Strategy and Implementation Flashcards
Component 2: Business, Analysis and Strategy
What is a vision 👀 statement?
Aspirational description of what an organisation would like to achieve in the medium to long term future.
What is the role of a vision 👀 statement?
- To present vision of where business could be in ideal world.
- source of inspiration and motivation
- describes future of organisation and industry in which hopes to effect change.
- VS provides clear guide to senior management of future direction and help direct strategic decision making.
- no set way of writing VS but should all have same purpose of defining core values and direction business is heading.
What is an example of a vision statement?
Google: “ To provide access to the world’s information in one click”.
What is a mission statement?
- Broad statement of organisations aims and values.
- guide everyday operations and decision making of business.
- focuses on what business wants to do in present.
What is the purpose of a mission statement?
- make clear statement of businesses purpose.
- give organisation cohesiveness so everyone in organisation has common goals to work towards.
- used to communicate purpose of organisation to all shareholders.
- some MS can vary between different organisations, some are vague and ambitious but some are specific and measurable.
- however, can be vague and express ambition instead of reality in which organisation needs to have reality.
- can be hard to achieve i.e. to end all poverty.
What is an example of mission statement?
Google: “ To organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.
State the difference between Vision and Mission statements.
Vision:
- describes where organisation is going in future
- communicates purpose and values of business for inspiration
- talks about future.
- helps shape understanding of working within organisation.
- should be clear and unambiguous, memorable, engaging and aligned with organisational values and culture.
Mission:
- describes organisations purpose on present and where it wants to be
- describes primary aims of organisation to inform stakeholders.
- primary audience internal to define key measures of organisations success to leadership team and shareholders.
- present leading to future.
- should contain purpose of organisation, who are main stakeholders and what are organisation responsibilities to stakeholders.
What are the BENEFITS of having clear Vision and Mission statements?
- ensures managers and leaders make strategic decisions in line with what company is trying to achieve overall (mission).
- having clear mission statement, goals of company are communicated to all staff - staff feel more motivated and involved giving organisation cohesiveness.
- clear mission statement means all departments are encouraged to work together to achieve common goal rather than pursuing different and conflicting objectives.
Criticisms of Vision and Mission statements.
- mission statements of business not always supported by actions
- Too vague and general or obvious - can be unrealistic and never achieved missions.
- sometimes seen as PR exercise by staff = regarded cynically.
Evaluate Vision and Mission Statements
- must be supported wholeheartedly by senior management
- communicated by staff
- put into practise in day to day policies and actions and embedded into firm’s culture
- reflected in departmental policies
Stakeholders and Vision and Mission statements.
- Customers = help to understand core values of business
- Suppliers = benefit if mission leads to success for business, more repeat orders
- Management = assists to set aims and objectives in line with overall mission
- Shareholders = to see purpose of business and general direction
- Community = provides clear picture of business and its purpose to local people
- Employees = the better they understand the business’ purpose the better they will contribute and more involved.
What is meant by Aims?
- What business wants to achieve in future and they tend to be quite generic and broad.
- They set out goals of business.
- organisations will set out aims so everyone has clear focus on where business is heading.
- means business can measure progress in achieving its aims over time.
- corporate aims refer to aims for organisation as a whole and will generally fall into one of categories.
What are the Corporate aims?
- Profit maximisation
- Growth
- Survival
- Sales maximisation
- Corporate social responsibility / environmental ethics.
- Increasing shareholder value
- Profit satisfying
Explain what is meant by Profit maximisation ?
- means that business will want to use resources to full and have little wastage as possible.
- higher profits enable firm to pay higher wages, more dividends to shareholders, survive economic downturn, finance R&D, make firm less vulnerable for takeover.
- objectives such as corporate image and increasing market share can be way to maximise long term profit.
Explain what is meant by Growth ?
- Allow business to sell product/service to larger market and become better known.
- Growth will offer business increased security (spread risk)
- likely to aim when firm been established in current market and making sufficient profits to finance expansion.
- involve mergers and takeovers.
- more market share increases monopoly power and ability to be price setter.
Explain what is meant by Survival?
- business world competitive, can difficult for firms to survive during difficult economic conditions.
- survival means firm need to break even and go on to make profit.
Explain what is meant by Sales maximisation?
When firm involves selling as many units of good/service as possible without making loss to achieve rapid growth of market share.
- means sacrificing short term profit with view to achieving longer term gain.
- sales maximisation involves business charging lower price for product contrasted with profit maximisation.
Explain what is meant by Corporate social responsibility/ environmental ethics?
Concern for these has become increasingly important.
- firms can be environmentally friendly by encouraging customers to reuse plastic bags in supermkerts, enhancing environment around business e.g. langscaping, planting trees, sponser schools which draw attention to environmental ethics - raising awareness.
- may ensure suppliers in developing countries have good wage and working conditions.
- sourcing raw materials from sustainable sources.
- business has legal obligations not to damage environment.
- can gain positive corporate image by working towards achieving this aim.
Explain what is meant by increasing shareholder value?
measured by amount of dividends paid to shareholders and any increases in price.
- aims is concerned with increasing price of business’ shares on stock market.
- senior management may have bonus scheme related to increasing share prices and dividends so may also have interest in increasing shareholder value.
Explain what is meant by Profit satisfying?
Owner of business focus on achieving acceptable level in terms of revenue and profit - to make owners comfortable - aim of smaller businesses whose owners don’t want to work long hours.
What is meant by Objectives?
Measurable (quantitative) medium/short term targets of how to achieve business aims.
Objectives need to be practical and give clearly defined target using SMART.
There are 2 different types of objectives:
Corporate and functional objectives.
Corporate objectives
Whole business/ wide company goals that need to be achieved to keep business on track to achieve its aims.
- They need to be SMART
Functional objectives
Targets/goals relating to one of four functional departments within business, and they must match organisations own corporate objectives.
What does SMART stand for?
Specific (what exactly is to be achieved)
Measurable (able to measure achievement)
Agreed (have approval of everyone involved)
Realistic (able to be achieved by business with given resources)
Time specific (time which should be achieved by)
SMART helps to ensure organisation meets objectives and achieves its aims.
What are the objectives that a organisation can set?
- Growth objectives
- Market share objectives
- Profitability objectives
- Sales objectives
- Branding objectives
What is the importance of objectives?
- represent clear statement of what needs to be achieved
- represent targets for individual and group achievement (motivational)
- means of measuring performance
- implement mission and aims of business
What is a strategy?
how business sets out to achieve its aims and objectives.
- decided by board of directors
- seen as long term business planning and typically cover period of about 3-5 years.
- 2 sides to strategy: formulation (similar process of constructing business plan) and implementation (putting plan into practise).
- strategy important in ensuring objectives are achieved , so should be devised in consideration of current business environment, resources available and skills of management and employees.
What is the strategy process?
- Corporate strategy
- strategic direction
- divisional strategy
- Functional strategy
What is 1. Corporate strategy?
- strategic decisions business makes tat affect the entire organisation.
- at corporate level, strategy concerned with long term planning which could have significant impact on organisation.
- decisions are high risk and can be costly and not easily reversible.
- Corporate strategy usually made by senior management, boarder director and plans and policies to meet companies objectives.
e. g. allocating resources to different business divisions, HR planning, proposed mergers and acquisitions, moving production abroad/expansion into new markets/products.
- Strategic direction
- aims to lead business to corporate strategy/goals.
- once corporate strategy planned, strategic planning used to establish strategic direction.
i. e. how objectives will be achieved. - plan will contain clear mission statement but describes business’ objectives, which divisions or functions need to be focused on to achieve them and clear methods.
- Divisional strategy
strategy of division within a business.
- Functional strategy
- strategy of department within a business.
- each of department will specialise in completing certain type of task.
- business usually divided into 4 main functional areas: marketing, finance, HR and operations.
- departments should plan how they will achieve objectives.