Chapter 10 & 11

Hello guys! This week Miss Ummi cover two topics in the lecture. Before the class start, Miss Ummi asked us to do a personality test known as Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The test is all about ourselves. From the answer, we can know the suitable job scope for us. It was so exciting. :) 

 Then, we continue the lecture in chapter 10, Miss Ummi explained BUILDING AN ORGANIZATION CAPABLE OF GOOD STRATEGY EXECUTION: PEOPLE, CAPABILITIES AND STRUCTURE.

From the explanation, I understand that hiring, training and retaining the right person constitute a key component of the strategy execution process so that the company will grow smoothly.

While chapter 11 is about MANAGING INTERNAL OPERATION. This topic discuss that rewards and incentives can promote a good strategy execution and achievement both in strategic and financial targets. A company may give monthly reward like "employee of the month" or maybe give a ticket to Mecca to perform Hajj or Umrah as their reward of excellent as the reward will motivate them to perform well in future. 

That's all from me. THANK YOU! :)

Chapter 8

CORPORATE STRATEGY: DIVERSIFICATION AND THE MULTIBUSINESS COMPANY

 WHAT IS SYNERGY???

Creating added value for shareholders via diversification requires building a multibusiness company where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts - an outcome known as SYNERGY

TQ :)

Chapter 7

STRATEGIES FOR COMPETING IN INTERNATIONAL MARKETS

This chapter discuss about the diamond framework.

The Diamond Framework answers important questions about competing on an international basis by

1. Predicting where new foreign entrants are likely to come from and their strengths

2. Highlighting foreign market opportunities where rivals are weakest

3. Identifying the location-based advantages of conducting certain value chain activities of the firm in a particular country

There are Export Strategies, Licensing and Franchising Strategies, Foreign Subsidiary Strategies,  Greenfield Strategies provided for competing in International Markets.

Collaborative Strategies involving alliances or joint ventures with foreign partners are a popular way for companies to edge their way into the markets of foreign countries.

While Cross-border alliances enable a growth-minded company to widen its geographic coverage and strengthen its competitiveness in foreign markets; at the same time, they offer flexibility and allow a company to retain some degree of autonomy and operating control.

That's all for this entry. See you next time. Thank you. :)

SHARING SESSION <O-SHIMA JAPANESE RESTAURANT>

It's a sharing session friends! :)  The sharing session was conducted by Mrs. Asnidar Hanim Yusuf, the owner of O-Shima Japanese Restaurant. The restaurant located at Kiosk B3, Shah Alam Walk , Persiaran Majlis , 40000 Shah Alam, Malaysia.

As Madam Asnidar sharing her education background, she said that she have a degree and master in engineering but her passion towards foods are bigger that she decided to opened a Japanese restaurant which provided by HALAL product. 

Madam Asnidar faced obstacle in getting HALAL certification for her restaurant since the suppliers do not want to get the HALAL certificate for their product or ingredient used in the food that she sell in her restaurant. She also shared the upside down of her business through the years and ALHAMDULILLAH, now her restaurant survived and have been accepted among the people in the area. :)

Madam Asnidar once said that "Its not always bad to fail, the most important thing is how you bounce back after the failure". Its not worth it if you cries over the river yet do nothing to stand yourself after that so it is important to gain as much knowledge as we can to get involved in business field.

This is some of the menu provided in O-Shima Restaurant. I personally want to get there and taste the variety of menu provided at the restaurant, insyaAllah. :)

THANK YOU! :D

TMA3 tutorial class with Madam Huda

In the tutorial class, we learnt how to analyze the case study. Madam Huda teach us about the TOWS MATRIX ANALYSIS. 

It was very interesting yet difficult to come out with the new idea after we combined the S+O, W+O, S+T, and W+T strategies. But yeahh, its a new thing to us so it take times to understand the application of the TOWS matrix. :)

It's the use of smartphones and gadget. isn't it? ^^

We have to make more exercise to remember the stages of case study analysis. 

THANK YOU MADAM HUDA, MISS UMMI  AND FRIENDS! :) 

CHAPTER 6

 Strengthening A Company's Competitive Position: Strategic Moves, Timing, and Scope of Operations.

1. What is BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY? B.O.S is a business strategy book first published in 2005 and written by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne of the Blue Ocean Strategy Institute at INSEAD. The book illustrates what the authors believe is the best organizational strategy to generate growth and profits. B.O.S suggests that an organization should create new demand in an uncontested market space, or a "Blue Ocean", rather than compete head-to-head with other suppliers in an existing industry. 

First Edition Cover

Miss Ummi said this is an interesting book to explore with pleasure in order to have more understanding in strategic management. so friends, you can either read it online or buy it at bookstores near you. :)

 2. Sometimes, a company's best strategic option is to seize the initiative, go on the attack, and launch a strategic offensive to improve its market position. The best offensives use a company's most powerful resources and capabilities to attack rivals in the areas where they are weakest. ^^

3. Next is horizontal and vertical scope where Horizontal Scope is the range of product and service segments that a firm serves within its focal market while Vertical Scope is the extent to which a firm's internal activities encompass one, some, many or all of the activities that make up an industry's entire value chain system.

4. A strategic alliance is a formal agreement between two or more separate companies in which they agree to work cooperatively toward some common objective. 

5. A joint venture is a partnership involving the establishment of an independent corporate entity that the partners own and control jointly, sharing in its revenues and expenses. 

6. Merger is the combining of two or more firms into a single corporate entity that often takes on a new name. 

so, that's it. see you next time!  thank you 

MGB 4013 - Week Five

This chapter is about The Five Generic Competitive Strategies: Which One To Employ?

A low-cost provider's basis for competitive advantage is lower overall costs than competitors. Successful low-cost leaders, who have the lowest industry costs, are exceptionally good at finding ways to drive costs out of their businesses and still provide a product or service that buyers find acceptable while a cost driver is a factor that has a strong influence on a firm's costs. It was said that 'a low-cost advantage over rivals can translate into better profitability than rivals attain'.

Differentiation enhances profitability whenever a company's product can command a sufficiently higher price or produce greater unit sales to more than cover the added costs of achieving the differentiation. Broad differentiation strategy is to offer unique product to wider range of buyers and consumers that satisfy with the fee and products. 

When a focused low-cost or focused differentiation strategy is attractive, the target market niche is a big enough to be profitable and offers good growth potential so industrial leaders choose not to compete in the niche - focuses avoid competing against strong competitors. Its basically difficult to multi-segment competitors to meet the specialized needs of niche buyers.

Best-cost provider strategies are a hybrid of low-cost provider and differentiation strategies that aim at providing desired quality of service that happen while competing the rivals on price list. A company's competitive strategy should be well-matched to its internal situation and predicted on leveraging its collection of competitively valuable resources and capabilities.

MGB 4013 - Week Four

Hello friends! In week four we've learnt a topic about EVALUATING A COMPANY"S RESOURCES, CAPABILITIES, AND COMPETITIVENESS.

Basically, we discussed six questions throughout the topic. Let's discuss the questions. :)


1. How well is the firm's present strategy working?

##  The best indicators of a well-conceived, well-executed strategy is when the firm is achieving its stated financial and strategic objectives and it is an above-average industry performer.

Identifying the Components of a Single-Business Company's Strategy

As stated in the Strategic Management Principle, sluggish financial performance and second-rate market accomplishments almost always signal weak strategy, weak execution, or both.

2. What are the firm's competitively important resources and capabilities?

##  According to strategic management core concepts, a resource is a competitive asset that is owned or controlled by a firm while a capability or competence is the capacity of a firm to perform and internal activity competently through deployment of a firm's resources where a firm's resources and capabilities represent its competitive assets and are big determinants of its competitiveness and ability to succeed in the marketplace. Next, a resource bundle is a linked and closely integrated set of competitive assets centered around one or more cross-functional capabilities. The VRIN tests for sustainable competitive advantage ask if a resource is Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, and Non-substitutable. Social complexity (company culture, interpersonal relationships among managers or R&D teams, trust-based relations with customers or suppliers) and casual are two factors that inhibit the ability of rivals to imitate a firm's most valuable resources and capabilities. Plus, a dynamic capability is the ongoing capacity of a firm to modify its existing resources and capabilities or create new ones by (improving existing resources and capabilities incrementally and adding new resources and capabilities to the firm's competitive asset portfolio).

3. Is the company able to seize market opportunities and nullify external threats?

## SWOT analysis is a simple but powerful tool for sizing up a company's strengths and weaknesses, its market opportunities, and the external threats to its future well-being. 

4. Are the company's cost structure and customer value proposition competitive?

## The higher a company's costs are above those of close rivals, the more competitively vulnerable it becomes. However, the greater the amount of customer value that a company can offer profitably relative to close rivals, the less competitively vulnerable it becomes. As we've cover in this topic, a company's cost competitiveness depends not only on the costs of internally performed activities (its own value chain) but also on costs in the value chains of its suppliers and distribution channel allies. Bench-marking the costs of company activities against rivals provides hard evidence of whether a company is cost-competitive while performing value chain activities with capabilities that permit the company to either outmatch rivals on differentiation or beat them on costs will give the company a competitive advantage.

  

5. Is the firm competitively stronger or weaker than key rivals?

## High-weighted competitive strength ratings signal a strong competitive position and possession of competitive advantage; low ratings signal a weak position and competitive disadvantage. A company's competitive strength scores pinpoint its strengths and weaknesses against rivals and point directly to the kinds of offensive/defensive strengths and reduce its competitive vulnerabilities. Thus, a good strategy must contain ways to deal with all the strategic issues and obstacles that stand in the way of the company's financial and competitive success in the years ahead.

6. What strategic issues and problems merit-front-burner managerial attention?

## It is stated that zeroing in on the strategic issues a company faces and compiling a list of problems and roadblocks creates a strategic agenda of problems that merit prompt managerial attention. 

u Strategic “How To” Issues:

●How to meet challenges of new foreign competitors.

●How to combat the price discounting of rivals.

●How to both reduce high costs and prepare for price reductions.

●How to sustain growth as buyer demand slows.

●How to adapt to the changing demographics of the firm’s customer base.

u Strategic “Should We” Issues:

●Expand rapidly or cautiously into foreign markets.

●Re-position the firm to move to a different strategic group.

●Counter increasing buyer interest in substitute products.

●Expand of the firm’s product line.

●Correct the firm’s competitive deficiencies by acquiring a rival firm with the missing strengths.

MGB 4013 - Week Three

Hi guys! This week we've learnt another chapter which titled Evaluating A Company's External Environment. The objective of this topic is to thinking strategically about a firm's external environment that we have to form a strategic vision of where the firm needs to head, to identify promising strategic options for the firm as well to select the best strategy and business model for the firm to achieve the best result in business. 

Basically, this chapter covered by 7 questions. Let's cover those questions briefly. :)


QUESTION 1: WHAT ARE THE STRATEGICALLY RELEVANT FACTORS
IN THE MACRO-ENVIRONMENT?

   It's known as PESTEL Analysis which focuses on principal components of strategic significance in the macro-environment. 

QUESTION 2: HOW STRONG ARE THE INDUSTRY’S COMPETITIVE FORCES?

   There are 5 competitive forces; 1)competition from rival sellers. 2)competition from potential new entrants. 3)competition from producers of substitute products. 4)supplier bargaining power. and 5)customer bargaining power. 

# Whether an industry's entry barriers ought to be considered high or low depends on the resources and capabilities possessed by the pool of potential entrants.

# High entry barriers and weak entry threats today do not always translate into high entry barriers and weak entry threats tomorrow.

# The strongest of the five forces determines the extent of the downward pressure on an industry's profitability.

# Having more than one strong force means that an industry has multiple competitive challenges with which to cope. 

   A company's strategy is increasingly effective the more it provides some insulation from competitive pressures, shifts the competitive battle in the company's favor, and positions firms to take advantage of attractive growth opportunities.

QUESTION 3: WHAT FACTORS ARE DRIVING INDUSTRY CHANGE, AND WHAT IMPACTS WILL THEY HAVE?

   First, we have to identify what the driving forces are. Then, assessing whether the driving forces are, on the whole, acting to make the industry more or less attractive and next, determine what strategy changes are needed to prepare for the impact of the driving forces as the driving forces are the major underlying causes of change in industry and competitive conditions.

QUESTION 4: HOW ARE INDUSTRY RIVALS POSITIONED IN THE MARKET?

   As we've learned in this topic, a strategic group is a cluster of industry rivals that have similar or identical competitive approaches and market positions while strategic group mapping is a technique for displaying the different market or competitive positions that rival firms occupy in the industry. Thus, the strategic group maps reveal which companies are close competitors and which are distant competitors. 

A Strategic Group Map Example

QUESTION 5: WHAT STRATEGIC MOVES ARE RIVALS LIKELY TO MAKE NEXT?

   Any business company should know some information about rivals that is useful in anticipating their next strategic moves. We have to know and understand those signals of the likelihood of strategic moves as studying competitors past behavior and preferences provides a valuable assist in anticipating what moves rivals are likely to make next in the marketplace.

QUESTION 6: WHAT ARE THE INDUSTRY’S KEY SUCCESS FACTORS?

   KSF's are the strategy elements, product and service attributes, operational approaches, resources, and competitive capabilities that are necessary for competitive success by any and all firms in an industry. Vary from industry, and over time within the same industry, and in importance as drivers of change and competitive conditions change.

QUESTION 7: IS THE INDUSTRY OUTLOOK CONDUCIVE TO GOOD PROFITABILITY?

   The anticipated industry environment is fundamentally attractive if it presents a company with good opportunity for above-average profitability BUT, the industry outlook is fundamentally unattractive if a firm's profit prospects are unappealingly low. 

That's all i can share with you in this entry. see you in the next entry, insyaAllah. :)

MGB 4013 - Week Two

Hello friends! In this entry I will write about the second lecture of the subject. In this lecture, we've learnt two topics where Chapter One is The Nature of Strategic Management and Chapter Two is The Business Vision and Mission.


Chapter One - The Nature of Strategic Management

Basically the strategic management process consists of three stages:

1. Strategy formulation that includes developing a vision and mission, identifying an organization's opportunities and threats, and determining the strengths and weaknesses as known as SWOT analysis, generating strategies and choosing particular strategies to be done. This strategy formulation including;

• Deciding the new businesses to enter,
• What businesses to abandon,
• How they can allocate resources,
• Whether to expand the operations,
• Whether to enter international markets,
• Whether to form a joint venture, and
• How to avoid a hostile takeover.

2. Strategy implementation requires a firm to establish their annual objectives, devise policies, motivate employees, and allocate resources so that the formulated strategies can be executed and it is also called as the action stage.

3. Strategy evaluation is defined as reviewing external factors that are the bases for current strategies, measuring performance, and taking the corrective actions to the strategy.

As in the first chapter, we covered all topics that we will learn in the Strategic Management throughout the semester briefly. So, figure 1.1 shows a comprehensive strategic management model while figure 1.2 shows the benefits to a firm that does strategic planning in their business.  

Chapter Two - The Business Vision and Mission

In this chapter, we were explained that a vision statement should answer the basic question, that is, "what do we want to become?" as the vision statement should be short, differ from the mission statement as it is a declaration of an organizations --"reason for being" and answering the important question --"what is our business?" and it is an essential for effectively establishing objectives and formulating strategies.


There are 9 mission statement components as following;

1. Customers
2. Products or services--how we entertain our customer
3. Markets
4. Technology--to produce product(quantity with quality)
5. Concern for survival, growth, and profitability
6. Philosophy
7. Self-concept
8. Concern for public image--its related with CSR(corporate service resposibility) 
9. Concern for employees

I think, tingtong. hihi. This is what i can share about the second week of lecture. Enough saying for this time entry i guess. see you next time! :)

MGB 4013

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim.

It's a new semester friends! And this is absolutely a brand new subject for us to get to know about and understand the knowlegde.

so, in the first lecture, Miss Ummi asked us to built a tower from the newspaper within 10 minutes as she said the tallest tower will be the winner. So we were divided into groups of 10 to 13 group members to set up the highest tower as we can. 10 minutes passed quickly and the tower were evaluated based on its strength and verily, my group tower was not the one that stand still till the end. Poor us but its okay. Anyhow, the essence of the activity is basically a good strategic followed by an excellent cooperation from group members.

It was an exciting activities as everybody participated and learnt that strategic is important as the implementation of the strategy itself. 

Thank you for spending your time, see you in the next entry. :)