Highlights
STRATEGIC PLAN GUIDANCE
You are required to write a 4,500 word strategic plan for a company of your choice. Please choose a non-diversified company (one industry only, e.g., Clarks Shoes or IKEA) or the business unit of a corporation (e.g., BT Consumer, rather than BT Group; Unilever Foods, rather than Unilever).
Your strategic plan should be written in report style. The detailed guidance which follows provides a suggested format.
Utilise diagrams and tables to inform your analysis and provide insights. Generic diagrams or tables add no value. Given this is a practical assessment diagrams and tables should be enriched with the appropriate contextual information thus applying to the company in question. Inserting a photo of a neatly drawn diagram is acceptable. Diagrams and tables are excluded from your word count.
You should critically apply the online module material to inform the development of your strategic plan. This material should be referenced according to the Harvard referencing system.
You should also use the core text book Exploring Strategy: Text and Cases by Johnson, Whittington, Scholes, Angwin and Regner (2014) to inform the development of your strategic plan. Implementation considerations are outlined on page 520, for example. Once again Harvard referencing is required.
1. Introduction to company and challenge(s) – 5 marks (c. 250 words)
• Share your relationship to the company or interest in it, justifying why you selected the company to focus upon in this assignment.
• The introduction to the company should include the current situation and a summary of the key challenges it needs to overcome.
• Include any existing purpose statements the company has e.g. vision and mission statements, core values and strategic objectives (citing academic and company references). Discuss how the statements inform the company’s challenge(s). Statements should be critically analysed.
• You do not have to address all purpose statements – select those that are available for the company, or the most relevant. If no purpose statements are available reflect on purpose based on other types of information (e.g., the ‘About us’ section of the company’s website; CEO/director’s interview, Annual Report etc.). Another approach is to suggest your own purpose statements.
2. Environmental analysis
• MACRO trend environment analysis:
• (PESTLE) analysis to identify key drivers of change (based on possible level of impact and likelihood). Consider strategies to either mitigate
possible impact of threats or take advantage of opportunities that
might be presented.
• MICRO trend environment analysis
• Industry (Five Forces) analysis to understand intensity of competition and relative attractiveness of market.
• Establish which industry life cycle stage the company is in sharing any competitive implications of this.
• Customer (Segmentation) analysis to share a summary of current
customers/users utilising segmentation variables.
• Identification of Opportunities and Threats and Critical Success Factors
• Summarise the macro and micro analyses by clearly articulating what they represent in terms of opportunities and threats for the company.
• Internal environment capability analysis
• Adopting a resource based view (RBV) of strategy, undertake a
critical evaluation of the company’s strategic capabilities.
• Apply McKinsey’s 7S Framework to assess the fit between the
company’s strategy, structure, systems, staff, style, skills and
superordinate goals.
• Apply the VRIO criteria to the distinctive capabilities identified.
• Value chain analysis will identify where the strategic capabilities
actually reside in the company’s value chain.
• The analyses point to the company’s strengths and weaknesses which should be summarised.
• Strategic fit with the operating environment
• Present a SWOT analysis which summarises the main findings from your macro- and micro-environment trend analyses.
• Evaluate the company’s strategic fit in respect its relevant congruence with its operating environment by applying the EVR framework.
3. Strategic options – 20 marks (c. 1,000 words)
• Based on the SWOT that resulted from your previous analyses, consider the different strategic options that your selected organisation could adopt. You may find it useful to map these options in a TOWS matrix. These options will be either business-level strategies or corporate-level strategies (or a
combination of both – it depends on your context).
• Evaluate the feasibility, acceptability and suitability of the strategic options to inform your selection of one preferred option for the company.
4. Proposed strategy & implementation challenges – 20 marks (c. 1,000 words)
• If you are suggesting a change in business strategy for a single business unit (SBU) apply Porter’s generic strategies or Faulkner & Bowman’s strategy clock to explain how the company will proceed with their preferred strategic option.
• If you are suggesting new corporate strategy direction, you can apply the Ansoff matrix to show potential strategy directions and comment on
potential strategic methods (organic development, mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances) if a diversification strategy is proposed. Application of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix is useful for determining the
attractiveness and balance of a business portfolio.
• The feasibility of your proposed new direction should be considered implementation challenges identified and some thought given to how these might be addressed. You should also briefly consider risks and how these might be overcome or mitigated.
• Conclude with triangulation linking back the proposed strategy to the content of the introduction. Does your strategy address the challenge(s) you identified? How does the proposed strategy exploit the opportunities in the environment and/or avoid the threats? How does the proposed strategy capitalise on company’s strengths and/or avoid or remedy the weaknesses? Do the resources and competences currently exist to implement the strategy effectively? If not, can these resources and competences be obtained, and how? Does the proposed strategy align with the purpose of the company?
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