Organisation and Management on Ubisoft

UBISOFT REPORT

1. Introduction

1.1 The purpose of this report is to identify and show knowledge of Henri Fayols study on management. The study of management is about planning, organising, motivation and control. This report will discuss how technology can cause problems or assist managers in each of Henri Fayols study of management areas within Ubisoft.

1.2 Ubisoft was created in 1986 by five brothers Claude, Michel, Yves, Gйrard and Christian Guillermots. Ubisoft is a publisher and distributor of educational software and video games and is the second largest force in video game creation worldwide. Ubisoft has distribution subsidiaries present in 21 countries and ensure the distribution of products in more than 50.

2. Study of Management

2.1 Henri Fayol

2.1.1 Henri Fayol was a French mining engineer and was a key figure in the turn of the century school of management theory. His book General and Industrial Management which was first published in 1916, is the foundation of the classical organisation theory.

2.1.2 Henri Fayol devised his ideas from his own practical experience. He decided that all business organisations are concerned with more or less the same type of activity and he claimed that his guidelines were universally applicable. He had a set of fourteen principles and his study of management is about planning, organising, motivation and control.

2.1.3 Even though Henri Fayols guidelines are very easy to understand and are the backbone of many organisational structures, his guidelines have been criticised. It doesn't take into account the interaction of people and doesn't look at what conflicts can occur. His guidelines have been described as an "Organisations without people" (Bennis 1959)

2.2 Planning

Planning is the most important management activity and must precede all other management activities. If management planning is not accurately done than all other activities will fail. The process of planning involves deciding on what future objectives need to be done and how they can be achieved, in the most cost effective way. With planning, a decision has to be made on what to do in the future, given the occurrence of predicted or intended events. Planning can be difficult as it requires forecasts of the future and can be expensive as it takes up vast amounts of time.

2.2.1 New and increased profitable opportunities can occur when careful planning of future events are considered. As broadband is getting cheaper and more accessible, Ubisoft have planned well for the future and are going into online gaming sector. Ubisoft have launched Ubi.Com which is the benchmark portal for gamers to play MMO (massively multiplayer online) titles against each other. Ubisoft have a short term objective to sell over 10 million units with a turnover of between 60-65 million euros for 2003/2004. A long term objective to be among the top 5 independent game publishers worldwide by 2006 with a target of $1.5 billion in sales in 2005/2006.

2.2.2 Ubisoft Managers need to forecast for demand, capacity, deliveries and sales, making planning a long and complex process. The use of software technology for sales forecasting, planning and budgeting can play an important part in assisting Ubisoft managers. These software packages can support numerous statistical models, they can analyse data and produce projection models, and they can build up seasonal models and differenciate historical and projected data. Even though these software packages are highly accurate and easy to analyse they are only figures, graphs and pictures accumulated from past events and trends. They do not take into consideration change. The knowledge of managers is essential in planning and forecasting. The managers can take into account many conflicting factors like competitor activity where Ubisoft might have to produce a new product, advertising effects where some advertising campaigns could fail and market trends as products and consumer trends change all the time. Managers have the very difficult job of planning for change and often have to make a worse case scenario. The most influential causes of change will come from environmental, cultural, political and technological changes.

2.3 Organising

Organisations must organise a structure so that their objectives can be achieved. A company will have different departments and procedures with each one having a special function. All of these organised departments and procedures are linked so the company can run efficiently. For many organisation this can be very complex has they will have offices in international countries around the world.

2.3.1 With Ubisoft they have 29 production sites around the world. There production is organised into business units and act as service providers for the group's design and marketing teams. They have 24 marketing subsidiaries located in 21 countries. Ubisoft also have organised administrative and Internet teams.

2.3.2 Ubisoft has different production, marketing, administrative and Internet teams in different countries. As each department uses different IT systems, managers have an initial problem of whether the IT centres should be centralised or decentralised. Centralisation has its advantages as it offers a rapid system response, it can save money through avoidance of duplicated activities and offers better security. Its disadvantages include if the central unit fails then the entire system will collapse and they might lose touch with the goals of major IT departments. Decentralisation offers the development of end-user computing software and variation in the IT needs of certain departments. It can be a disadvantage as the role of the IT specialist could become unclear