Strategic Plan Part 3: Balanced Scorecard and Communication Plan

Write a 1,050- to 1,400-word strategic objectives summary. Include your balanced scorecard and its impact on all stakeholders, and the communication plan.

Identify key trends, assumptions, and risks in the context of your final business model.

Develop the strategic objectives for your new division of the existing business in a balanced scorecard format in the context of key trends, assumptions, and risks. The strategic objectives are measures of attaining your vision and mission. As you develop them, consider the vision, mission, and values for your business and the outcomes of your SWOT analysis and supply chain analysis.

Consider the following four quadrants of the balanced scorecard when developing your strategic objectives:

• Shareholder Value or Financial Perspective, which includes strategic objectives in areas such as:
  • Market share
  • Revenues and costs
  • Profitability
  • Competitive position
• Customer Value Perspective, which includes strategic objectives in areas such as:
  • Customer retention or turnover
  • Customer satisfaction
  • Customer value
• Process or Internal Operations Perspective, which includes strategic objectives in areas such as:
  • Measure of process performance
  • Productivity or productivity improvement
  • Operations metrics
  • Impact of change on the organization
• Learning and Growth (Employee) Perspective, which includes strategic objectives in areas such as:
  • Employee satisfaction
  • Employee turnover or retention
  • Level of organizational capability
  • Nature of organizational culture or climate
  • Technological innovation

Evaluate potential alternatives to the issues and/or opportunities identified in the SWOT Analysis paper and table you completed in Week 3.

Create at least three strategic objectives for each of the four balanced scorecard areas.  Baseyour solutions on a ranking of alternative solutions that includes the following:

• Identify potential risks and mitigation plans
• Analyze a stakeholder and include mitigation and contingency strategies.
• Incorporate ethical implications

Develop a metric and target for each strategic objective using a balanced scorecard format.

• Example: a strategic objective in the shareholder or financial perspective is to increase market share. A metric to actually measure this strategic objective of market share increase is, "The percentage of increase in market share." The target is the specific number to be achieved in a particular time period. The target for the metric of "Increase market share" could be "Increase market share by 2% for each of the next 3 years" of an increase of 2% per year for 3 years.)

Outline a communication plan discussing how you will communicate the company's strategic objectives, to various stakeholders, that includes the following:

• Define the purpose.
• Define the audience.
• Identify the channel(s) of communication and why you selected that channel.
• Identify the frequency of each communication

Format paper consistent with APA guidelines. No plagarism, Please use the attached paper as a guide. The objective is a new division for Microsoft, that will manufacture its own hardware. Instead of relying on other companies for hardware. Please use only as a guide this paper returned back at 39% on the turnit report. Make sure you cite correctly and plese have it completed by 1:00 pm est on 05-19-17.

Microsoft Company Analysis

Introduction

The Microsoft Corporation opened its doors back in the year 1975, and this was as a result of the initiative undertaken by its co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen to open a basic operating system store. The company has through the years grown as a result of creativeness, innovativeness and even the production of outstanding quality products, and services. The organization has five core divisions which deal with its numerous products lines. This discussion will focus on establishing the various factors within both the internal and external business environment that will have an impact on the new product line for Xbox, and in so doing establish the core competencies that the organization needs to leverage upon.

SWOT analysis

Strength

Weaknesses

Opportunities

Threats

Strong revenue growth

Lack of innovativeness and creativity

The existence of robust technology

Expansions into new markets

Strong R&D capabilities

Dependence on hardware manufacturers

Developing mobile advertising

Software piracy

Broad offerings

Technical issues with complementary products

Developing innovative products and services

Emergence of new competitors

Human resource efficiency

High dependence on United States markets

Engagement in mergers and acquisitions

Anti-monopoly campaigns

Internal environment analysis

The Microsoft Corporation has several strengths within its internal environment and which it can leverage upon to ensure that it is in a position to market the new division and even realize its growth. The organization has a diverse workforce which is composed of nearly 88, 414 employees who are distributed all across the globe. The organization in an effort to ensure that it is in a position to deliver and outsmart its competitors has through the years been able to leverage on a stringent recruitment process, where only the most qualified and competent applicants are recruited. This ensures that the organization benefits from their resilience and also talent. The organization also has a strong brand reputation, which ensures that it is in a position to leverage on its existing product divisions to help market the other divisions that are underperforming.

Over the years the usage of the organizations products has increased as they have been perceived as both quality and cost friendly products. The organization heavily spend on its research and development department, and this has borne fruits, as it has been able to continuously launch and release products that act as the pace setters in the industry, consolidating its market share. The fact that the company is one of the leaders of information technology revolution makes it a pioneer in the industry, with a large financial basis, which makes it able to charge its products at an affordable price, while leveraging on economies of scale. The company has through the years undertaken to bolster its infrastructure, and this can be attributed to the capability of the organization to maintain its top management structure, and hence its culture. The company is among the few organizations that have leveraged on their culture, when making changes within their structure, and even their operational divisions (Heizer & Barry, 2013).

This notwithstanding the organization has several weaknesses, which include lack of consistence in product development, where over the last several years the company has not been able to develop or even launch a new product in its market. The organization is also facing severe levels of competition from the numerous product lines that it engages in. the organization is facing intense competition from both Apple, and Google which are offering similar products with differentiated features (Peteraf et al., 2014). The various technical issues that it has been experiencing, such as the challenges in windows update have through the years seen it lose its clients to is competitors who had a onetime software offer. The overdependence of the company on hardware manufacturers as it specializes on software development has been a detriment to its diversification, add it has lacked in terms of both expertise and resources.

External environment

The company has through the years been able to enjoy a stable external environment and this can be credited as among the core pillars that have prompted its growth and success. The organization does not have any distinct opportunities that it can leverage on that other companies specializing in the same trade do not have at their disposal, although it has been able to capitalize on the various market opportunities that have occurred and transformed them into success stories. The organization in an effort to develop and grow the new product line can leverage on mergers and acquisition to ensure that it utilizes their already existing supply chains and even strategies to market its new products and technologies. The organization can also leverage on the growing demand for mobile technologies to diversify into the product line, with an aim of ensuring that it grows its earnings, as well as leveraging on the mobile advertising markets.

The company faces the threat of losing its existing markets to other competitors who have been able to leverage on innovation to create new product lines, Software piracy is a major threat and Microsoft has adopted a multipronged strategy to stop it. It is selling cheaper versions of its products in certain Asian countries where software piracy is widespread and working closely with law enforcement to stop those who manufacture or sell illegal copies of its products. In an effort to fight software piracy, Microsoft put a piracy lock on two of its download Web sites in 2005, which required all Windows XP and Windows 2000 users to validate their copy of Windows before downloading software (Barney & Hesterly, 2015)

Open source software- Continued adoption of open software’s will increase pressure on Microsoft's traditional licensing based software model and disrupt its core revenue growth. Open source software such as Linux software has seen significant growth within the enterprise market and many governments have supported the greater use of open-source software in government institutions to reduce software licensing costs. Intense competition-Microsoft continues to face intense competition across all markets for its products and services (Eden & Ackermann, 2013).Its competitors range in size from Fortune 100 companies to small, specialized single-product businesses and open source community-based projects and the emergence of both the internet as a distribution channel and non-commercial software models has further reduced barriers to entry. In the enterprise software segment, Oracle and IBM are key competitors and have been engaging heavily in acquisition activity to increase scale and broaden the scope of their product portfolios.

Forces within the external environment

Political: Several types of political factors can affect upon the business activities of Microsoft. For 2004, European Union has imposed fine to this particular company for taking out the media player version from the Windows version of Europe. Economical: Unpredictable behavior of foreign currency, import and export currency has been impacted upon the economical structure of this corporation.  On the other hand, Barney & Hesterly, (2015) stated that, unlimited threats of cyber crimes have been impacted upon the economic condition of Microsoft.

Social: Needs and demand of the customers refer to the social factors. Customers have demanded for high productive as well as technologically advanced element. Customers have the demand of high technological personal computers and other mobile devices. Technological: This refers to the modernized as well as developed technology of Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft is a business organization that sells various types of electronic products. Therefore, advancement of operating system of personal computer or mobile system has imposed pressure for the creation of new technologically improved product (Eden & Ackermann, 2013).

Supply chain analysis

Organizations continually seek ways to reduce costs, improve productivity, and customer satisfaction while attaining competitive advantage. As a result, organizations rely on supply chains and logistics to coordinate improvements and productivity across marketing, production, and finance departments within an organization and across organizations to meet goals and objectives. This paper uses three articles as a basis of how logistics and supply chain management processes meet customer requirements. Logistics will also be defined along with a discussion of the of supply chain logistics in organizational strategy. Implications of poor logistics and supply chain management are reviewed and the identification and description of customer satisfaction requirements influencing logistics and impacting the supply chain are examined (Peteraf et al., 2014).

Logistics Strategic Role within the Supply Chain

Logistics impact organizational success in attaining goals and objectives. Within the last two decades “companies began to view logistics as more than simply a source of cost savings and recognize it as a source of enhancing product or service offerings as part of the broader supply chain process to create competitive advantage”. Organizations have various strategies including: innovation, increasing profits, improving delivery timeliness, quality, or flexibility. Each strategy offers trade off’s and customer value that requires collaboration among supply chain members and departments within an organization. According to Penske Logistics, “Ford suppliers and carriers currently operate under a single set of transportation and distribution procedures enabling better service throughout the chain” (Barney & Hesterly, 2015).

References

Barney, J. B., & Hesterly, W. (2015). Strategic management and competitive advantage concepts and cases. Pearson.

Eden, C., & Ackermann, F. (2013). Making strategy: The journey of strategic management. Sage.

Heizer, R., & Barry, R. (2013). Operation Management, Sustainability and Supply Chain management (Vol. 11). Pearson, UK.

Peteraf, M., Gamble, J., & Thompson Jr, A. (2014). Essentials of strategic management: The quest for competitive advantage. McGraw-Hill Education.