Topic the good, the bad, the ugly

Untitled IB1701 – Group 1 FPT UNIVERSITY Topic “The good, the bad, the ugly” Group 1 Team members Pham Thi Hong Hanh – SS170006 Tran Minh Quan – SS170337 Le Tran Kim Tien – SS170202 Le Ngoc Truc Quyen[.]

IB1701 – Group 1

FPT UNIVERSITY

Topic:

“The good, the bad, the ugly”

Group 1 Team members: Pham Thi Hong Hanh – SS170006

Tran Minh Quan – SS170337

Le Tran Kim Tien – SS170202

Le Ngoc Truc Quyen – SS170071

Class: IB1701 Lecturer: Du Tieu Duong

3 Nov 2022

IB1701 – Group 1

TABLE OF CONTENT

Introduction: 3

Chapter 1: Overview 4

1.1: The company 4

1.2: Situation 5

Chapter 2: Briefly explain action 6

2.1: Why does it happen? 6

2.2: Why is it ugly? 7

Chapter 3: The Management Concepts 8

Chapter 4: The consequences 9

4.1: Their Company 9

4.2: Their customer 11

4.3: Employee 12

Reference lists: 13

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INTRODUCTION

Surely when relatives or close friends are together, there is always a curiosity about each other's location to know where that friend is, whether is there nearby to be able to help you or, for some other reason another needs help With research and market research, in 2011, Zenly was established According to those needs, the Zenly application was born in 2014 in Paris, the application has attracted more than 50 million downloads on the platform Android platform and now extended to the iOS platform By 2017, it was acquired by Snap

Zenly is an application now known as Snapchat, used to track location, and developed as a social network When users make friends on Zenly, they can know a lot of information about each other, including the location and battery capacity of the other's phone Messenger, Zalo, or Google Maps also have a location-sharing feature, but this is limited in sharing time As for Zenly, the location is updated in real-time, so the follower will know how long the other person has been in the same position, how fast they are moving, how far, and how long to travel to meet each other In addition, if two people are in the same location, the system also records that both have met and saves history According to the developer, the application helps relatives and friends know where they are, keep memories, and easily stay in touch when apart It can be like

a message but more powerful, it can chat, drop stickers with everyone, send pictures, videos, record audio to friends and relatives, and especially know the battery capacity of the phone and present of friends and relatives The status notification feature also helps you to see if your friend is sleeping or working, or playing games, so you do not disturb them unnecessarily In addition to viewing the time spent together, and checking the level of intimacy, Zenly is a convenient and convenient application

Zenly is also a very simple and easy-to-use application Customers only need to download apps and do some operations to access and connect with their loved ones Users will feel more secure every time their loved ones move away or go home late at night Not only that, the services and tools that apps are extremely complete, clear, and diverse helping customers have many experiences

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I Overview

1 The Company

Snap Inc (Snap) is a camera and social media company that develops and provides applications and products for communication The company's products include Cameras, Media, Spotlight, Stories, Snapshot Maps, Memories, and Glasses It also provides promotional products and services such as sponsored creative tools and instant advertising for businesses The company's camera app, Snapchat allows users to take photos and voiceovers and share them with family and friends Its service offering includes campaign management and delivery as well as advertising performance measurement The company also provides advertising services such as Snap Ads, AR Ads, and sponsored creative tools The company operates throughout Europe and North America Australia and Asia Snap is headquartered in Santa Monica, California, USA

Snap had a rough year with low revenue and almost no profit In early July, Snap issued a letter

to investors, announcing that there would be no business guidance for the time being and that the company would face numerous challenges Soon after, the tech company's stock lost at least

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25% over the past month The company then released a dismal sales growth report and warned investors that the economy was deteriorating at a faster rate than expected The company is restructuring to focus on three strategic priorities including community growth, revenue growth, and augmented reality

In parallel with the above, Snap plans to lay off 20% of its employees globally, which means 1,200 people will lose their jobs Snap adds that the cuts could save $500 million in annual costs However, some other businesses

of the company will be greatly affected

Among them is Zenly

2 Situation

In June 2017, Snap Inc developed a

navigation application called Snap map

but failed because users thought it was

a copy of Zenly And by November of the same year, Snap Inc acquired Zenly for a total cash value of $213.3 million for the purpose of learning geolocation technology on social networks But what the company did not expect is that the number of users on Zenly is increasing day by day, even reaching the top 10 of the most used applications globally in March But just a few months later, the company's CEO Martin decided to leave Insiders believe that the reason comes from Snap's too-strict management, especially after Zenly exploded during the Covid-19 pandemic Martin's departure was the beginning of a series of personnel change events later Zenly's key personnel are all limited in leadership, while the directors sent by Snap continuously expand their power and work directly at the headquarters

In a court filing, Snap stated that the reason for shutting down Zenly was that the app wasn't making a profit In fact, in May, CEO Spiegel said he was in favor of investing in development products for long-term results But given Snap's dismal business, it seems that the company's long-term investment strategy has become less viable In addition, Snap also used the excuse of shutting down Zenly because of the platform's slow growth After former CEO Martin stepped

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down, Snap cut costs to help grow paid users on Zenly The company does not support marketing from celebrities or buying ads on other apps… making user growth on Zenly very slow

II Briefly explain the action

1 Why does it happen?

As for the result of my own research, the situation that causes the Snap organization to remove Zenly from its own acquisition is quite systematic and deliberate For further explanation, as

we can see, Zenly has a very huge position in its own industry, and Snap's ambition is to develop its own application in that industry As a result, Snapmap has been developed before 2017

In order to achieve that ambition, Snap drew quite a long-term huge plan Starting with conquering Zenly’s Market in the most simple way, acquiring Zenly In the short run, Snap can easily get its market and raise its revenue, and spread out the users of many countries around the world, including the previous customers On the other hand, they kept developing their product with the same function This can lead

to some problems in managing two

applications with the same function while

using different systems In addition, although

they have acquired Zenly, it is still famous for

its name - “Zenly” and there are few

contributions to the reputation of Snap

During this period of time, Snap decided to shut down on Zenly and there are two main reasons for this In the first point, it is clear that Zenly's reputation is one of the reasons that take huge responsibility for threatening the launching of Snapmap due to the exact-the-same service that provides to consumers The other point can be easily understood that the members of the board

of directors did not want the marketplace of Zenly to be taken by other companies

During the closing announcement, Snap said that former employees will receive very generous severance pay But in reality, the compensation package Snap offers is only slightly higher than

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the minimum compensation requirement of labor law in France “Other tech companies in France are paying more,” said one former employee As for Snap, internal company documents show that if it sells Zenly, it fears the app will become a formidable competitor to Snapchat

Snap also used the excuse of shutting down Zenly because of the platform's slow growth But told "Rest of World News," after former CEO Martin stepped down, Snap cut costs to help grow the paid users on Zenly The company does not support marketing from celebrities or buying ads on other applications… making user growth on Zenly very slow

As a result, to protect the company's benefits and to continue with the company’s aim, the decision of shutting down Zenly has been completely calculated

2 Why is it ugly?

After Snap acquired Zenly, they made a shocking announcement when they cut Zenly's global staff by 20%, affecting more than 1,200 people working for Zenly The reason for these large-scale cuts lies in the economics that prompted countless other businesses to lay off employees this year, and Snap did the same The company says the cuts could save it $500 million in annual costs Although the storm of public opinion is pouring on the company, the reason why Snap made this decision is to cut costs to focus on the company's business

We can see many companies doing the same thing when shutting down applications on mobile platforms themselves, but for Zenly it is shocking news as Zenly is still a popular application today around the world thanks to its convenience Many Zenly users believe that it is the arbitrary and selfishness of the parent company Snap when they only focus on investing in their brainchild (Snap Map) instead of Zenly - the application purchased more than 5 years ago for 200 million dollars to make the move to delist a platform that people are trusting in

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However, Snap has made a move to speak up and argue that Zenly is not the main target and does not attract the company because growing social applications such as Tik Tok and BeReal are leading the new market Snap's core goal

So a lot of questions were raised, instead of trying to maintain Zenly's popularity in major markets like Asia or Europe? Or why do they strangely not sell that application to another company and still want to keep it with them? And Snap said that they canceled Zenly because they wanted to focus on investing in "Snap Map", a product of the company launched in 2017 And the reason they did so is that they do not want Snap Map to be completed by another similar application, and will not be in the strategic interest that Snap wants to capture -considered almost a unique market for Snap On top of that, Snap had invested a lot in Zenly before deciding to buy this app, which led to them not wanting third parties to touch their competition and relying on that investment that Zenly can be stronger than Snap Map Zenly already has a foothold with several users worldwide, making it easy for any company that buys Zenly to develop Zenly, which is like giving away your treasure to someone else So they do not sell Zenly and kill it

This has led to a significant impact on Zenly, causing it to grow very slowly despite being updated and updated a lot, but still escaped cancellation by the parent company Snap This makes the public disagree and very angry, even they think that too much ambition for Snap Map is impossible and there will be actions to boycott Snap's own application due to the move

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to stop investing and develop Zenly and put all the focus on Snap Map Make Snap's parent company bad in the eyes of consumers and make the company worse, become ugly

III The Management Concepts

- To continue its plan to develop the Snapmap, the planning process in their point of view may have already included the laid-off implementation To ensure their ambition and to restructure their human resources

- Two of the factors that affect the managing decision in the redundant are the financial and information terms On the other hand, human factors may also take part in the responsibility of this decision

 In terms of the financial factor, due to the external environment that causes loss in their revenue The best action in that situation is to cut down on the expenses, not to raise the sales in order to maintain the development of the company

 In the information field, the main reason for firing more than 1200 people, and there are few efforts to help them to return back to the company is due to the culture of the company Most of the 20% laid-off Zenly’s employees are assessed by Zenly’s training hub while 80% of the rest were trained by Snap’s hub It is a waste of money if they choose to pour money into training 20% without any guarantee about the return on their investment

 As the final part of the human factor, in my opinion, instead of keeping all the employees in an unexpected economy with lower wages instead of cutting down on the workforce that is not qualified with the company’s new scale The second option will be a better way to manage a company

IV The consequences

1 Their Company

Snap constantly pressed and decided to kill Zenly for fear of competition Some former employees said the most infuriating thing was that CEO Spiegel refused to sell Zenly but just wanted to kill the application This means that the technology company throws away millions

of users and products that have been researched and built for their decades The cause is simple That is because Snap does not want Zenly to be a competitor if it continues to grow in

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The management of the company is unfair to Zenly Although Zenly is a part of the company, they constantly conflict with Zenly's employees and put pressure on them during their work This strained relationship was made more

apparent when co-founder Antoine Martin left the

company in May Zenly was able to develop

applications with only a small number of

employees, but the CEO cut off all human

resources, fired employees, and killed the

application Insiders believe that the reason comes

from Snap's too-strict management, especially

after Zenly's outbreak during the Covid-19

pandemic caused the company's CEO Zenly

Martin to decide to quit

Martin's departure was the beginning of a series of events that changed personnel later Zenly's key personnel are all limited in leadership Meanwhile, the directors sent by Snap continuously expanded their power and worked directly at the headquarters Employees claim that working under Snap is stressful for them, and the parent company's managers do not even care about Zenly's product or business As a result, the company works under extremely messy and disorderly management, making work inefficient and unproductive

The biggest consequence is that Snap's stock price has declined nearly 80 percent this year Although the scale of the layoffs is significant, it shouldn't definitely come as a surprise: Snap's stock price has lost nearly 80 percent of its value since the beginning of this year, and the company said in May that it would slow hiring and look for ways to cut costs

Antoine Martin - Former CEO of Zenly