Executive Summary:
My decision as the President and CEO of CN, Hunter E. Harrison, is to continue with our strategic focus on continuing to improve productivity and customer service along with a new directive moving forward to continue to grow our sales, profits, cash flow and market value. CN will implement a new strategic focus to expand the share of rail traffic in North America by directing overseas traffic flows on to our network. In order to grow with expansion possibilities in North America being limited and the growth in NAFTA trade declining, CN requires a solid strategy to capture the growing importance of Asian markets. CN will invest and/or partner in international logistics as a freight forwarder intermediary to assist …show more content…

These investments are lowering transportation costs by reducing travel times and making service more reliable. There also needs to be improvements to be able to use modern communications to become a participant in the growing international markets.

Alternatives or Options with Pros and Cons:
1) CN can continue to improve their customer service by continuing to improve operations with providing lower prices and high-quality service that is reliable. CN does need to emphasize on improving transit reliability through more effective scheduling of shipments, rather than just scheduling trains. Now CN customers’ can place one phone call to move goods from Mexico into Canada with CN’s expansion southward which does provide economies of scale as well as speed since the trains can now travel longer without interruptions for transferring cars or goods to another carrier’s network.
2) An operational improvement is for CN to operate in one ERP system in order to schedule, invoice, trace, etc. in which they can always know where the shipment is no matter the rail line it is on and where one contact can update a customer inquiry without having to login different systems or calling various service representatives along the network. CN must invest in technology and remain a leader in using information technology to improve their operating efficiency and effectiveness in order to attract an increasing share of the North American market. CN has