RE Module Essay

Strategic planning is the management activity of an organization to achieve the organization’s goals through setting priorities, focusing activities and resources, working of employees and stakeholders, agreement establishment, and evaluation of the organization’s direction (Balanced Scorecard Institute, 2015).

Strategic Management is the theory and practice of making decisions that shape the future of the firm. This course looks at the content and process of strategic decision making from the perspective of managers who are responsible for an entire business unit. These may be individuals who are acting in the capacity of a Chief Executive of a company, divisional General Managers, or departmental heads. It is also the perspective most

Chinese smartphone makers are slowly but surely conquering the world so to speak. Chine smartphone maker Meizu is another addition to the list. Meizu recently released its budget smartphone, Meizu M5.

Strategic Planning is the process of developing and maintaining a strategic fit between the organizations goals and capabilities as well as emerging market conditions and opportunities. This process begins with a clear company mission statement. However, this is only a small piece of a dynamic and perpetual process. Other activities involved with strategic planning also include setting supporting organizational objectives, designing a sound product mix as well as coordinating functional strategies. Strategic planning works to set the groundwork for the rest of the subsidiary planning functions in the company.

Xiaomi is a Chinese company that designs and sells smartphones and consumer electronics. The company has grown unprecedentedly to become one of the top five smartphone brands in China in three years. Xiaomi products are designed and manufactured for local Chinese customers, who meet customer expectations more closely than other competing brands, Xiaomi pinned their success on the combination of short supply, high quality and low priced products. For example, Xiaomi software has similar functions compared to the leading smartphone brands such as some famous android phone. With elimination of brick and mortar stores, as well as distributors and retailers, Xiaomi offers its customers highly competitive prices on its products. Apart from reducing

According to Griffin & Pustay (2005), a core competency is a distinctive strength or advantage that is central to a firm¡¦s operations, and by utilising its core competency in new markets, the firm is able to increase

Core competencies are the most significant value creating skills within a company and key areas of expertise that are distinctive to a company and critical to the company's long-term growth. Core competencies are the pieces that a company is superior than its competitors in the critical, central areas of the company where the most value is added to its products. These areas of expertise may be in any area from product development to employee dedication. A competence which is central to business's operations but which is not exceptional in some way is not considered as a core competence, as it will not generate a differentiated advantage over rival businesses. It follows from the concept of core competencies; resources that are

China is the world’s largest mobile phone market. Due to the large size of the Chinese cell phone market and its potential for long-term continual growth, competition for access to China’s consumer markets is intense. For the first ten years after entering China, Motorola had no competition but now competitive threats from other multinational companies like Nokia, Siemens, Samsung, and local producers like TCL are a cause for concern within Motorola.

Huawei owns three major businesses: carrier, enterprise and consumer, of which each business has successfully gained a significant portion of market share. As of today, Huawei’s carrier business in their 4G equipment is very active in over 140 countries, they have also launched an advanced 4.5G solution to bring a better experience to its consumers. For their enterprise business, many Fortune 500 companies have selected Huawei to be their partners in cloud architecture and enterprise networks. Their consumer business performance has improved a lot, ever since they launched smart watches and fitness bands as well as their growth of mid-range to high end products, Huawei has achieved an annual revenue growth of 70%, making Huawei one of the top three global device retailers. Its mobile products have also been challenging Apple in China and in some European countries.

Xiaomi has never believed in ‘old-fashioned’ advertising, shuns the concept of retail stores and decides to do all selling, online. This inevitably leads to a significant reduction in its cost price as “the price on e-commerce is essentially just fulfillment and shipping cost” (Kumar, 2014). E.g. while the average selling price for iPhones is very high, Xiaomi could offer its advanced smartphone at 30-60% lower from even other

In 2008, Apple had 19.2% of the smartphone market with their groundbreaking announcement of the iPhone. That is remarkable all things considered that they had just come into the marketplace and

Xiaomi was growing rapidly in the last five years in which it has become the world’s third largest smartphone company. Xiaomi has a great understanding of its customers and the market; therefore, it was able to attract many customers and create high quality products. One of the major factors that contributed to Xiaomi’s success was the mobile internet and e-commerce strategies. Xiaomi grew into a mobile internet and e-commerce company that contract-manufactures smartphones and compatible devices designed to offer a complete customer experience. The second major factor was Xiaomi’s world-class team. Xiaomi contained a world-class team of Chinese executives and one prominent western executive, with collective experience at top foreign IT firms like Google, Microsoft, Motorola, and Yahoo. Its executive team complemented Lei Jun, Xiaomi’s driven founder and CEO, and brought attributed that Lei Jun lacked. Furthermore, the last major factor was Xiaomi’s manufacturing model, which is based on customer demand. In other words, when Xiaomi’s customers place their orders

Very simply put, strategic planning identifies where the organization wants to be at some point in the future and how it is going to get there. The "strategic" part of this planning process is the continual attention to current changes in the organization and its external environment, and how this effects the future of the organization. Skills in strategic planning are critical to the long-term success of your organization.

Strategic management covers enterprise wide strategy formulation, implementation and evaluation. It emphasizes sustained wellbeing of organizations. Why? According to Thomas and Strickland (1996) strategic management

Strategic management plays a vital role in most organisations as it consists of formulating and implementing the company’s goals; this is done by taking into account the available resources and doing an analysis of the internal and external environment (Takalkar, 2014). The author of this essay will be identifying and analysing a significant strategic challenge that was faced by a local and global entity from two different industries, furthermore an external and internal analysis will be given. Lastly the author will address how the two organisations were able to overcome the strategic challenge in order to strengthen the strategic positions of the organisations. The local entity that was chosen is Eskom which falls part of the energy industry and for the global entity Samsung was chosen as it falls part of the technology industry. The differences found between Samsung and Eskom are that Samsung provides products that can be seen as a want for its consumers whereas Eskom provides a service which is a need for the general public. A similarity that can be found between the two entities is that both these companies are leading players within the industry they belong to. The reason these two organisations