ACCT 5391
Case 5
Dr. Reed
10/15/2012

Case 5 1. Globalization, e-commerce, supply chain management (Palepu, 2008, P 5-51), a major technology upgrade, changes in pricing and a change in marketing strategy (Palepu, 2008, P 5-47) are the key successful factors to UPS. The labor stoppage is the risk of UPS.

2. UPS became a globalized company as “’best-of-breed’ industry leader” in package delivery industry. Now UPS is running business within 220 countries. UPS’s credit rating is AAA (Palepu, 2008, 5-51).
Globalization, e-commerce, and supply chain management are driving this performance.
The current performance is likely to be sustained, firstly, because its employees are extremely loyal. Secondly, their credit rating is AAA, which is much higher than its competitors. Thirdly, UPS’s financial position is much better than its competitors (Palepu, 2008, P 5-50).
Fourthly, it runs business with strong supply chain management. Last, UPS has the largest customer basis (Palepu, 2008, P 5-51).

3. FedEx is doing a good job. Its credit rating is BBB (Palepu, 2008, P 5-51). It built a global network that can “reach over 90% of the world population” (Palepu, 2008, P 5-46).
For assessing UPS, FedEx should be compared with UPS. On financial position, UPS is better than FedEx, which is the most important factor for determining (Palepu, 2008, P5-50). On the credit rating, FedEx is BBB, but UPS is AAA. On daily packages that are picked up, UPS has more than FedEx. However, on customer service, FedEx is superior.

4. First, the globalization size should be kept as No 1 and the business should be kept as faster and better.
Second, the good financial position should be held, especially compared with its competitors.
Thirdly, the credit rating AAA should be kept.