Strategic Plan for McKesson: Analyzing Internal and External Factors

Introduction
McKesson is an American health care organization that distributes pharmaceuticals and also provide medical supplies. This company also provide different health care information technologies and management tools to enhance the productivity of health care systems. This company in 1828 in New York City and it also acquired medical information systems firm in 1999 (Data & Governance Initiative, 2018). This report aims to write a strategic plan including different elements like proposing analytical tool, internal and external factors that may affect the success of the strategic plan. This report will also recommend solution the barriers to the strategic plan and also determine to specify target market by applying effective marketing approach.
 
Mission and Vision
The main mission of McKesson is to bring all the new advancement in the health care systems by advancing the growth and success of its partners and other associated companies. The vision of McKesson is to fundamentally change the quality and cost of accessible health care services by combining the clinical knowledge and technological advancements. This company also bring together the resources of a Fortune 15 company and qualifies process expertise (DeSalvo, 2015).     

Strategic Thinking
Strategic thinking is the rational thought process that mainly aims to identify the effects of different critical factors and variables on the long-term success of an organization. The strategic thinking of McKesson is related to the improvement in the vision of this company. The key factors that are determined by McKesson are unifying physicians, fostering collegiality, developing a common culture within a practice (Wagner, 2012).

Strategic Management
It is the assessment of all the necessities, ongoing planning, analysis and monitoring of the current situations that are required to achieve the organization's goal and objectives. The strategic management of the McKesson is very effective as its strategic processes create an effective planning conversation, different methods that help to improve its financial status, its geographic data is managed in a valuable way, and it also manages its leaders so that they implement data-driven decision more effectively.

Strategic Planning
Strategic planning is a process in which an organization analyse its current position and abilities and position or capabilities after implementing effective strategies. The strategic planning process of McKesson helps the company to develop an effective vision for the future by using the short-term tactical planning so that they can help to drive best results and effective momentum (Ginter, Duncan & Swayne, 2018). 

Strategic Momentum
This is one of the major objectives of the management of an organization to maintain its strategic momentum. Aligning all the consequences and decision-making processes are base to do the actual work to achieve the specific goal. McKesson handles all its decision-making process based on its understanding of its opportunities and challenges.

Strategic Thinking

Analytical Tool
SWOT will be the best analytical tool that will help the management team so that they can implement strategies to achieve mission and goals. This analytical tool will help McKesson to analyse the coordination between different departments like Management information system, finance, marketing, operations and strategic planning (Peppard & Ward, 2016).

Strengths of McKesson
The “Go to Market Strategies” are very successful.
The customer satisfaction of this company is also very high as it has effective management team for customer relationship.
McKesson is also successful in managing and tracking records.
McKesson is an expert in stepping in new markets as it has diversified economic cycle.
It also has a strong dealer community
McKesson is also successful in the execution of new strategies and projects.

Weakness of McKesson
McKesson is lagging somewhere in the advancement of technology and other technical equipment.
This company also face issues when there is a new entrant in the industry.
There is no effective and efficient financial planning.
This company also faces difficulties in interacting with other companies that have different work culture.
The range of products that are sold by this company is less. 

Opportunities for McKesson
The transportation cost is continuously decreasing and the reason behind this is lower shipping rates.
After the implementation of the government free trade agreement, there is more way to enter new markets.
Accessibility to health care through the online channel also increase the number of customers.
Access to emerging technologies will also beneficial for McKesson to implement different pricing strategies.

Threats McKesson Facing
McKesson is operating in several countries so it faces different currency fluctuations.
Increasing the production of raw material also affects the profitability of McKesson.
International sales are affected by the rising trend towards isolationism in the economy of America.
Some of the product categories are affected by the new environment regulations under the Paris agreement.

Effectiveness to Analytical Tool in achieving Strategic Plan
After identifying the strengths and weaknesses of McKesson, it is easy to implement new strategies so that the company can achieve its goal and objective effectively. This tool is very effective in achieving the strategic plan easily because it will guide with the where the company can put its efforts so that it can success over its threats like in which areas McKesson should install new technological equipment so that its products can be increased (Jacobs & Ward, 2019). After analysing McKesson’s strengths, the company can focus to minimise its weakness so that it can use different resources to work for the upcoming opportunities and take the advantage of those. For examples, McKesson can work on its information systems to take profitable advantage of online services so that the number of customers can be increased. This company can also plan for its expansion in new markets because there are several opportunities after the implementation of the government's free trade agreement. 

Strategic Management

Internal and External Factors
Several internal and external factors can influence the strategic planning of McKesson. Internal factors that can affect the strategic plan has been already discussed above and these are the evaluation of major weaknesses and strength of McKesson. Several other external factors are a barrier to the success of McKesson’s strategic plan can be identified by PESTEL analysis. 

Internal Factors
Employees
There are some employees and department that can be a barrier to the success of the strategic plan as they are not capable to handle the change or do not involve in the decision-making processes. 

McKesson’s Culture
McKesson's culture is to build integrity and collaboration with different other resource providers. It also develops respect and inspires every employee so that they can give their best but at some place, this company fails to generate effective culture value and also misunderstand their ethics (Hovenkamp, 2012).

Communication 
This is also a major factor that can affect the success of the strategic plan. Miscommunication can lead to the misunderstanding that may affect the processing of the strategic plan.

External Factors
Political Factors
Services-related trading law & tariffs
Favoured partners in trading
Wholesale drug-related anti-trust regulations
Pricing laws and restrictions: There is a pricing control framework for services
Taxation - rates of taxation and benefits
Wage rule - minimum wage and overtime

Economic Factors
Form of economic system
Involvement of the government in the private market and associated programs
labour rates and efficiency in the economy
Level in Sales Cycle
Level of unemployment
Level of inflation
The rates of interest

Social Factors
The population's characteristics and ability level
The system of groups, hierarchy and control of society.
Level of education and quality of education in the McKesson Corporation
Behaviours - health, environmental consciousness
Goals of Recreation
The creative spirit of culture and its wider existence. Some cultures, although some do not, promote entrepreneurship.

Technological Factors 
Recent technical advances by rivals of the McKesson Company
The effect of technology on product offerings
Effect on pricing structure in the wholesale drug market 
Effect on the function of the supply chain in the service sector
Technological Diffusion Rate (Hegewald, et al., 2016).

Environmental Factors
Regulations on air and water emissions in the wholesale pharmacy industry
Reusing
Regulation of waste management in the service sector
Attitudes towards organic products or environmental products
Climate
Changing the Atmosphere
Laws governing emissions in the atmosphere

Legal Factors
Anti-trust laws in the wholesale and general drug business in the region.
Act on Prejudice
Public domain, patents / Rules on intellectual property
Security and e-commerce for customers
The Employment Law
Law on health and welfare
Data Privacy

Recommendations
Training to Employees: To improve the performance of the employees McKesson needs to introduce new training programs and clear the vision and mission to the employees and motivate them to achieve it.

Authority for Ethical Values: Create a department that ensures that the company will follow all the ethical values while implementing different strategies and managing operations of the company. 

Information Systems: For better communication within the organization McKesson needs to implement information systems and they also need to ensure that whether the employees able to understand effective the goals and objective of the organization or not. They also need to use different communication tools in which fast and effective communication can be done (Lynas, 2012).

Political factors: McKesson needs to get full information about the pricing laws and anti-trust regulations before taking action related to development. The company also needs to know about taxation before implementing any strategy.

Economic Factor: Rate of inflation and unemployment can also affect the success of the strategic plan so McKesson needs to understand the whole economic factors that may affect the performance and then take action accordingly.  
    
Technological Factor: The company can implement new modern technologies to grow its productivity. The company need to think about the technological diffusion rate accordingly take actions. 

Target Market
This strategic plan will target to deliver more care management tools and health care information systems to different health care systems to achieve its mission and vision. For bringing the new advancement in the health care systems this strategic plan targets both public and private health care organization that provides treatment and diagnosis. This company combines technical advancement and clinical to produce effective medication that will help McKesson to achieve its goal and objectives.  

Approach to Marketing of Strategic Plan
By building responsive healthcare websites on which it can get feedback from patients and other health care departments related to the services and products provided by this company. For healthcare marketing utilizing PPC and displaying advertisement will also be a great approach and using consistent healthcare branding will also beneficial (Kumar, 2016).

Conclusion
From the above report, this can be concluded that this strategic plan will be successful in achieving McKesson’s mission and vision. After applying analytical tools, it will become easy to identify the current position of McKesson and after this McKesson can also take effective decisions and implement appropriate strategies. All the internal and external factor will also affect the success of the strategic plan.