In the Cinco De Mayo issue of Fortune, the magazine presents this year’s Fortune 500, their annual list of the 500 largest United States based corporations. As you might expect, it’s a treasure trove of interesting facts and highlights some very different approaches to the challenges and opportunities of globalization.

Page 225 has a great chart showing how globalization has impacted the revenue of US companies. Looking at 32 companies with greater than $50 billion in revenue that report non-US revenue, Fortune showed that 9, Exxon, HP, Dow, Chevron, IBM, Proctor & Gamble, American International Group, Ford Motor and United Technologies get more than 50% of their revenue outside the US. ExxonMobile tops the list with 72.2% of revenue coming from outside the 50 states. General Electric is on the brink of tipping the scales with 49% of revenue coming from outside the US.

The issue also highlighted 3 supply management and market strategies to respond to globalization:

• Boeing takes us inside the factories around the globe to show how suppliers are working together to produce systems that will ultimately allow the company to assemble a carbon-fiber 787 Dreamliner in just 3 days versus the 4 months they require to manufacture a typical aircraft. Good thing too, with a backlog of 892 planes, the Dreamliner is more than a year behind schedule because of some of the trials Boeing and its suppliers have suffered in perfecting the system (our friend Jason Busch at SpendMatters has been keeping us up to date on this).
• Ford is working to standardize its design for the Fiesta, their 3rd attempt to produce a “global” car. In perhaps its most notorious attempt to produce a global product, the 1981 Ford Escort, the US and European versions ended up with exactly 2 parts in common. While cost plays a significant role in this effort - they’ve reduced the number of seat structures from 28 to 2 - the effort seems to be driven as much by a desire to further define the Ford brand and follow in the footsteps of companies like Toyota and BMW, who are able to offer extremely similar autos in every corner of the globe.
• While Ford is focused on standardization, McDonald’s is taking a very different approach. Outside of the US, they’re localizing the menu, packaging and even store decor. Some of the best ideas are then shipped back to the US - most notably it’s Consumer Reports topping coffee. This approach has made Australia the company’s global coffee lab and led to products that you won’t find on any US menu, including the Big Tasty (a burger cooked up in a German test kitchen which is too large for the US drive-thru-centric market), the Croque McDo (a French toasted ham and swiss) and the Maharaja Mac in India.

While the jury is still out on the ultimate success of these efforts, they show that there is no one size fits all approach to taking advantage of global opportunity.

Justin Sullivan is a Senior Manager in Ariba’s Spend Management Services Group. In addition to his strategic sourcing and technology expertise, Justin worked for a number of years in the While House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), where he analyzed the fiscal implications of Federal policy.