Research Paper on:
IBM Services Case Study

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
as Dell, Hewlett Packard and Microsoft, the major competitors that offer similar services the company appear to have gained a competitive advantage in terms of the reputation of reliability and  innovation which has been associated with the products, but a change appears to be occurring with this reputation attached to the brand and the people rather than only the products  (Pawlowski and Gartenfeld, Thompson, 2005). If we want to benchmark the company against the competitors in 1999 this was the largest multi-segment company with revenues of $34.6 billion and  a market share of 8.2%. If we bring this up to date then IBM are stilt her major company but with increasing cross-overs they are now competing with Microsoft which  has a turnover of US $294 billion compared to IBMs total income of US $140.75 billion, behind these is Hewlett Packard with US $85.86 billion and Dell with US $73.48  billion and an industry average of only US $402.74 million (Yahoo Finance, 2005). The industry average currently is making a loss for the net income and only has an operating  margin of 6.98%, IBM has an operating margin of 14.14% (Yahoo, Finance, 2005). 2. Resources, capabilities and distinctive competencies The main resources are the knowledge of the employees and the  ability to meet customer needs with the different services as well as the back up that has created the reputation for innovation and reliability (Pawlowski and Gartenfeld). The structure of  the business is also one that means where customers come into contact with the employees the employees will have relevant in doeth information regarding that specific need such as integration,  e-commerce and customer programming and processing services are all areas of expertise. 3. Functional issues There is a very integrated company divided b the functions the services division is also