Project Portfolio and Program Management

This research discusses project portfolio and program management for Alibaba Group. It explores the company's portfolios, strategic marketing, and the challenges and opportunities they face. Learn about the importance of technology and customer support services.

Running head: PROJECT PORTFOLIO AND PROGRAM MANAGEMENT 1
Project portfolio and program management
Name
Affiliation

PROJECT PORTFOLIO AND PROGRAM MANAGEMENT 2
Executive summary
In this piece of research, we are going to discuss business portfolio and program management for
Alibaba group. Alibaba is an online platform which is used by investors to sell their good to the
consumer at affordable price. The platform provides room for efficient and effective good
provision services. In the long run there are advantages as well as disadvantages associated with
online platform, this piece of research will as well discuss this. To be efficient in the market,
collaboration with other sectors must be effectively used. Some of those sectors will be discussed
into detail. The deep we discuss about Alibaba group the better for the research.

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Project portfolio and program management
Alibaba Group
Introduction
In 1999 Houngzouh English teacher, Jack Ma and a group of other seventeen friends started
Alibaba.com, the idea was to provide business to another and consumer with each other in terms
of sales services via the internet. Through Chinese enterprise, Alibaba.com was expected to
promote china based products through e-commerce platform (Qin, 2017). The company got a
break through by the year 2002 and in 2003 the introduced alimama.com and lynx. That
introduction of the two had great influenced. It attracted competitors such as American based
eBay, the eBay had announced its expansion into china market in 2003.
Company vision. Aim to build the future infrastructure of commerce. Envision that customers
will meet, work and live at Alibaba, and that we will be a company that lasts at least 102 years.
Company mission: Our mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. Alibaba’s founders
started the company to champion small businesses, in the belief that the Internet would level the
playing field by enabling small enterprises to leverage innovation and technology to grow and
compete more effectively in domestic and global economies. Alibaba’s long-term strategic goal
is to serve two billion consumers around the world and support ten million businesses to operate
profitably on our platforms.
The company’s management has introduced some portfolios that help in managing large number
of customers and assets. These include,
Mobile app charts

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The company introduced messaging software in the year 2004 known as Aliwangwang, its main
objective was to connect the buyer to the customer. Later in 2013, which promoted Alibaba
own messaging and service only (Kingsnorth, & Wolffsohn, 2015). Two years later the company
partnered with yahoo and the acquired it.
E-commerce
Alibaba offers a wide variety of commodities through platforms of buyer to buyer and consumer
to consumer. Alibaba Company in May this year plan develops a platform of online payment and
loan business micro finance (Laudon, & Traver, 2016). According to Jack Ma the company
CEO, this platform can be availed by manufacturers and also internet and logistic companies.
Ali Micro Finance
This is a platform that offers loans and deposits investors. These loans are lent to customers
depending on their credit rating. This reduces the need to go through bank process and at the
same time luring clients to Alibaba (Sheikh, & Datta, 2019).
China Smart Network (CSN) Project
This platform was founded by four big companies in china and Alibaba with their main objective
of delivering goods to a buyer within 24 hours of purchase .They combine logistics of various
companies and built one network .this was to ensure a faster commodities deriver (Qiu, & Qu,
2017).
Alimama

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The main goal of Alimama was advertising. This is the platform where business to business
marketing is done. The platform offers a list of all commodities on the market at a particular
time.
Large incorporation of data
Alibaba has a wide data resources coverage meant to meet the clients business grow. This is
based on the fact that Alibaba has a very wide market thus advertising through their channel
means more viewers.
lazada Group
lazada refers to a Southeast Asian e-commerce company. It was founded in the year 2012 by
Alibaba group. Its main objective was to sell inventory to consumers from its production
warehouse it operates in five major countries, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore,
Thailand, and Vietnam. To be effective in the market Alibaba has been doing its operations in a
unique way. This is to ensure they remain relevant in the market despite the radical changes in
technology. This can be attributed to the CEO Mr. Jack ma and a group of managers in Alibaba.
The key points that make the company remain the best
Observing every activity of your clients
In every business, the customer data base is very important, introduction of software that
connects the customer and the management is therefore very crucial. Information and changes
can be communicated with much ease. Alibaba introduced Taobao the retailing website is
supported by effective software and retail processes. Taobao first built messaging software
known as Wangwang where buyers and sellers communicated easily. Sellers can introduce their
products and state their prices thus attracting more buyers on the website. On each seller data

PROJECT PORTFOLIO AND PROGRAM MANAGEMENT 6
base the customer can offer discounts, run loyalty programs, and negotiate with the willing
buyers.
It becomes easy to conduct, collect data and range company performance since all process are
performed via software and are recorded. This can be achieved when managers rally the workers
towards achieving a common goal of the company. In Alibaba market platform all decision are
machine generated where all sellers follow the same procedures different from those of buyers
too.
Being smart in the market
When Alibaba introduced Ant micro loans in the year 2012, most small and medium enterprises
(SMEs) seized the opportunity and borrowed the money. Up to today the Ant microfinance lends
more than 13.4 billion us dollars to close to three million small SMEs businesses. Payment was
done through Alipay. This was a platform introduced by Alibaba to ease payment procedure.
The company uses data to distinguish between good borrowers and those who can default loans.
The data collected about each individual is then used to calculate credit scores. The management
uses these to decide on whether to lend or not. The data is based on all recorded transactions and
communication with sellers or buyer
In order to determine the amount of money that can be lend, all alibaba network were analyzed.
These data include the amount of profit, inventory and the seller relation with the company. The
information was gathered from things like emails and instant messaging.
Innovations and introduction new strategies
To reduce cost in the supply chain of management, companies need to come up with easier ways
and avoid long chain for a transaction to go through. The Alibaba.com uses consumer to

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consumer platform transaction method in order to decrease costs as observed in the early supply
methods. Shortening time taken by transaction to be over. This has greatly contributed to
increasing the customer satisfaction (Yates III, 2018). Alibaba.com developed a platform where
customers buying the same product are pulled together and are given an offer to buy in wholesale
prices. Also the company uses big customers data to develop products cater their needs. This is
made possible by the use of online to online platform.
Incorporating technology in business
Companies like Alibaba.com depend much on technology to perform their day to day activities;
this has made their project and management portfolios to work more easily. This has proven
incorporation of technology towards the transformation of the industrial economy to modern
economy; companies should learn and be willing to apply this new business methodology. It
may be hard to accept these technological changes but it is becoming more and more essential to
modern business. The use of computers and artificial developed technologies has brought
commercialization of large-scale use of computers to accessing anyone at any particular time.
Indeed, the level of data stored and cost of storing it has decreased, thus, computing large
quantities of data has dropped drastically reduced. Thus use of computers to learn is now
possible and affordable in different societies globally. The rapid usage of internet and technology
will further improve our surroundings making us more knowledgeable. As far as these
developments are witnessed in the future years. Companies that suite well into the competition
will survive in the market.
Support services for customer satisfaction

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The first impression at certain a client get when he or she as requests for services really matters.
Alibaba.com service team has very comfortable responses and friendly online customer services;
this has led to large number of users. Alibaba.com offers nice support services to ensuring full
attention from their customers. This is achieved by helping sellers on maintaining positive
interaction with buyers. With the knowledge they are aware of the coding systems that codes
Alibaba stores platform. Despite the instant communication that is computer set. The support
helps a lot in generating those transactions
Strategic marketing
Marketing is the backbone of every successful business today. It may be less important to some
business that has never engaged it. Identification of potential customers, making that your
product known and making it unique in your in way.
Project portfolio management models
Despite the wide range of technology that alibaba has put into practice, the following platforms
can be used to make sure they remain in the front line of the modern competitive market.
ADKAR Model change
ADKAR refers to a tool that helps indentify why some changes are difficult and why others
succeed. It’s meant to guide management on individual and organizational change.
This kind of a platform is necessary in Alibaba to help monitor its newly introduced platforms

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Divers
ifying experiment process
In order to understand the market perfectly, Alibaba should improve on how they conduct their
marketing process by increasing the area of coverage, environment. This is due to the ever
increasing number of customers and it’s better to understand their likes and dislikes, taste and
preferences. Experiment should never be overruled because customers are always expecting new
things.
Enterprise revolution
As a company continue being in existence, new challenge keep arising thus a need for a
company to continue reinventing itself. These challenges are experienced not only on the
management sector but across all sectors of the company.
For a successful use of these portfolios, the following methods can help in introducing a
successful establishment of these portfolios. One would need to evaluate the projects that are
currently being used; also one would need to evaluate the current customers to oversee who
would stay and who is likely to leave the market soon.
Awareness-the
management should
check constantly
whether the
introduced portfolios
are working or not.
Desire-the company
should be ready to
incur costs arising
from the newly
introduced portfolio
Knowledge-the
management should
rally all the
employees towards
achieving company
goals.
Action-Alibaba
should employ a
suitable governance
framework also train
its employees on
basics on the new
portfolios
Reinforcement-
Alibaba’s
management should
be able to learn
previous mistakes
and improve on
them

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Introduction of evaluation scheme
After successful introduction of project portfolios, a criterion of evaluating its performance is put
in place to help in aligning its objective. The criteria should be able to determine whether the
platform perform different roles such
 Does it led in achieving company’s objectives?
 What is the expected outcome over a specific time?
 Is it possible to achieve the set goals?
 What is the expected return on the cost incurred?
Key performance indicator method
This method reflects how well an organization is achieving the goals set. Alibaba should be able
to measure whether it’s achieving long term and short term goals and objectives.
Balance score card
The balance score card objective is to translate an organization's mission and vision into actual
(operational) actions (strategic). Alibaba should suse this criteria in making sure the introduced
portfolios work
Opportunity and threats
Alibaba has proven good in identification and seizing unique business opportunities, this has
helped it remain effective in the market maintaining customer for a long time. November 11
double 11 festivals, which is Chinese holiday and Christmas where people used to avoid
shopping during those days but through efforts of Taobao. They have successfully converted
these days into a mass shopping days. On the other hand, newly introduced portfolios faces many
challenges and at same time open new opportunities of any business. Introduction of strategic
portfolios within Alibaba is likely to experience the following threats

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Challenges facing the company portfolio
The following challenges are likely to be experienced with introduction of new portfolio;
The management does not know what will be the outcome of a new project in order to place it
under the right PPM. This may make it a problem in the long run. In order to rectify this
company can adopt 5 question method of PPM to know the project standing. The 5 question
model is as follows
If the staff does not have full understanding of the new portfolios, the project may face resistance
of adoption. In order to avoid this, the company should know its capabilities. Alibaba should
make sure its employees suit well for the new protocol and new portfolios.
Recommendation
Alibaba should conduct research and information from foreign markets rather than basing it in on
domestic market alone. That way they would have view of the market platforms and more
accurate data.

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Alibaba should come with other marketing tools and advertisement platforms since online alone
cannot be availed every customer. This would in return bring more customers and hence the
company would be able to realize more profit margins,
Conclusion
After analyzing Alibaba projects and management portfolios, it proves that the company will
remain a dominating leader in the business to business platform. This can be observed from their
great achievement up to date. This is achieved by maintaining financial standing that helps it
despite the future being unpredictable. These are as a result similar businesses in the market
which are very competitive. Moreover, its requires new ideas to survive modern competition,
This makes it difficult for new businesses to compete with a company like Alibaba.com,
therefore, Alibaba needs to keep trying new ideas and improving on older ones to remain a
market leader.

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