Reed Hastings is the co-founder, CEO, and Chairman of Netflix. Together with the other co-founder, Marc Randolph, they are the key individuals who can be associated with the success of Netflix . Initially, the company started as a film store where clients could rent cassettes. Regarding information systems and the deployment of IT, Netflix saw its breakthrough when they developed a filter feature in their system to enable customers to scrutinize the films that were available and those that were not available. Consequently, this saved the company resources and energy. In addition, it provided a solution to a problem in the company’s systems where customers would order films and end up being disappointed since the films had already been rented out. Being a company based on the film industry, this piece of technology placed Netflix at an advantage over its competitors. At that time, Reed was serving as the Manager and Randolph was the marketing manager.
When Netflix was founded in 1997, technology was not advanced and traditional methods were mainly used to rent out films. However, as technology advanced and the internet gained popularity, Netflix was not left behind. As such, the leaders are credited for making decisions, which revolutionized the business of films from traditional platforms to modern ones ( Barker & Wiatrowski, 2017) . The company upgraded its information systems in a bid to keep up with the technological advancements and the shifting customer demands. As such, the opportunity that was identified was the need to increase customer convenience in accessing films. To make the most out of this opportunity, Netflix increased customer value by using more convenient and modern systems. In 2006, Netflix’s new releases made over 70% of rentals. The subscribers were able to access over 70,000 film titles out of a collection of over 55 million DVDs. Deliveries were also more prompt with the company having 44 outlets. Additionally, the daily deliveries rose to 90% of the 6.6 million subscribers Netflix had (Shih et al., 2009). Today, Reeds has steered Netflix into using streaming technology and convenient subscription models to serve more than 135 million subscribers worldwide. This success is hugely attributed to the company’s leadership.
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References
Barker, C. & Wiatrowski, M. (2017). The Age of Netflix : Critical Essays on Streaming Media, Digital Delivery and Instant Access. McFarland.
Shih, W., Kaufman, S. & Spinola, D. (2009). Netflix. MA: Harvard Business School.
