Strategic Management and Strategy

The purpose of this article is to illuminate the need for any organization to have its IT strategy and business strategy properly aligned. While many organizations view IT and business alignment as an event – it is actually an on-going process, or continuous journey. Therefore, the main problem is that many organizations of today still hold these two principles (business mission & IT strategy) as two separate entities. However, in the Information Age – collaboration is key to capturing and retaining market penetration. To not have alignment with the IT and business strategy together is not a matter of want it is a matter of survival. This report will expand upon the need for business and IT strategic alignment as well as examine what happens in lack of a comprehensive plan. This will be done by examining the Vermont Teddy Bear company prior to and after the arrival of Bob Stetzel, the Vice President of Information Technology. This document will view it findings and make recommendations on the immediate and future operations of the company.

The paper that I 'm writing will help you to gain information on how Strategic Management and Strategic Competitiveness play hand and hand when dealing with a business. The business that I have chosen to write about is Nike. I have always wanted to know the practices that Nike used to make their business last this long and how have they been so successful. I will explain to you how globalization and technology changes have helped or hurt the company and the major role that it has played. I also plan to construct a plan to see how my corporation could earn above-average returns and increase their gaining potential. I will explain Nike 's vision and mission statement and show how this had allowed them to continue to be one of the most outstanding business in this day and age. In turn, I plan to show how each or stakeholder plays an important role in the success of the corporation.

The purpose of the paper is to research and understand how the changes of globalization and technology have impacted the Airline industry. This paper will also apply the industrial organization model and the resource-based model to determine how the Airline industry earn above-average returns. This paper will explain how the Airline industry’s success is through its mission and vision statements with Southwest Airlines as an example. Finally, this paper will evaluate how the importance each category of the stakeholder impacts are to the overall success of the Airline industry.

Several internal and external drivers have pushed Synergetic Solutions Inc., (SSI) in a direction to implement organizational change. To begin with there has been a stagnation of the systems integration market, industry standards for system building, selling and reselling and system networking solutions have made significant process improvements, and finally productivity and absenteeism are declining (Organizational Structure Simulation, 2004.) In application of the Lewin's three-phase model because of these drivers of change, it is now time to unfreeze the current processes (McShane, S. 2002.) In the Burke-Litwin Model of Organizational Performance and Change theory, the application process has begun with the strategic initiatives by Harold Redd (CFO), implementation of growth targets, employee involvement in productivity and absenteeism and forays to networking solutions (George, H. 1992.) In application of Tichy Strategic Alignment Process model

The purpose of my assignment has been done in terms of strategic analysis, its formulation and implementation of Ryanair organization. The assignment is developed by three parts which includes variety of questions in the each part.

This report demonstrates the evaluation of current performance of JD Sports Company. Method of Analysis includes Ansoff’s matrix and Porter’s generic growth strategies to discuss the nature of the market which JD Sports invest in. The financial methods are including the flexibility and stability of JD sports which judged by the liquidity, current ratio, operation capital, gearing and profit margin of this company. These figures could be collected from the annual report or balance sheet. This report analyzed the JD sport’s position in the market, and used generic and external growth method to expand market size. Such as acquired a lot stores to improve business profitability. Obviously, JD has expanded to the European

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?

According to the article, “Avoiding the Alignment trap in information technology”, 75% of IT projects fail to deliver the expected functionality, timing and cost. According to survey results, two major patterns lead to failure of IT: alignment and efficiency. Alignment is the degree to which the IT group understands the priorities of the business and expends its resources, pursues projects ad provides information consistent with them. This case recognized the following four IT alignment quadrants that companies fall into as followed:

In accordance with Chan’s (2002) views, there was no structural alignment in the process as the responsibility of managing IT was shared resulting in a tiny business growth. After forming the BPTO and undergoing strategy change, the company came up with roles for IS as a strategic alignment (Chan, 2002) by categorizing them and relating them to business goals. This comparison articulated the priorities of a

M. J. Earl wrote on information system strategy, and argued that there were five different models: business-led, method-driven, administrative, technological, and organisational (Earl 1990:181). He argued that organisational was the best, which is the system that treats strategic information system planning as being “based on IS [information systems] decisions being made through continuous integration between the IS function and the organization.” (Earl 1990:195) One interesting development of this that links Earl’s work with later IT Architecture theory is the work by Kanungo, Sadavarti and Srinivas, which, via a case study of the Indian public sector, draws connections between strategy implementation and organisational culture (Kanungo, Sadavarti and Srinivas, 2001).

Globalization changes have impacted Burger King in the following ways; since the company began in 1953 with its first restaurant in Jacksonville, Florida and opened several locations across the United States, the company began its international expansion in 1969 with its first international franchise location in Canada, followed by Australia in 1971, and Europe in 1975. The setting up of franchises outside the United States was as a result of fast food opportunities arising outside the United States. So as to fully integrate in the international market, Burger King had to adopt and embrace

Strategic alignment occurs when the Information Technology (IT) and business strategies are in dynamic symmetry with the structures that support strategy execution, which include; organization framework and Information systems (Lapiedra, Alegre, and Chiva, 2006). Therefore, when this alignment exists IT can predict what the business future requirements are and set up a trajectory to meet those upcoming needs (Hu and Huang, 2007). Luftman (2003) noted that for over two decades IT to business alignment has been classified among the top management concerns in organizations. Although IT-business alignment has been identified as a promoter for IT investment to enhance organizational performance, fear prevails among management teams that the return of investment in IT will not be achieved. The main reason of failure to generate return from IT investment is the practice’s challenge faced by many implementers due to external forces, like transformation of IT (Luftman and Kempaiah, 2008), cost, and lack of understanding on alignment framework and models to use at different strategic planning levels (Oana, 2010).

Process for Applying the Technique • After isolating the strategic distance between the seven elements of strategic fit, there are essentially three options: – The firm can work to change the required components of each ‘S’ so that they are consistent with strategy. – It can change the strategy to fit the existing orientation of the other six elements of the model. – Often, a compromise between each option is the realistic alternative.

Strategy literature offers many techniques and models suited for systematic strategic analysis. The SWOT analysis, the PESTEL analysis, the Five Forces analysis framework are the prime examples of techniques that can be adopted for strategic analysis. This assignment will use PESTEL and Five forces model to analysis the environment of CRH plc.

Future- oriented: Strategic management encompasses forecasts, what is anticipated by the managers. In such decisions, emphasis is placed on the development of projections that will enable the firm to select the most promising strategic options. In the turbulent environment, a firm will succeed only if it takes a proactive stance towards change.