfeld der Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG zu untersuchen. In diesem Zusammenhang werden die Potenziale für eine effizientere Kommunikation, der bereits im Unternehmen bestehenden und neuer Social Media Plattformen, herausgearbeitet. Aus den gewonnenen Ergebnissen konnten Empfehlungen bezüglich der Nutzung von Social Media Plattformen, der Hardwareausstattung der Mitarbeiter und der Unternehmenskultur und-organisation abgeleitet werden.
Fast and flexible – today's two most desired traits within the business environment. The quickly rising technological advancement makes it difficult for organizations to keep up with their productivity. Owing to the digitalization, organizations have to rethink their structures and processes to be able to adjust to the constantly changing environment and ultimately continue to stay a successful force. A “one-size-fits-all” solution does not exist, which makes the initiatives time-consuming and difficult.
Since digitalization comes with major challenges that have to be tackled to decrease the gap in potential business productivity, the first objective of this paper is to identify relevant action points for organizations, together with the examination of the best practice of agility and its structural and cultural traits.
Further, this work aims to comprehend the structural and cultural traits of the case of [company name]. This is approached by a mixed method empirical analysis. First, by qualitative in-depth interviews with the first and second level managers based on the preceding theoretical framework of Spiral Dynamics and a concept of organizational culture analysis. Second, by a quantitative online survey with the remaining workforce based on the model of Competing Values Framework, assessing not only the current but also the by the workforce desired structural and cultural traits.
The model of Spiral Dynamics defines differing predominant core value systems of mankind, whereas challenges that cannot be accomplished with current behaviors initiate the evolution to another core value system – just like digitalization does with the case of [company name]. The Competing Values Framework is a scientifically justified concept to analyze organizational culture.
The last objective of this paper is to develop a set of tailored recommendations towards agile work approaches for the case of [company name] based on the preceding analysis and the theoretical framework of a scientifically justified change management process.
The conducted research reveals that the organization’s culture mainly shows traits of a traditional organization, with top-down decision-making and task assignments, selective transparency, silo-communication and a lack of interdisciplinary collaboration, which results in the predominant core value system of Success. Additionally, the analysis of the desired traits reveals a congruency with agile organizational traits, or in other words, the predominant value system of Synergy. With respect to the results, the study makes seven recommendations, incorporating the theory of a successful change initiative. Together with specified action examples, the way towards the desired predominant value system is paved.