Strategic Alignment Is A Method For Understanding The Nature Of A Business

This paper analyzes the term ‘strategic fit’ exactly means, types of strategic fit, necessities to focus on strategic fit, and most importantly how well an organization can align its resources & capabilities with the opportunities that exist in the external environment so as to achieve peak performance in the business. Strategy of Nestlé as an example to discuss how far it is true that effective strategic fit ensures organization’s resources & capabilities and what the environment exactly needs from it.

Our mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time. Starbucks has lived up to that motto each and every year and with such great numbers and great feedback the company keeps on growing in the right direction. Starbucks is well known around the world for delivering fast, efficient coffee in all forms. From their frappachino’s, to their brew coffee and ice tea they are definitely the set example that other company’s in their area follow. They live by six principles that they practice each and every day they represent there coffee which has always been there passion to deliver

starbucks Corp., an international coffee and coffeehouse chain based in Seattle, Washington, has expanded rapidly since its opening in 1971. These outrageous success was due to its well-developed strategy vision which lay out the company's strategic course in developing and strengthening its business. Starbucks is a global corporation that sells authentic coffee in 30 countries, reporting revenues of nearly $5.1 billion in 2006. The main goal of Starbucks is to embrace diversity by applying the highest standards of excellence. Starbucks strives to perfect the relationship with the working class by making the service as fast as possible because they believe that every customer has their own personal rate. One

In order to succeed in today's market place, whatever key business purpose or strategy your company emphasizes, must be reflected in the workplace practices. These workplace practices should subsequently manage and change the behaviors of the company and its employees to serve that purpose and strategy. Strategic Alignment is the business redesign process by which you link strategy to the business model and environment with the objective of minimizing waste and misdirection of effort and resources. So how can you determine if your work place practices align with your strategy? How can you achieve strategic alignment?

Additionally with its growth strategy Starbucks seemed to have lost the ability to communicate its values to its customers. Note that Starbucks research team discovered that between 2000 and 2001 there was an increase in customers who felt that Starbucks primarily cared about making money and building more stores. This is an indication that the company lost sight of the components making up its value proposition. Customer service was a major component of Starbucks value proposition but according to the research team by 2002 it discovered that Starbucks was not meeting expectations in terms of customer satisfaction. In fact the data collected by the research team indicated that 10% of customers would like to see improvements in service especially speed of service and 19% would like to have friendlier more attentive staff.

There are two strategies provided to solve the most important human resource issue which is identified in the previous step. Firstly, one of the commonly used HR model is performance culture model which is appropriate for the issue adjusted before. HR undertakes the responsibility for shifting the entire corporate culture with result in every single way of it enhances performance and results; the net result is that excellent people practices become a sustainable competitive advantage (Sullivan, 2010). The second strategy addressed to the issue will be Aligning strategy. Effective communication of strategy within an organization is one of the key elements of strategic alignment. Strategic alignment has tools such as real-time strategic performance dashboards for operations, engineering and management which can help bottom-line business improvement performance (Barr & Cook, 2008).

ticket size) X (4.4 customer life years)] $921.78. Calculating sales amount for the highly satisfied customer using the same method shows an amount of [(7.2 visits/mo) X (12 months) X ($4.42 avg. ticket size) X (8.3 customer life years)] $3,169.67. The sales figure for the highly satisfied customer is nearly three and a half times as much as the satisfied customer. This is why it is very important for Starbucks to figure out how to provide more customer satisfaction. The company needs to do research to find out if quality of service has actually declined. There is always the societal perception that a large mega brand is incapable of delivering customer intimacy. This perception is not necessarily a foregone conclusion. It’s just a matter of Starbucks collecting accurate information regarding both quality and quantity of its customer service. The company needs to take a look at itself and determine if its customer service strategy had changed from 1992 to 2002. This is an era indicative of the massive growth. Starbucks needs to answer the question, “Did we lose our focus on customer service quality by concentrating too much on opening more stores?”.

Starbucks advertises two essential mission statements. First and foremost, it strives to “establish [ourselves] as the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles while [we] grow(s).” (Starbucks) Reflective of its mission, Starbucks bases its strategic campaign and communications on six indispensable philosophies; structuring a pleasant work environment in which employees are treated with “respect and dignity,” incorporating diversity in all business aspects, purchasing, roasting and delivering fresh coffee, retaining satisfied customers, giving back to the community and environment, and developing

Starbucks’ lead in the specialty coffee industry exemplifies the result of deftly executing a well-planned business strategy. Moreover, Starbucks is well positioned for what is expected to be a continuing rise in the popularity of specialty coffee products. The question before Starbucks’ leadership, however, is what avenues will lead to Starbucks’ goal of remaining true to its core, the highest quality coffee products while providing a “total coffee experience” for its customers?

Starbucks has put heavy concentration on product innovation, new product launches and branding strategies and as a result, the company has lost sight of the customer’s wants and needs. Ultimately, Starbucks is not properly or correctly measuring customer satisfaction. They are basing these scores on characteristics affecting the product, and not precisely measuring the quality of their services. As Exhibit 10 from the case study shows, Starbucks’ customers ranked a clean and convenient store as the most important attributes of creating customer satisfaction. As marketing research is beginning to reveal, this should not be the only focus. Starbucks needs to shift their priorities and rank fast service, customer experience, and atmosphere as most important, as new studies suggest.

The "best-fit" approach questions the universality assumption of the best-practice perspective. It emphasizes contingency fit between HR activities and the organization's stage of development, an organization's internal structures and its external environment like clients, suppliers, competition and labour markets (Redman and Wilkinson 2009). HR policy should be minted by the appropriate context of individual employees and therefore support the overall competitive strategy. Aligning HRM practices to strategies can enable companies to create potential competitive advantages (Schuler and Jackson 1987 in Redman and Wilkinson 2009).

Starbucks has discovered that they are not always meeting their customers’ expectations in the area of customer satisfaction. Starbucks has to come up with an action plan to address this issue, considering its significant correlation and impact to sales and profitability.

Starbucks is a successful premium coffee retailer. Its target market sets as well-educated, white- color patrons between the ages of 25 and 44. There are three components of the brand, live coffee, service, and atmosphere. However, its brand image is losing while they focus on retail expansion.

Starbucks – one of the fastest growing companies in the US and in the world - had built its position on the market by connect with its customers, and create “third place” beside home and work, where people could relax and enjoy others or themselves. It was the motto of Starbucks’ owner Howard Schultz and mostly thanks to his philosophy; company has became the biggest coffee drink retailer in the world. However, within the new customer satisfaction report, there is shown some concerns, that company has lost the connection with customers and it must been taken some steps to help Starbucks to go back on the right path regarding customer satisfaction.

Starbucks is and will continue to be one of the largest distributers of a cup of coffee today and into the future.  The Starbucks mission to “inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time” directly correlates with the experience a customer has in each store. They have many ways to differentiate in comparison to competitors because they provide an experience while shopping for a coffee allowing them to charge a premium price.