Research Paper Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

Question 01

How/why does one research and analyze a company’s recent strategic direction

External/Environmental Changes

The essential structure and success of the strategy is highly reliant upon few complex and vital factors that comprise of arrangement of the firm with its exterior environment.

Financial changes

The company’s financial performance and financial goals play a pivotal role in the development of the company. Moreover, it helps to identify and improve the decision making process specifically when it comes to the monitoring stage. In order to identify the company’s strategic direction and to identify the financial changes in the company, financial metrics has been used to identify the financial health of an organization. Financial changes can be identified and evaluated through establishing benchmarks that include the best trends that have been followed in the industry (George, 2007).

One of the firm’s best measures to identify the financial performance is through the measuring free cash flow of the organization. FCF evaluates the efficient use of the organizational resources in monetary terms. With the help of free cash flow, the organization can identify the cash that has been left after deducting all the expenses. In addition to that, the company needs to analyze the proper,efficient and effective use of the company’s assets that are given to all the departments. Further, strategic decisions have a direct impact on company’s capital structure as the management needs to decide about the sources of financing in terms of debt and equity. Additionally, profitability ratio recognized the operational efficiency of the company that includes relationship between different elements (Dev, 2005).

Economic changes

The environment in which the economic changes took place affects the company’s strategic decisions. Over a period of time, many economic changes in the economy have emerged that in turn changed the strategic direction of the organization. Growth in the economy is important to consider if organizations need to prosper and grow. Economic changes in the country do have a direct impact on the strategic decision making of the company. The growth in the economy can be measured in terms of GDP of the country over a period of time. The manager of the company needs to analyze whether the economy has slow down or not. At this point, the managers need to analyze the strategic implementation of the company by putting into practice more aggressive tactics and strategies. Changes in the economic structure change the customers of the company as well and it becomes more severe during the bad economic times. Further, economic growth in the company is highly dependent upon the investment and productivity of the company (Kawakami, 2001).

Customer needs

Company’s strategic direction is based on understanding the needs and wants of the customers that need to be fulfilled to better implement strategic decisions of the company. As part of the company’s strategic decisions, the company needs to identify the potential problems and needs of the customers that in turn help the company to build brand loyalty and strong relationships with its old customers and open new ways to add new customers in the company’s portfolio. The company needs to engage the customers’ as well in making strategic changes and decisions within the company so that trust of customers can be achieved.

Recent activities to compete with rivals

To be successful, companies need to make strategies so as to compete with the rivals within the industry. The prime aim of the company is to make money so that competitors can be defeated. Companies can compete with and defeat their competitors through financial and marketing activities (George, 2007).

Finance activities

Financial activities of companies include making investment externally to make it more financially sound and attractive for investors. The company can beat their competitors by decreasing costs of their products. In order to decrease the cost, the company can go for bulk purchasing by availing discounts that in turn will reduce the cost of the company. In addition to that, the company can increase their prices to a certain level so that the value of the company can be increased than the contenders. While increasing price, the company needs to make sure that that price should not be that much that it impacts the brand loyalty and customers starts thinking about switching to other brands. Further, the company can go for customer acquisition and customer retention strategy to compete with the competitors. By making optimal capital structure, the company can make a proper proportion of debt and equity so that maximum return can be attained on minimum interest with minimum exposure to risk (Jones, 2008).......................

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