Strategic Direction: 3000-word Business Report for Organization Expansion

Title: Strategic Direction

You are required to write a 3000 word business report on the strategic direction of an organisation of your choice, commenting on the issues you have identified and making appropriate recommendations.  This is in preparation for an interview with your chosen company for the role of Strategy Officer.  Your choice of organisation should be agreed with your tutor during Tutorial.   In this report, you should cover learning outcomes 1, 2, 3 and 6.

In this report you are looking at moving the business to Africa.

Task Requirements:

Overall word count = 3,000

An Executive summary and Company background should be Included in Your Report.

Format: A professional business report to senior management.

Present it beautifully!

The tasks should be presented in the style of a formal report addressing senior management team.  Use business English and write in the third person e.g.  “It is recommended that…” not, “I think we should do this…” Ensure your tasks are clearly signposted for the examiner by using good formatting, headings, and titles that relate to the assignment question.

Section 1 (LO1)

1.1 The current Situation

• What’s the current situation, e.g. market size, what’s happening, etc. to give some context to the firm’s current standing. 300 words ish

1.2 External environmental analysis/Audit

1. Prepare an environmental analysis (external), which will be used to inform the rest of the assignment – e.g. using models such as PEST, 5-Forces – they need to use ALL

2. Within this, identify the issues that are relevant, applicable to your firm & what the impacts are – positive/negative on the firm. Be prepared to draw conclusions for the external forces that you discover in your audit. For example,

A. Are there forthcoming changes in specific legislation? – be specific

B. What will the implications of that be?

C. How are consumer lifestyle changes and trends likely to affect the performance of your products and services?

D. Size of market/opportunity – can be abroad as the goal is to get to a wider audience

E. Which market segment

F. Trends identified

G. Peoples wants

H. Products/services identified

I. This will provide you with the information for your (SW – not included as only doing external analysis) OT in section 2.

A commentary & critical analysis based on the wider ‘macro/micro’ environmental setting which potentially impacts on the performance and strategic actions of the firm.  

Here you will need to identify the main factors impacting on the company (i.e., key ‘drivers of change’). You may find that some macro/micro factors exert a stronger influence over the company than other factors. You will need to make an evaluation of this through your assessment of the information presented in the case.  

This needs a lot of data/specific quantitative/qualitative information that is relevant to the context of the firm & that can prove that there is an opportunity in a new or existing market 1,300 words ish

Section 2 (LO2):

2.1 The evaluation of your Findings  

Prepare an evaluation report, of your findings, i.e. the key drivers, the opportunities & threats (from Section 1)

This Part is essentially a SWOT without the SW

As they are only doing an external analysis. So they will show only the OT & relate to the findings in 1.2 as shown below

The findings from your Macro/ Micro environment can be summarized as external features relating to Firm’s external environment and placed inside the opportunities and threats boxes.   

Explain and assess the ways your chosen organisation can react to the opportunities or threats presented by changes in the external environment you have identified.

• identify key driversof your new strategy – from these they can say as a result of some ID key drivers e.g. 2 or 3 drivers the new objective/strategy should be XXXX 300 words ish

Section 3 (LO3)

3.1 Recommendations:

• Finally, make recommendations to management for functional polices on the corporate strategy to determine the future direction of the firm, for the medium-long term of the organisation (3-5 years).   
• Explain and justify the use of your recommended strategy for success. By use of the following –
  • Porter’s Generic strategies,
  • Ansoff Matrix, &
  • one of the 3 Growth Options M&A, JV or organic growth –
• a strategic recommendation that is relevant to the assignment criteria and your chosen organisation and market place.
• Set SMART objectives

The findings of your analysis should be used to inform & justify the plan and will form the basis of the new objectives and strategy. 400 words ish  

3.2  Evaluating the Strategy

Here they should include consideration of Evaluating the Strategy as it is an iterative process via the Balance Scorecard(BSC) – not looking for detail here in that they do not need to apply the BSC as the strategy has not been delivered yet. But can be combine with the SMART objectives identified – KPI’s

A Short conclusion – to say why the recommended strategy should go ahead 200 words

Section 4 ( LO6)

• Critically Discuss McKinsey’s 7S’s as a change management theory, in managing a period of strategic change. – ideally applied to the firm discussed in the CW. 300 wordsish

Students need to include diagrams of the models that they have used in their analysis.