Summary
The case "C3 ENABLING DIGITAL INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION" outlines the journey of C3 Energy in enabling digital industrial transformation by developing software solutions for companies in the United States and across Europe for aggregation and data analysis. The case tracks the background data on Thomas "Tom" Siebel, the founder of C3 Energy, from his graduation to a technology industry career until the time of incorporation of C3 Energy. 1 The case also tracks the life of C3 Energy from its incorporation through a near-death of the cleantech market in 2011 to a life-threatening accident for Siebel and bounce back and a series of makeovers that mostly followed the shifting trends in demand for technology across the world. The article also offers extensive coverage of C3 IoT, the new face of Siebel’s company, its competitive environment, the industry of technology and artificial intelligent (AI) products, the company’s culture, finances and fundraising, marketing strategies, partnerships, and sales channels, and strategic challenges.
Business Intelligence, Knowledge Management, and Analytics
Business intelligence refers to the idea of business organizations applying technology strategies as a tool for analyzing data and business information to facilitate sound decisions at an organization. Business intelligence incorporates software for data analysis and the development of data warehouses that offer safe storage of data used by corporations. The case study widely covers business intelligence elements since C3 Energy is an organization that sells products that offer business intelligence solutions on various grounds. The products made by C3 Energy help organizations aggregate data from different devices and analyze them for sound decision-making.
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Knowledge management refers to the process where organizations define, structure, and define their employees' experience and knowledge within an organization and work to maximally tap the knowledge and turn it into profits for the organization. Moreover, knowledge management seeks to improve the efficiency of an organization's production while retaining knowledge. Tom Siebel was focused on creating a human resource comprising learners and people who enjoyed working and working in teams. Moreover, one of C3's main core values was to achieve collective intelligence. 2 The case study clearly outlines C3 Energy as a company that incorporated knowledge management and sought to get the best out of their employees. However, the organization does not give weight to the organizational chart, which is yet another tool for promoting knowledge management by outlining different leaders' roles, including human resource managers.
Analytics refers to business organizations' process using technologies and statistical methods to analyze historical data to help the business organization gain new insights and make predictions that would improve the organization's decision-making. 3 The case study widely covers the concept of data analytics. C3 Energy’s software products are meant to offer data analytics solutions, among others, to their clients. Specifically, the company offered clients a data analytic engine that offered queuing, encryption, stream processing, batch processing, and data analytic services that propelled decision making.
Business Ethics and Green Computing
Business ethics generally refers to the application and use of appropriate policies of the business. This can also be defined as doing business while staying considerate of legal provisions, environmental effects, and effects on the community that hosts the business. Business ethics seeks businesses to make the right decisions by applying the right policies on controversial topics such as insider trading, discrimination, bribery, fiduciary responsibility, and corporate social responsibility. Green computing has one of the major trends in practicing business ethics. Green computing specifically refers to business organizations' tendency to use computers and technology with considerations of eco-friendliness and environmental responsibility.
The article tracks the creation of C3 Energy in 2009, an incorporation that was pushed by the rising trend in companies embracing environmental conservation by incorporating green plans. At the time, consumers became sensitive with companies which considered green computer as a key business ethic. C3 was specifically incorporated in 2009 to address the needs of carbon measurement, mitigation, and monetization and to create a positive environmental impact. Siebel sought to make products that would help companies with carbon footprints while maintaining their profits. This was a strategy that would make C3 engage themselves in solving environmental problems. At the same time, the company had a chance to make products that were becoming increasingly on demand because the Barack Obama campaign and presidency brought about a great concern for addressing the green environment. However, some corporate leaders do not set out plans for investment in green computing.
Sustainability Stage and IS roles addressed by C3
| STAGE | DOMINANT IS ROLES | INNOVATIONS |
| New Practice Platforms | Flexible technology Infrastructure. |
Artificial Intelligence (IS) Software as a Service (SaaS) |
C3 Energy is at the sustainability stage of New Practice Platforms. The company specifically seeks to address issues of creating a flexible technology infrastructure and transformation of platforms. C3 sought to offer cloud computing services, among other services such as Artificial Intelligence, data analytics, and machine learning applications. Ahead of the incorporation of C3 in 2009, Siebel outlined the idea of software as a Service (SaaS) as one of the company's major entrepreneurial objectives. Moreover, C3 sought to develop software solutions and sell them as services.
Financial Analysis
Financial ratios are important in analyzing the financial position of a company. The current ratio is an example of a liquidity ratio that is widely used in analyzing liquidity positions of various companies. The current ratio is calculated by evaluating the ratio of current assets to current liabilities. The current assets of C3 as at September 30,2020 (amounts in millions) was 33.831 while the current liabilities were 40.396.
Current ratio = Current assets/ current liabilities.
= 33.831/40.396
= 0.837
Unfortunately, the current ratio is less than one, something that implies that the company cannot clear its current liabilities with the available current assets.
C3 projected growth that would make them double their human resource by the spring of 2019. This would be achievable due to the high rate of growth seen with the company. Despite the increased competition, C3’s growth is viable since the use and application of the internet is increasingly growing every year.
Recommendation and Conclusion
The company is doing pretty well in various fields including innovation and human resource. Nonetheless a quick ratio of less than one is an issue of concern. The company can work on correcting this by working on improving the company’s cash flows.
Various challenges compromise the ability of C3 to achieve its various objectives. They vary from corporate leaders who do not believe in products, legal constraints, and economic problems. C3 should design strategies to curb unprecedented challenges such as economic crises caused by unplanned global situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Laying any such strategy is good in ensuring that the company doesn't fall into a crisis.
Bibliography
“C3: Enabling Digital Industrial Transformation,” Stanford Graduate School of Business. (2020): p1-p23.
1 “C3: Enabling Digital Industrial Transformation,” Stanford Graduate School of Business. (2020): pp1-23.
2 “C3: Enabling Digital Industrial Transformation,” Stanford Graduate School of Business. (2020): p6.
