RE: Directions for the Individual Strategic Analysis
Your boss has given you the assignment to scope out the competition. Your assignment is to analyze a competitor of your group’s firm .You need to do the following:
a. Identify the company’s business model (how they make money). Give a short history and overview of the firm’s products.
b. Identify factors which will impact on the external environment. Make sure that you address demand and where the industry is going. Identify what are the major issues in the industry that are concerning for the competitor. Use Five Forces, PEST, and Industry Characteristics to help you.
This section should be a very short over view of your team external analysis paper. You may need to add more research your team paper lacked.
c. You need to do an internal analysis of the firm. Identify their resources and capabilities, and describe their mission, vision, leadership, culture, and core competencies. Analyze their current position in the market and determine what they have in their “luggage or not.” Discuss the major issues facing the company internally. Use the models of Value Chain, VIRO and RBV perspective. (major portion of the grade).
d. Identify what strategies – Porter’s generic/business and the corporate level strategies that the company appears to be following and how the company’s internal abilities and external forces impact on these strategies.
e. Evaluate the company’s performance using financial and measures. You will need to utilize your team’s financial analysis for some of the data necessary to understand how well the firm is doing. You will need to examine your company’s financial and market data. You must have 5 years of Balance Sheet, Income statement, and Ratios discussion about your individual firm’s performance .
f. You need to create a SWOT from your analysis above. Using your SWOT explain what changes you might recommend in the company’s direction. Make sure that you use the SWOT and Grand Strategy Matrices.
Exhibits that should be attached to the report include at least a Balance Sheet (5 years), and Income Statement (5 years), Ratios (3 years at least), Value Chain, and SWOT for each firm. The data (numbers and charts) go into tables and figures, write your analysis referring to the data. It is the quality of data and interpretation which matters. Exhibits should be referred to and discussed in the report. Do not just repeat data, instead analyze and tell your boss what the data means. Use headings to help organize your report. Please make sure you use terms developed in class and from the book. You need to cite your sources of data. Use end notes to cite your sources. Be consistent in your format. You may also include a reference page. The Maximum length is 15 pages with 10 pages of exhibits. What you turn in for this assignment you should be proud to give to any boss.
The report is for a business audience and needs to fit a more business style of writing. Use the following web site for help if you are unsure about business writing style. Use headings to organize your work. http://oregonstate.edu/dept/eli/buswrite/Business_Writing_Help.html
Exhibits, preliminaries, bibliography, footnotes and endnotes, and appendices are not included in the suggested page count. Note that in several instances the Professor/Boss expects the use of exhibits, e.g., financial statements. There are multiple points at which “a graph will speak volumes.” Or a summary exhibit will efficiently summarize a discussion.
The page count assumes 12-Point Times Roman font or equivalent, with one-inch margins. Double spacing is easier for the professor to read and make comments. However, generally a professional report will be single (or perhaps one and a half) spacing.
A google.com search is certainly a beginning, but is NOT sufficient. You must use sources such as Hoovers, Standard and Poor’s Net Advantage, Business Insight, Morningstar, ABI/INFORM, Books in Print (any books on the company, its competitors or industry?), Business Source Premier, EDGAR, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, LexisNexis, Marquis Who’s Who, New York Times Article, Mergent, IBISWorld, and Wilson Business Full Text. There are also hard copy references and specialty data bases at the library as well as other sources at local libraries. Please make Limestone’s Business Reference Librarian one of your best friends.
Certainly each of the firms are more complex than we can do justice to given our time frame and limitations on our data/information sources. As indicated in the introduction, the purpose of the overall project is to pull on as much of the perspectives as we have learned throughout our formal business training as possible in order to develop a robust understanding of a firm and its environment. As the consultant you are working at very high levels in the firm to help the organization consider its current situation and what it can and should do to be better at achieving its vision/mission/goals/objectives, an improved strategy, and a sustainable competitive advantage. In actuality such a task would draw on both primary and secondary data and might take a consultant 18 months.
Suggested Outline of Report Content
(Suggested pages of text, about 10-15)
Introduction
• Purpose of analysis
• Overview/outline of written report
• Description of the company
I. Description of the) General Environment dimensions: (1 page) (Description of the) Specific External Environment dimensions (i.e., extended industry and competitors)
• PEST – Economic, Demographic/Socio-demographic, Technological, Political/Regulatory, Global
• 5 Forces
• Demand and market segments
II. Company/Organization/Internal Environment ( 6-10 pages)
**** Major thrust of the paper should be this section)************
• Brief history (suggest including a Time Line as an exhibit) ( 1/2-2)
• Vision/mission statements/strategic objectives (1/2 -1)
• Describe products/services/technologies (1-2)
• Organization:
o Culture (1/2-1)
Leadership (1-2) remember to include analysis of the board.
• Value Chain Analysis –
o Operations, Marketing, Supply Chain, Distribution
o Core competencies and Comparison
III. Financial statements and Analysis
5 years of Balance Sheet, Income statement, and Ratios discussion about your individual firm’s performance.
Stock Value performance (1; suggest a graph with a paragraph of explanation or anomalies such as stock splits is recommended and/or text boxes on the graph pointing out major events that influenced the stock price, i.e., a one-company event analysis. Juxtapositioning against the S&P and team’s firm is useful.)
IV. Strategies of the firm – Description of the current strategy choices of the firm (2-3 pages)
• Generic/ Business level strategy
• Corporate Level Strategy
• Use of BCG matrix if appropriate for the firm.
V. SWOT analysis and recommendations (2-3 Pages)
• SWOT table
• Discussion of the SWOT
• Analysis through SWOT Matrices
• Recommendation based on your analysis
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