Strategic Position and Options Flashcards
What are the 9 M’s when we look at Resource Audit
- Money
- Machinery
- Make up (Culture & Structure)
- MGMT (Skills and experience)
- Markets (Operate in)
- Materials (Relationship with suppliers)
- MIS (Innovation IS)
- ManPower
- Methods (Activites carried out)
What is meant by Dynamic Capability when looking at Resource Audit
The ability of a business to achieve new forms of CA by developing and changing competences to meet the needs of changing environment
What are the Drivers when it comes to creating shareholder value
- Increase Sales Growth
- Increase Profit
- Reduce Tax
- Reduce Fixed Asset investment
- Increase Length of project
- Reduce Working Capital
- Reduce Cost of Capital
What are the limitations of the Value Chain
- Cost may outweight benefit
- Difficult to apply to network organisations
- Difficult to apply to service industry
- Takes little account of IT in business
The value shop is used when looking at Value Chain for service industry. What are the Primary Activities
- Problem finding and acquisition
- Problem Solving
- Choice between solutions
- Solution implementation
- Control and feedback
In the Supply Chain Model there are 3 elements. What are they and explain
Responsivness - Shortening Product Life cycles and supply customers quickly. Increased integration
Reliability - Quality, Timeliness and Quantity
Relationship - Supply chain needs to be seen as a network based collaboration
What are the characteristics of Pull and Push models in the supply chain process
Pull - From the customer oders
Push - In advance of orders (Inventory)
What are the elements of Supply Chain Management
- Reduce number of suppliers
- Reduce number of customers serviced
- Price and Onventory co-ordination
- EDI
- Supply involvement in design and development
- Joint problem solving
What are the features of Growth in the PLC
- Sharp rise in sales
- Capital investment needed
- Unit costs fall
- Additional features required to differentiate
What are the features of Maturity in the PLC
- Repeat and replacement orders
- High competition
- Profit high, investment low
- Launch Spin offs to capitalise on Brand
What are the links between Portfolio Analysis and BCG
- Build = Star: Short term profit frogoe to increase market share through investment
- Hold = Cash Cow: Hold current position
- Harvest = Question Mark or Cash Cow: Short terms profits prevail over long term
- Divest = Dog
When choosing a Focus Strategy what are the 2 options
Cost Focus - Lower cost to a segment of market
Differenitated Focus - Provide differnt product/service to that segment
When looking at Price Strategy what does the following mean:
Penetration
Skimming
Predatory
Selective
- Penetration - Low price to gain market share
- Skimming - High prices to maximise short term profitability
- Predatory - Low price to damage competitors
- Selective - different prices across different markets
What are the 3 criteria for evaluating Strategic Options
Suitability
- Strengthen weakness and exploit stengths
- Deflect enviromental threats
Acceptable
- Risk associated
- To all stakeholders
Feasibility
- Resources
- Competitors response
What is Earls Nine reasons for IT/IS Strategy
It is a source os CA so should not be left in hands of just IT people
- Critical to biz
- High costs
- Effective MGMT
- Source of CA
- Structural changes may occur
- Stakeholders are affected so analysis of impact
- Technical issues in and out of IT
- All levels of staff are impacted
Revolutionary changes are possible
When developing IT strategies what 3 core components can be look at
ISS - How to exploit info to support biz strategies
ITS - What technologies will assist the ISS
IMS - Who will manage the ISS & ITS
Earl said that there are 3 ways strategy can be developed. What are they?
Business Led (Top Down)
Develop Objectives
Use of IT/IS to support
Use specialist to achieve
Infrastructre Led (Bottom up)
What IT/IS are aviailable
How will they help business achieve
What oppurtunites are available using that technology
Mixed (Inside out)
Look outside to what is available
Creative think how it can be used in business
When designing IT strategy what is Earis grid used for:
Looks at the VIB vs Quality
- Divest
- Renew
- Reassess
- Maintain
When designing IT strategy what is The Strategic Grid used for:
Looks at the level of dependence of current IT/IS vs Planned
- Turnaround (will be important in future)
- Support
- Strategic
- Factory (wont be important in future)
When designing IT strategy what is the (Peppard) Applications portfolio used for:
Looks at the strategic impact of individual applications wihin an Org
- High Potential (impact in future)
- Support
- Strategic
- Key Operational (support core business activites)
Explain:
- Disintermediation
- Reintermediation
- Countermediation
Dis - Removal of intermediaries (Radiohead direct to download only)
Re - New intermediaries (Amazon replace high street)
Counter - New intermediaries to compete with online
What is a DBMS and used for?
Database MGMT system which stores data and allows many applications to extract information
When turning Tacit knoweldge into explict there are 4 forms:
Socialisation - general chat
Externalisation - Formalising knowledge via reports etc
Combination - Brainstorming / Groups
Internatisation - Still in groups but light bulb moment comes after and then made formal
What specific applications are available when we look at KM sharing and explain
- Intranet - Internal network
- Extranet - Collabrative network sharing
- Intronet - Intranet is shared with trusted agencies
- Supranet - Set up in co-operative manner but no one entity has control
- Expert Systems - replace human beings in decision making
Explain the 3 types of data
- Financial Data - Standard financial metrics such as profitability KPI’s
- Enterprise Data - Include the above plus operational and transactional data such as customer satisfaction KPI’s
- Big data - All of above plus new internal and external data much os which is unstrucuted
Give some features of an Expert system
- Can be purchased off the shelf
- Trial and error can be used to perfect
- Rules governing it can be updated
With IMS what responsibilites fall under its remit
- Planning and control of IS developments
- Allocating IT staff
Name 3 sources of information that will be used by a Decision Support System
- Internal and External info
- Qualatitive and Quantative info
- Tactical information
What is Data Mining
Looks for trends and hiddern patterns/relationships in large pools of data.
Can gove Org better insight into customer behaviours
What are the characteristics of Data Warehouse
- Stores data for use (Not for analysis)
- Used across the Org for decision making
- Enables consistency when making decisions
- Improves speed of response by an Org
List the values of big data
- Transparency - reveal insigths to trends
- Performance improvement - real time accurate info enables performance to be improved
- Decision making - analytical toold to identfy trends
- Market segmentation - voleume and variety allows creation of specific target markets
- New products and services - data re social trens and customer behaviour can alter strategy
How do you create a marketing strategy
# Define the market - Key requirements needed to be succesful Understand the gaps - point of entry Competitor analysis Determine strategic planning structure
Explain EIS
- Uses internal, external, current and Histroic data
- Graphical Outputs
Explain Database and DBMS
Database - collection of wide variety of data organised to service many applications
DBMS - Software that centralises the data and manages access to the database
- Shared Data
- Central controls for intregrity
- Flexible to meet needs
BIg Data tools used to extract information and knowledge are:
- Data Analytics - Algorithms to allow analysis of large data pools
- Cloud - Remote servers to hold an dprocess data
- Data Mining - Perform cluster anaysis to extract patterns from raw data
- OLAP - software that ansysis stored data
What are the uses of Big Data identifed by CIMA
- Better fprcasting
- Increase efficiency and reducing cost
- Monitor external risks
- Increase revenue through better marketing
With Marketing Strategy what are the limitations of DPP
- Cost v Benefit
- Focus on cost reduction rather than customer satsfaction
- Ignores interrelations
