Reshaping strategies in times of crises : the case of Gorillas Technologies GmbH

The Covid 19 pandemic shook the world in 2020. As a result, there were many innovations, including a revolution in the retail sector. Online ordering was the new normal, and new industries were enabled by changing consumer behaviour. One example is the quick commerce industry. In 2022, however, the Ukraine war and record inflation resulted in significant market changes. Thus also a strong influence on the new quick commerce industry. The case study covers Gorillas Technologies GmbH, which brought the quick commerce industry to Europe. It looks closely at Gorillas' response to Covid-19 and how Gorillas is responding to the Ukraine war and inflation. Different strategic frameworks were used for the analysis. Moreover, a particular focus was placed on the competitive environment of Gorillas. Six semi-structured interviews were conducted for this qualitative research project to analyze Gorilla's strategies and strategy changes in detail. The case study is suitable for a variety of people interested in the food industry, e-commerce or quick commerce. The analysis revealed that Covid-19 catalyzed the rapid growth of Gorillas and the industry as consumer behaviour changed. Furthermore, it was recognized that the Ukraine war and inflation caused a complete strategic realignment of Gorillas, who is now striving for profitability instead of growth.A pandemia de Covid 19 abalou o mundo em 2020. Como resultado, houve muitas inovações, incluindo uma revolução no sector retalhista. A encomenda online foi o novo normal, e novas indústrias foram viabilizadas pela mudança do comportamento dos consumidores. Um exemplo é a indústria do comércio rápido. Em 2022, contudo, a guerra da Ucrânia e a inflação recorde resultaram em mudanças significativas no mercado. Assim, também uma forte influência sobre a nova indústria do comércio rápido. O estudo de caso abrange a Gorillas Technologies GmbH, que trouxe a indústria do comércio rápido para a Europa. Analisa atentamente a resposta de Gorillas ao Covid-19 e como Gorillas está a responder à guerra e à inflação na Ucrânia. Foram utilizados diferentes quadros estratégicos para a análise. Além disso, foi dada especial atenção ao ambiente competitivo de Gorillas. Foram realizadas seis entrevistas semi-estruturadas para este projecto de investigação qualitativa para analisar em pormenor as estratégias e mudanças de estratégia de Gorilla. O estudo de caso é adequado para uma variedade de pessoas interessadas na indústria alimentar, comércio electrónico ou comércio rápido. A análise revelou que o Covid-19 catalisou o rápido crescimento de Gorilas e da indústria à medida que o comportamento dos consumidores mudava. Além disso, foi reconhecido que a guerra e a inflação da Ucrânia causaram um realinhamento estratégico completo dos gorilas, que agora se esforçam por obter rentabilidade em vez de crescimento

AUGURES : profit-aware web infrastructure management

Over the last decade, advances in technology together with the increasing use of the Internet for everyday tasks, are causing profound changes in end-users, as well as in businesses and technology providers. The widespread adoption of high-speed and ubiquitous Internet access, is also changing the way users interact with Web applications and their expectations in terms of Quality-of-Service (QoS) and User eXperience (UX). Recently, Cloud computing has been rapidly adopted to host and manage Web applications, due to its inherent cost effectiveness and on-demand scaling of infrastructures. However, system administrators still need to make manual decisions about the parameters that affect the business results of their applications ie., setting QoS targets and defining metrics for scaling the number of servers during the day. Therefore, understanding the workload and user behavior ¿the demand, poses new challenges for capacity planning and scalability ¿the supply, and ultimately for the success of a Web site. This thesis contributes to the current state-of-art of Web infrastructure management by providing: i) a methodology for predicting Web session revenue; ii) a methodology to determine high response time effect on sales; and iii) a policy for profit-aware resource management, that relates server capacity, to QoS, and sales. The approach leverages Machine Learning (ML) techniques on custom, real-life datasets from an Ecommerce retailer featuring popular Web applications. Where the experimentation shows how user behavior and server performance models can be built from offline information, to determine how demand and supply relations work as resources are consumed. Producing in this way, economical metrics that are consumed by profit-aware policies, that allow the self-configuration of cloud infrastructures to an optimal number of servers under a variety of conditions. While at the same time, the thesis, provides several insights applicable for improving Autonomic infrastructure management and the profitability of Ecommerce applications.Durante la última década, avances en tecnología junto al incremento de uso de Internet, están causando cambios en los usuarios finales, así como también a las empresas y proveedores de tecnología. La adopción masiva del acceso ubicuo a Internet de alta velocidad, crea cambios en la forma de interacción con las aplicaciones Web y en las expectativas de los usuarios en relación de calidad de servicio (QoS) y experiencia de usuario (UX) ofrecidas. Recientemente, el modelo de computación Cloud ha sido adoptado rápidamente para albergar y gestionar aplicaciones Web, debido a su inherente efectividad en costos y servidores bajo demanda. Sin embargo, los administradores de sistema aún tienen que tomar decisiones manuales con respecto a los parámetros de ejecución que afectan a los resultados de negocio p.ej. definir objetivos de QoS y métricas para escalar en número de servidores. Por estos motivos, entender la carga y el comportamiento de usuario (la demanda), pone nuevos desafíos a la planificación de capacidad y escalabilidad (el suministro), y finalmente el éxito de un sitio Web.Esta tesis contribuye al estado del arte actual en gestión de infraestructuras Web presentado: i) una metodología para predecir los beneficios de una sesión Web; ii) una metodología para determinar el efecto de tiempos de respuesta altos en las ventas; y iii) una política para la gestión de recursos basada en beneficios, al relacionar la capacidad de los servidores, QoS, y ventas. La propuesta se basa en aplicar técnicas Machine Learning (ML) a fuentes de datos de producción de un proveedor de Ecommerce, que ofrece aplicaciones Web populares. Donde los experimentos realizados muestran cómo modelos de comportamiento de usuario y de rendimiento de servidor pueden obtenerse de datos históricos; con el fin de determinar la relación entre la demanda y el suministro, según se utilizan los recursos. Produciendo así, métricas económicas que son luego aplicadas en políticas basadas en beneficios, para permitir la auto-configuración de infraestructuras Cloud a un número adecuado de servidores. Mientras que al mismo tiempo, la tesis provee información relevante para mejorar la gestión de infraestructuras Web de forma autónoma y aumentar los beneficios en aplicaciones de Ecommerce

Business process implications of e-commerce in construction organisations

The need for construction to change its traditional working practices has been repeatedly expressed in government, industry, and academic publications. The Internet has been a major catalyst for change in most industry sectors, including the construction sector. The implementation of Internet-based technologies, such as ecommerce for achieving business targets, bring about changes in an organisation, its current practices, systems, processes and workflows. It is therefore important to evaluate the business process implications of adopting e-commerce in construction organisations. This was the focus of this study. The early stages of the research established the possible benefits, barriers, and drivers for the adoption of e-commerce technologies within construction. This was done by conducting an industry-wide survey that explored attitudes, current usage, barriers and enablers of IT and e-commerce within the UK construction sector. Survey results indicated that the exact benefits of using e-commerce within the construction industry were not known and more needed to be done to establish the effects of incorporating e-commerce applications into construction business processes and to demonstrate the opportunities of e-commerce for construction. To address this need a typical business process model that used the principles of business process re-engineering and demonstrated opportunities for e-commerce, was developed. Using this model it was possible to illustrate how, with the use of ecommerce applications, different members of the construction supply chain could derive business benefits and overcome traditional process inefficiencies. In order to effectively adopt e-commerce technologies in construction, companies may have to reengineer their current working methods, which could lead to a step change in current work practices. To facilitate such a step change it was essential to study and document the impact of specific e-commerce applications on their current end-user business processes. Case studies were conducted for this purpose. The case study findings showed that the end-user companies had accrued several business benefits from using e-commerce tools. Issues related to management buy-in and organisational culture were the main barriers to the wider use of e-commerce within the construction industry. The case studies and earlier findings indicated that e-commerce is ‘here to stay’ and it will not be long before it becomes an industry norm. Taking this into account, construction companies who are currently using, and those who have yet to use, e-commerce tools need to take measures to successfully adopt and benefit from these tools. It is important for companies that seek to adopt ecommerce to assess their ‘e-readiness’ for adopting e-commerce tools to ensure a productive and beneficial implementation of these tools. To address this need an ereadiness model for construction organisations and a prototype application, VERDICT, that assess e-readiness were developed and implemented. The model is based on the premise that for any company to be e-ready, its management, people, process and technology have to be e-ready in order to derive maximum business benefits. The research findings indicate that the use of e-commerce is still in its infancy within the construction industry. The current use of e-commerce has resulted in process automation, however, there is no evidence of process re-engineering. Such practices, although beneficial in the short-term, can have long-term implications in that the end-users are not necessarily making full use of the technology and hence not deriving full benefits from it. The model and e-readiness assessment prototype developed as part of this study will enable construction organisations to successfully adopt e-commerce and exploit its potential