YouTube BPR

Google Inc. is one of the top companies in the world. They have excelled in how they manage their digital and non-digital supply chain.
This week Google, now re-named Alphabet, became the most valuable company on earth besting Apple for at a least one day. No matter what happens the rest of this week, Google is sending notice that its place in the world of business strategy is at the head of the table (O'Marah, 2016).
They did this by creating an internal supply chain the sources, constructs, and plans Google’s data centers. Similar to their counterparts Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft, Google drives innovation back up for the existing value chain. The company demands the best off-the-shelf servers and network equipment to ensure reliable connectivity and speed for users. To meet such high demands and standards, Google assembles and designs the components for use to their own specifications as part of a continual effort to supersede consumer response time and expectation. This leads to high advertising revenue and ongoing success in an area that is highly competitive.
With all this said, Google Inc. is having problems in one area in what has become its main eye sore. That is YouTube. Advertisers have pulled out multiple times because they see the website as not advertiser friendly. They believe videos that have negative subject matter are being attached to their paid advertisements. Because of this, YouTube has had to generate new algorithms that have led to YouTube creators not receiving as much revenue as they had before.
The Google-owned video service in June enacted stricter policies this summer for YouTube content that will be ineligible for advertising. That was part of Google’s crackdown on ads being served in offensive videos, after hundreds of marketers suspended YouTube spending earlier in the year after it came to light that their ads were appearing in videos espousing hateful rhetoric (Spangler, 2017).
To circumvent these problems and improve the overall service, YouTube has decided to hire new employees to review videos rather than letting the algorithm mainly do it. This is a step up for Google. However, the quality of reviews depends on the quality of hires. While the company does not simply wish to hire reviewers for YouTube, it does want to ensure that is the main focus of the current recruitment process. Therefore, the humans are part of the digital supply chain as they evaluate what content is advertiser-friendly on the website.
YouTube is a global website owned by a global company. What may seem appropriate in one country may not be appropriate in another. For example, if one video has women dancing provocatively, this may be allowed for American advertisers but not for advertisers in Saudi Arabia for example, that practice Islam. Therefore, the humans hired to review videos must be understanding of the culture and the advertiser. This is where supply chain talent management comes in hand.
Supply chain talent management is an integral part to any businesses and acts as a source of competitive advantage. “The current literature on supply chain talent has identified supply chain talent management as a source of competitive advantage for growing firms…corporates have failed to see shortage of supply chain talent as one of the important source of supply chain risks” (Dubey & Gunasekaran, 2015, p. 257). Supply chain talent, especially in this scenario is integral to success. Google Inc. is one of the most successful businesses today. However, if one of their off-shoots, YouTube, begins to perform poorly due to mismanagement of resources and talent, they may end up in a negative situation in the future. That negative situation is profit loss.
BPR or Business Process Re-engineering is an important aspect to running a successful business during difficult times. The BPR recommendation on supply chain management and understand the most importance resource, humans, as the driving force behind success for mainly digital companies like Google. The first thing to discuss is their location, facilities, and capacities.
Google exists as a global company. They have offices on every continent. Their headquarters is in Mountain View, California and serves as the foundation for the company. If Google wants to improve their services, they need to expand their offices in South America and the Middle East where potential growth could spur additional need for support. One researcher notes how from the management perspective, managers must understand and know what is needed for leverages of resources and capabilities. “On the other hand, sustainability from operations management perspective may be achieved if operations managers in banking institutions understand what they have to provide and how to leverage resources and capabilities as an integrated system” (Tornjanski, Marinkovic, & Jancic, 2017, p. 1). Such initiative implies suitable operational excellence, management of quality and ambidextrous method to operations management. In fact, quality management supports each function of a company so that it may flourish throughout ongoing improvement, organization change, and development.
With Google offering a search engine and a video sharing website as its main draws, the need for quality employees and recruitment strategies are paramount during this time. The typical supply chain in Google’s YouTube is users known as ‘Content Creators’ create and upload videos for an audience to see. Human and computer reviewers check if the content is appropriate for advertisers and then either flag or do not flag the video. If it is flagged, the video does not net AdSense revenue for the user or YouTube.
The problem however, is when the reviewers whether computer or human choose a video that does not fit the profile of ‘not advertiser-friendly’. This is known as a kink in supply chain management. Supply chain management must be the focus of YouTube to remain profitable. “Highlighting the absence of products flows in the delivery of professional services, the authors defined supply chain management as ‘the management of information, processes, capacity, service performance and funds from the earliest supplier to the ultimate customer” (Kumar, Amorim, Bhattacharya, & Garza-Reyes, 2016, p. 159). If the target markets for advertisers are families and children, and the algorithms made to review videos are tailored to these preferences, the addition of a human aspect must be willing to review according to the new guidelines. However, these guidelines must be in place that also serve the needs of the content creators.
Business processes like lean manufacturing or lean production may be a useful concept to improve the process of reviewing videos. While some companies fail at lean implementation, successful attempts can lead to improvements (Trang, 2016, p. 21). Thusly, for successful implementation of a lean system, managers must reconsider human costs for relief of worker stress, trust and cooperation among employees and employers within the organization, labor classifications, reward systems, and existing process aspects and layouts associated with invention such as logistics or purchasing, setups, and scheduling.
In the case of YouTube, quality reviewers must be recruited. These quality recruits can fix, or support decisions made by the YouTube algorithm and provide customer service to content creators. This can be see in dependence theory. “Dependence theory can be here linked to the relational view of the firm, so the supply chain is a network of resources and capabilities. What is more important is that the firm must be in a position as to control those resources” (Gonzalez-Loureiro, Dabic, & Kiessling, 2015, p. 172). The researchers did not mean to say the company must own the resource. However, it must have some control over it via bargaining power or even use of a collaborative joint strategy. There exists a clearly recognized intrinsic relation nature concerning the supply chain because of the entire system of value creation. Google Inc. for example, must have control over some resources to maintain its competitive advantage.
Google is known most as a search engine. To maintain the quality and speed people depend on for Youtube, Google must acquire specific resources and one of them being good human reviewers. These and others like those in customer service, are essential resources in a company where the main draw is intangible and digital. This would be the main BPR recommendation. For adequate quality employee recruitment, Google must apply their standards for sourcing within a digital supply chain to a tangible one.
The first step would be to hire effective recruitment managers that can act as ‘supply chain managers’ for employees. They are the front lines to ensuring the company has quality recruits. Another option is using Clinch. Clinch is marketing software with additional recruiting functionality. The aim with the software is for companies to build their own career sites ad use behavioral analysis to identify top candidates who have not applied and see which candidates are most suitable for the job. It is a fast and easy solution that is cost-effective and helps avoid any chinks in the supply chain.

References
Dubey, R., & Gunasekaran, A. (2015). Supply chain talent: the missing link in supply chain strategy. Industrial and Commercial Training, 47(5), 257-264. doi:10.1108/ict-11-2014-0073
Gonzalez-Loureiro, M., Dabic, M., & Kiessling, T. (2015). Supply chain management as the key to a firm’s strategy in the global marketplace. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 45(1/2), 159-181. doi:10.1108/ijpdlm-05-2013-0124
Kumar, V., Amorim, M., Bhattacharya, A., & Garza-Reyes, J. A. (2016). Managing reverse exchanges in service supply chains. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 21(2), 157-165. doi:10.1108/scm-12-2015-0467
O'Marah, K. (2016, February 5). Google and the future of supply chain. Retrieved from http://www.scmworld.com/google-and-the-future-of-supply-chain/
Spangler, T. (2017, October 27). YouTube Says Videos Flagged as Advertiser-Unfriendly Will Drop by 30%. Retrieved from http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/youtube-demonetization-advertiser-unfriendly-improvement-1202601115/
Tornjanski, V., Marinkovic, S., & Jancic, Z. (2017). Towards Sustainability: Effective Operations Strategies, Quality Management and Operational Excellence in Banking. The AMFITEATRU ECONOMIC, 19(44), 1-75.
Trang, N. T. (2016). Design an Ideal Supply Chain Strategy. Advances in Management, 9(4), 20-28.