{"id":74888,"date":"2020-05-06T22:29:29","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T22:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/essays.homeworkacetutors.com\/operations-management-at-uber\/"},"modified":"2020-05-06T22:29:29","modified_gmt":"2020-05-06T22:29:29","slug":"operations-management-at-uber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/operations-management-at-uber\/","title":{"rendered":"Operations Management at Uber"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Introduction:<\/h2>\n

Uber is a privately held company that was founded back in the year 2009, that is exactly 8 years before from present time and the company is headquartered in San Francisco which is in California located in US (Uber.com, 2018). There are more than 633 cities around the world that are served by the company and the main services that it provides to the customers are transportation services as well as the food delivery services. There are more than 12000 employees that work<\/a> under the company and as of 2016 last quarter; there total revenue amounted to US$ 6.5 billion. There are different prices at which the customers of the company can take a ride in Uber and there are four kind of pricing strategies that have been adopted by Uber which goes in the name of pool rides, that is the lowest pricing when an individual hires a cab and the person who hires this ride has to share his cab with another 2-3 persons. The second one is premium rides which are the highest in the category while the economy pricing is not much high and also not as low as pool rides (Ahluwalia, <\/strong>2017). There is another pricing strategy that is followed by Uber and that is accessibility ride which is for the disabled people and they can communicate with the driver using sign languages. <\/p>\n

There are a variety of departments at Uber which helps the
\norganization to reach its objective and fulfill the expectations of the
\ncustomers. The customers always looks forward to get the lowest price in the
\nmarket for the rides they take and with the help of following a variety of
\napproaches, the operations department of the organization helps in achievement
\nof the objective and tries to provide the lowest price to the customers. The
\noperations department always strives to reduce the price of rides with the help
\nof reducing the cost of the organization and me being an employee of the
\noperations department, it is also my duty to contribute towards making the
\norganization operate in a price effective way. Uber is one of the fastest
\ngrowing companies in the world and it is the aim of the operations department
\nof Uber to contribute towards the rapid growth of the organization with the
\nhelp of the operational activities (Dudley et al., 2017). The logistics and the
\noperations roles of Uber are interconnected and the most significant task that
\nis performed by the operations department is ensuring the supply in the market
\nfor their service is constant so that the satisfaction of the customers can be
\ngained and the most important function that is to be performed by the
\noperations department is analytics which will help them to use the data about
\nthe drivers in order to understand the driver behaviors with the passengers and
\ndesign strategy how the communication between the driver and the passengers can
\nbe improved. Moreover, the operations department also designs the incentive
\nplans for the drivers and also develop as well as optimizes the process. There
\nare several other functions that the operations managers of the company perform
\nwhich will unfold itself with the progress of the assignment.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Main Body:<\/h2>\n

Transportation is one of the oldest industries in the world
\nand there are many changes that took place in this industry with the coming up
\nof the technology (Centobelli et al., 2017). Due to the globalization of the
\nbusinesses all around the world, the technology of the companies have developed
\nand that have increased the demand among the customers. The transportation
\nindustry has viewed many ups and downs and Uber is nothing but just a company
\nborn out of technological development of the globalization. <\/p>\n

Uber\u2019s business model:<\/h2>\n

The business model of Uber is very simple and the passengers
\ncan simply request to hire a cab based of their choice by selecting the
\nlocation of the place they are in and additionally, they can also select the
\ntype of cab that they are looking forward to hire (Cannon et al., 2014). There
\nis also sharing of cab facility that has been kept available by Uber and this
\nhelps the customers to reduce the price of the booking as other passengers who
\nwill be going on in the same route also travels with the same cab. The drivers
\nthose who do not have booking are matched with the help of the system and then
\nthe drivers are then sent request to pick up the passengers with the help of
\nthe system but before that it is mandatory for the drivers also to accept the
\nrequest. There is also satisfaction provided on the part of the customers with
\nthe help showing the customers the real time position of the drivers who are
\ncoming to pick them up. Moreover, the drivers also receive direction with the
\nhelp of Google navigation the real location of the customers who are waiting
\nfor to get picked up. When the driver reaches the place of booking of the
\ncustomers, the customers are sent notifications with the help of app and also
\nmessages that the diver has reached the location and thus the customer hires
\nthe cab and after the journey is completed the fare of the ride is calculated
\nwith the help of the app based on real time travel and the user is charged to
\npay money either through credit card, debit card or through cash in some
\ncountries (Bashir et al., 2016). Moreover, the customers are also able to
\nreview about the drivers whether their ride was great or they have suffered
\ninappropriate behaviors from the drivers. This helps the operations team of the
\ndrivers to take actions against the drivers and do analytics of the driver
\nbehavior. <\/p>\n

The demand of the customers:<\/h2>\n

The main demand of the customers of the company is providing
\nthem with the lowest price for the purpose of travelling from one place to
\nother. Due to the increasing of rate of inflation in many countries across the
\nworld and the value of many currencies going down with the developing countries
\nbeing more developed, the demand of the customers is to lower the fare for the
\nrides they take with the company and thus in order to meet the customer demand,
\nUber focuses upon lowering the price of the rides (Rogers, 2015). Additionally,
\nthere are countries like India, Pakistan, and Nigeria, where the rate of
\nunemployment is more and thus in order to serve those customers, lowering the
\nprice of the cab fare is mandatory as the customers\u2019 demands more discount on
\ntheir rides. There are also a variety of types of customers who always look for
\ndiscount on their rides and some customers who prefers to travel alone. There
\nare also some customers who look forward to travel in a luxurious manner and
\nalso use Wi-Fi facility during the journey. Thus there are four ways of
\ntravelling that has been introduced by Uber for the purpose of travel. There is
\nUber Pool service introduced for the people who like to travel in cab at the
\nlowest fare and people travelling in the same route are made to share their
\nrides with those passengers (Geradin, 2015). There is also economic pricing
\nthat has been introduced by the company which allows the travelers to travel
\nalone or with their family but there are no benefits of Wi-Fi or spacious cars
\noffered to the customers like in case of premium bookings. <\/p>\n

Thus in order to meet the demand of the lowest fares of the
\ncustomers, the operations team of Uber focuses upon lowering the cost of the
\noperations of the organization with the help of lowering the driver fares per
\ntrip. At the time of the launch when there were very less drivers who adopted
\nthe Uber model and for satisfying the customer demand, more of Uber drivers or
\nthe owner of the cars were paid with higher fares, but nowadays, the scenario
\nhas changed and Uber has become a huge company with huge number of cars working
\nunder them and thus in order to provide more discounts to the customers and
\ncharge them less, they have made a price cut upon the salary provided to the
\ndrivers or the money provided per trip to the owners of the cars (Bernhardt,
\n2016). <\/p>\n

Operations Objectives:<\/h2>\n

Thus the demand of the customers of Uber is met with the
\nhelp of a few objectives of operations as mentioned below:<\/p>\n

Firstly, the quality of the design and the quality of the
\nservices is focused upon by Uber and improved by them so that they are able to
\nensure more customers attracted towards the company.<\/p>\n

Secondly, they also focus upon improvement of the
\nflexibility of their operations which can help to improve the operations of the
\ncompany by being flexible with the changing demand in the market (Wirtz et al.,
\n2016).<\/p>\n

Thirdly, customization of the services in some countries according
\nto the demands of the customers also helps them to satisfy the demands of the customers
\nin the market.<\/p>\n

Fourthly, Uber also focuses upon the customers who are
\ndependable upon them and increases the dependability of the services with the
\nhelp of providing them with options to rate their trip and thus if the reviews
\nare low and comments are negative, they focuses upon increasing those areas and
\nimprove the dependability of the customers. <\/p>\n

Lastly, reduction of the cost or expenditure of the company can
\nalso help Uber to satisfy the demands of the customers by providing them with
\nlower prices and also provide them with discounts. <\/p>\n

Meeting the Operations Objectives:<\/h2>\n

There are a few ways that can be implemented which helps in
\nmeeting the objectives of the operations of the company. Some ways of meeting
\nthe operations objectives of the company are mentioned below:<\/p>\n

Meeting quality of design:<\/h4>\n

There are some customers who demand luxurious services form
\nthe part of the company as well and in order to meet the demand of those
\ncustomers, there are high models of cars used for the services (Caranza et al.,
\n2016). For instance, Uber uses BMW, Audi, and Mercedes-Benz for the luxurious
\nsegment customers. The drivers that are also offered to the customers are
\nprivate drivers and the inputs that Uber makes upon the services is of very
\nhigh quality. <\/p>\n

Meeting quality of services:<\/h4>\n

The quality of the service that is provided by Uber is
\nanother objective of the operations team and the design of Uber promises to
\nprovide reliable services to the customers. The demand of the customers is to
\nget reliable services from the part of the organization and in order to
\nincrease the service reliability, Uber helps to view the customers with the
\nreal time location of the drivers and also texts the number of the drivers to
\nthe customer mobile numbers so that the customers can call the drivers and know
\nthe exact location of the drivers and communicate with the drivers regarding
\nthe trip (Wallsten, 2015). <\/p>\n

Improving flexibility of operations:<\/h4>\n

As the number of population is continuously increasing in
\nthe world, the numbers of customers that are demanding the services of Uber are
\nalso increasing in many countries where the company serves. Thus, there is
\nrequirement for Uber to become flexible in the market and cater their service
\nmore in the countries of their operations. As Uber hires professional and
\nlicensed drivers, they are able to meet the customers\u2019 demands with the help of
\nthat and also with the help of improvement made in the level of technology,
\nUber is able to focus more upon the changes that are taking place in the
\nmarketplace and technological developments are also helping them to increase
\ntheir flexibility as well as their capacity in the marketplace. <\/p>\n

Improving service customization:<\/h4>\n

There are also customers who look forward to customize their services and Uber being a technologically developed company, focuses upon the customization of the services. In some countries there are customization of the services under the brand names<\/a> like Uber Taxi, UberX and Uber black which focuses more upon meeting the demands of the customers (Miller et al., 2017).<\/p>\n

Improvement of customer dependability as well as accountability:<\/h4>\n

The customers also want the dependability of the services
\nthat is provided by Uber and for that reason, the customers are told to rate
\nthe services of the drivers and thus the dependability of the services is
\nimproved. <\/p>\n

Accountability is another aspect of the service that is
\nprovided by Uber and in order to improve the experience of the drivers and
\npassengers, the real time feedback has been implemented and this helps the
\ncompany to respond quickly if there are any problems or issues that are being
\nfaced by the passengers as well as the customers (Moon, 2015).<\/p>\n

Cost or expenditure reduction by Uber:<\/h4>\n

The organization also focuses upon reduction of the cost
\nwith the help of implementation of minimum regulation to become a driver with
\nUber. As the regulations that is implemented by the company is of minimum
\namount, any person who is above the age of 21 years can become a driver and
\nalso any person having the driving license can driver for the company. Also
\nhaving a car with four doors is enough to drive with Uber and the person should
\nhave a minimum amount of personal insurance to become a driver. But it is
\nmandatory that the person should not have any criminal background and the
\nrecord of accidents should be clear. Thus, the minimizations of the cost of
\nUber are supported by the company with the help of employing the drivers with
\nminimum requirements (Gabel, 2016). <\/p>\n

Hindrances in achievement of operations objectives:<\/h2>\n

There can be hindrances that can be faced by Uber in meeting
\nthe above mentioned objectives due to some of the external and internal factors
\nof the organization (Schneider, 2015). The external and the internal
\nenvironment of Uber are full of threats and these threats can hinder Uber to
\nmeet the objectives of the company. Some threats that can cause hindrances are
\nmentioned below:<\/p>\n

Firstly, the prices in some of the economies where Uber
\noperates are rising and this can cause the petrol prices to rise and thus the
\ndrivers and the car owners who are provided with low return per trip with Uber
\nwill not be able to work with the company which can cause Uber falling short to
\nmeet the demands of the customers.<\/p>\n

Secondly, there are complaints faced by Uber that drivers force
\nup the surge pricing of the rides and this causes the customers to pay more which
\nis a negative side of the business and if this continues, Uber will soon lose
\ntheir markets. <\/p>\n

Thirdly, there are rivals of Uber in some countries and
\nthose organizations sometimes in order to increase competition with Uber offer
\nmuch lower prices to the customers in the form of promotion, which shifts the demand
\nof the customers form Uber towards other companies which provides similar
\nservice in much lower price (Ng, 2016). <\/p>\n

Fourthly, there are sometimes very rude behavior complaints
\nthat are faced by Uber against the drivers of a few trips. The customer
\nlaunches complaints and posts those in social networking sites which are viewed
\nby other followers of their page and thus they lose the market as the customers
\ndo not get enough confidence to ride again with them.<\/p>\n

Lastly, model of Uber is easy for other rivals to copy and
\nthus in the countries where Uber is not present and is thinking of entering the
\nmarket, the model of the company can be copied by other organization which can
\nmake the company suffer in their expansion plans. <\/p>\n

Conclusion and Recommendations:<\/h2>\n

Thus, from the discussion above, it can be stated that
\nthough the operations department of Uber tries to provide better services to
\nthe customers with the help of improvement of the company operations, there are
\nstill some threats that the company is required to fight against so that they
\nare able to satisfy the customers of the organization (Colangelo et al., 2017).
\nThe customer satisfaction is the main motive of any kind of business that
\nexists in the real world and Uber is also not an exception. Thus in order to
\nsatisfy the customers of the organization, they are required to overcome the
\norganization threats with the help of improving their efficiency of the
\nservices that they provide to the customers. Sometimes when the customers
\nprovide negative reviews about the drivers, Uber is reluctant about it and this
\ncauses the drivers to do the same mistake over again. So, Uber should take
\nstrict actions against the drivers who have been provided with negative reviews
\nand should leave them with warning for the first and time and if the driver
\nagain receives same kind of review for same mistake, Uber should not be
\nhesitant to fire that driver. Additionally, Uber should also work against the
\ndrivers who are forcing up surge pricing and should work accordingly to reduce
\nthis. The Uber drivers keep their apps off for a long period of time; making
\nthe customer and the company believe that they are not available for duty and
\nthus they force up the surge pricing (The Telegraph, 2018). So, company should
\nimplement tracking devices in the cars and make sure where the drivers are
\nlocated so that they can reduce surge pricing that is forced up by the Uber
\ndrivers. Moreover, there are various competitors of Uber in some of the
\ncountries and those competitors eats up the market share of the company by
\nfollowing the model that have been implemented by Uber as it is very easy to
\ncopy. So, in order to reduce this, Uber should follow a more complex model so
\nthat they are able to reduce their model being copied by other rivals and eat
\nup their market share in return. Also, as there are some economies where the
\nfuel prices are rising high and it is causing the company to increase the pay
\nof the drivers and per trip, Uber can make it mandatory for their clients to
\ndrive electric operated cars and this will help them to reduce the cost of the
\nbusiness as well as at the same time meet the demands of customer by providing
\nthem with low fares (Nistal et al., 2016). Thus, implementation of the above
\nmentioned strategies can help Uber to be successful in the marketplace and also
\nhelp them to meet the demand of the customers. <\/p>\n

References:<\/h2>\n
    \n
  • Ahluwalia, R., 2017. CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF UBER BUSINESS MODEL UNDER \u201cGIG ECONOMY\u201d. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT AND SOCIAL SCIENCES (IJMSS), 6(2), pp.62-65.<\/li>\n
  • Bashir, M., Yousaf, A. and Verma, R., 2016. Disruptive business model innovation: How a tech firm is changing the traditional taxi service industry. Indian Journal of Marketing, 46(4), pp.49-59.<\/li>\n
  • Bernhardt, A., 2016. It\u2019s Not All About Uber. LERA For Libraries, 20(1-2).<\/li>\n
  • Cannon, S. and Summers, L.H., 2014. How Uber and the sharing economy can win over regulators. Harvard business review, 13(10), pp.24-28.<\/li>\n
  • Caranza, V., Chow, K., Pham, H., Roswell, E. and Sun, P., 2016. Life Cycle Analysis: Uber vs Car Ownership. Environment, 159, pp.1-19.<\/li>\n
  • Centobelli, P., Cerchione, R. and Esposito, E., 2017. Environmental sustainability in the service industry of transportation and logistics service providers: Systematic literature review and research directions. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 53, pp.454-470.<\/li>\n
  • Colangelo, M. and Maggiolino, M., 2017. Uber: A New Challenge for Regulation and Competition Law?.<\/li>\n
  • Dudley, G., Banister, D. and Schwanen, T., 2017. The Rise of Uber and Regulating the Disruptive Innovator. The Political Quarterly.<\/li>\n
  • Gabel, D., 2016. Uber and the Persistence of Market Power. Journal of Economic Issues, 50(2), pp.527-534.<\/li>\n
  • Geradin, D., 2015. Should Uber be allowed to compete in Europe? And if so how?.<\/li>\n
  • Miller, J. and How, J.P., 2017, May. Predictive positioning and quality of service ridesharing for campus mobility on demand systems. In Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2017 IEEE International Conference on (pp. 1402-1408). IEEE.<\/li>\n
  • Moon, Y., 2015. Uber: Changing the way the world moves. Harvard Business School, Case, (9-316), p.101.<\/li>\n
  • Ng, S., 2016. Uber Technologies Inc. as a Disruptive Innovation.<\/li>\n
  • Nistal, P.D. and Regidor, J.R.F., 2016, August. Comparative study of Uber and regular taxi service characteristics. In Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference of the Transportation Science Society of the Philippines, Quezon City, Philippines, August (Vol. 8).<\/li>\n
  • Rogers, B., 2015. The social costs of Uber. U. Chi. L. Rev. Dialogue, 82, p.85.<\/li>\n
  • Schneider, A., 2015. Uber Takes the Passing Lane: Disruptive Competition and Taxi-Livery Service Regulations. Elements, 11(2).<\/li>\n
  • The Telegraph. (2018). Telegraph. [online] Available at: http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk [Accessed 9 Jan. 2018].<\/li>\n
  • Uber.com. (2018). Sign Up to Drive or Tap and Ride. [online] Available at: http:\/\/www.uber.com [Accessed 9 Jan. 2018].<\/li>\n
  • Wallsten, S., 2015. The competitive effects of the sharing economy: how is Uber changing taxis?. Technology Policy Institute, 22.<\/li>\n
  • Wirtz, J. and Tang, C., 2016. Uber: Competing as market leader in the us versus being a distant second in china. In SERVICES MARKETING: People Technology Strategy (pp. 626-632).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Introduction: Uber is a privately held company that was founded back in the year 2009, that is exactly 8 years before from present time and the company is headquartered in San Francisco which is in California located in US (Uber.com, 2018). There are more than 633 cities around the world that are served by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5790],"tags":[9845,5294,9887,9867,9888,9889,9890,9886,9885],"class_list":["post-74888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-strategy","tag-1-dissertation-writing-service-in-uk","tag-bishops-writing-bureau","tag-cn","tag-create-a-paper-using-the-following-criteria","tag-homework-help-assignment-answers","tag-in-1050-word-essay","tag-in-a-4-to-6-page-essay","tag-in-a-page-paper-assignment","tag-write-an-essay-in-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}