ISP531 Business Process Management – Merger Case Study Analysis

In 2023, Microsoft completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a leading video game publisher, for approximately $75.4 billion. This strategic move aimed to enhance Microsoft’s gaming portfolio and expand its presence in the gaming industry.

Pre-Merger Business Processes

Microsoft’s Gaming Division operated primarily through its Xbox brand, focusing on console gaming, game development, and subscription services like Xbox Game Pass. Their business processes emphasized:

1. Platform Development: Designing and manufacturing gaming consoles.

2. Game Development Studios: Managing in-house studios to produce exclusive titles.

3. Subscription Services: Offering game libraries through subscription models.

Activision Blizzard was renowned for its popular franchises such as “Call of Duty,” “World of Warcraft,” and “Candy Crush.” Their business processes included:

1. Game Development: Operating multiple studios focused on developing and publishing games across various platforms.

2. Monetization Strategies: Implementing in-game purchases, expansions, and premium content.

3. Esports Initiatives: Investing in competitive gaming and organizing esports events.

Post-Merger Business Process Integration

The acquisition required careful integration of both companies’ operations to achieve strategic objectives:

1. Expansion of Game Pass Library: Integrating Activision Blizzard’s extensive game portfolio into Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass subscription service, enhancing value for subscribers.

2. Cross-Platform Synergies: Leveraging Activision Blizzard’s expertise in mobile gaming to expand Microsoft’s reach beyond consoles and PCs.

3. Cultural Integration: Aligning corporate cultures, addressing workplace environment concerns, and establishing unified values and practices.

4. Regulatory Compliance: Navigating antitrust regulations and ensuring fair competition practices during and after the merger.

Requirement

This is a paired assignment of not more than 3-4 persons. The report should be structured with headings and sub headings. The results should be intelligible to any reasonably well informed reader. As you are required to articulate complex ideas, it is important to present your report clearly and professionally. It is important that you communicate your findings effectively.

The report must contain all of the following attributes:

• Evidence of subject area knowledge.
• Coherent writing (e.g. constructing an understandable, creditable, and convincing narrative).
• Evidence of a critical and discerning approach, in particular the use of research material that supports your arguments.
• Organization of the report (e.g. report format, narrative structure, logical construction).

General Instructions

• You are required to form your own group and Whatsapp your group members (full name and student ID) to the lecturer.
• The report should be 2500 – 3000 words (+/- 10%). Appendices are exempt from word length restrictions.
• Use refered resources (not more than 5 years old) to support your ideas, strategies and recommendations.

Marking Rubric

Assumptions (10 Marks)

• Clearly state the assumptions you are making about the case study.
• These assumptions should define the scope of your analysis, including business operations, system constraints, and any contextual factors.

Requirements Elicitation Techniques (20 Marks)

• Critically discuss two (2) suitable requirements elicitation techniques for investigating business processes in the chosen case.
• Support your discussion with relevant deliverables, such as interview questions, questionnaires, or observation checklists.

Business Process Identification & Streamlining (30 Marks)

• Identify and describe one (1) major and one (1) minor business process before and after the streamlining.
• Major business process should have at least 15 events, 4 stakeholders. Minor business process should have at least 7 events, 1-2 stakeholders.
• Present a visual representation (e.g., flowcharts + BPMN diagrams) to illustrate the business process changes.
• Provide a thorough explanation of how the process has been optimized post-merger.

Information System Implementation Approaches (20 Marks)

• Suggest two (2) alternative approaches for implementing information systems to support business requirements in the new entity.
• Explain the advantages and limitations of each approach.

Justification of Chosen Approach (10 Marks)

• Critically justify your choice of one approach from the previous section.
• Support your justification with logical reasoning, feasibility, and expected business benefits.

Documentation Quality (10 Marks) – 10

• Ensure clarity, logical flow, and coherence in your report.
• Use appropriate citations and references following an academic referencing style.

Experts Answer on Above Questions on Business Management

Assumptions

It is assumed that Microsoft will retain the primary digital gaming ecosystem that comprises Xbox game pass, Azure, and Xbox live after the acquisition. There will be continuous development of existing franchisees by Activision Blizzard without any kind of major disruption. The focus of the entire analysis is on game development and distribution processes rather than on hardware Manufacturing. It is also assumed that the existing employees will continue to operate according to Microsoft’s organizational structure, and there will be sharing of common cloud infrastructure between both companies and adapt Microsoft azure.

Requirements elicitation techniques

The first technique is stakeholder interviews in order to gather business requirements from key personnel. The important stakeholders include Xbox game pass manager, Activision Studio director,Azure cloud architect and compliance manager. They can be interviewed using questions like how Activision titles are integrated into gamepass, which system requires integration with azure, are there any reporting requirements for regulators etc.

The second technique is process observation which includes observing existing publishing and deployment workflows. The important checklists to consider are the game testing sequence, store publishing workflow, content update deployment, player account synchronization and cross-platform testing.

Business process identification and streamlining

The major processes before the merger were game development and publishing that included his stakeholders like development Studio, QA team, publishing team and platform operations. The important events carried out in the process are approval of game concept, development starts, review of milestones, alpha Testing, bug fixing, quality approval, marketing preparation, release approval, launching of game and post monitoring.
After streamlining, the process would be a proper unified project planning, creation of workflow by Azure Developers, shared asset Repository, parallel development, continuous testing, automated scan, cross platform compatibility testing, microsoft QA validation, game Pass integration, unified marketing launch and Global release.

BPMN/Flow Chart

The flowchart starts with development – automated build- continuous testing- compliance review – game pass integration – global release – monitoring and update.

Information system implementation approach

The most significant approach is enterprise system integration which allows for faster implementation, lower migration risk, business continuity and lower implementation cost. The second approach is complete Cloud migration which allows for a unified technology platform, improved scalability, enhanced cybersecurity and better Analytics.
Justification of the chosen approach – the selected approach is complete Cloud migration because microsoft already operates azure as its enterprise Cloud platform which allows for complete migration as the most suitable long-term solution.

Documentation quality

Perform organisation of report using proper headings and subheadings with numbers. Also support discussion with peer-reviewed Journal articles, consistently apply APA 7 edition referencing and the application of tables to compare pre and post merger processes.

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The analysis of Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard by evaluating its business process integration, BPMN, system implementation and merger strategy revealed important findings above. If you need a similar kind of merger analysis, get in touch with our accounting assignment helper in Malaysia or you can also view solved assignments from Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) by our experts.