Reference no: EM131638001

Module 1 - Background

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PROCESS/VISION, MISSION, GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

The Strategic Management Process: Vision, Mission, Values, Goals, Stakeholders

Strategic management is a company-wide process that includes the development of a long-term plan of action that assists an organization in achieving its objectives and fulfilling its company vision.

This course is focused on the steps and stages of preparing and implementing a strategic plan. Although we do not have time in one short course to go through the entire process in detail, by the end of the course you will know what you would need to do, and you will have the tools to develop a plan if you need to participate in the process. The following two readings and PowerPoint presentation are intended to provide you with an overview of the planning process. They also serve as an introduction and overview of the course.

Background on the SLP

The SLP for this course requires that you participate in a simulated business exercise. Simulations are interactive, allowing you to see - and learn from - the results of your decisions. Moreover, you are able to repeat the simulation, improving the quality of your decisions, learning from past mistakes.

Speaking of mistakes, Joe Thomas had been the V.P. of Marketing for the Clipboard Tablet Company during the four-year period of 2012 through 2015 inclusive. Suffice it to say that the pricing and R&D strategy used by Joe Thomas throughout his four-year tenure was a disaster. Indeed, year-over-year, the company's performance has declined significantly. The inevitable result: Joe is fired on Dec. 15, 2015.

You are hired to replace Joe - and this, just as the company faces the prospects of another dismal new year - to begin 2016. Mysteriously, you are caught up in a Time Warp, in which you are taken back to January 1, 2012. While you find these circumstances to be very strange, you recognize that they do give you the opportunity to erase the past four-year history completely, redoing the unfortunate decisions that have been made by Joe Thomas over the last four years. As a recent MBA graduate, you are excited by the opportunity, because you know that you have the requisite knowledge and the skill set required to vastly improve the performance of the Clipboard Tablet Company.

In this simulation, you will be examining income statements and marketing reports to assist you in making decisions about pricing, product development (R&D expenditures), and product life cycles.

Following is a brief summary of what you will do in each SLP:

1. SLP1: In this first SLP, it is Dec. 15, 2015. You have just replaced Joe Thomas. You are getting ready to create a marketing strategy for 2016. Before doing so however, you need to review the performance of the company over the last four years. You review the financial, marketing, and product data to determine how well your products have fared against the competition. Confident that you are familiar with the 4-year history of your products, you are ready to move forward into 2016.

2. SLP2: At the beginning of SLP2, you have mysteriously been caught in a Time Warp, in which you have been taken back to January 1, 2012. You realize that you have the opportunity to redo the decisions made by Joe Thomas during 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. Of course, you know that you can do better than Joe Thomas. You work your way through each of the four years, making better decisions than Joe along the way, trying to generate more profit and an overall better performance than your predecessor. As you do so, you methodically keep track of your decisions (noting the reasons you've made each decision you have), and you document the results of your decisions. You write a final report that demonstrates why you made each decision - and the results of your decisions.

3. SLP3: Alas, in SLP3, the Time Warp has struck again, taking you back once more to January 1, 2012. You recognize that you had forgotten to use CVP analysis to support your decision-making process. Using CVP, you evaluate your pricing strategy for the past four years. You have confidence that the use of CVP has helped you to develop a new (and hopefully, a vastly improved) product, pricing, and R&D strategy.

4. SLP4: In SLP4, you run the simulation using the CVP-related strategy you developed in SLP3. Once again, at the end of each year, you document each decision, and you document your results. Hopefully, your use of CVP has helped to improve your SLP2 results!

You will see the simulation interface, which provides you with information about the Clipboard Tablet Company, as well as the input interface to implement your strategy (pricing decisions and R&D budget allocations).

Explore the interface, and become familiar with it and the information it provides. The left-hand menu includes these options:
- Introduction - Background about the company and its three products; how to play the simulation.
- Financials - Provides the financial results of the current year and the previous year. Clicking on the tabs at the top of the chart will allow for the display of different company data, as well as data for each of the three products.
- Market Info - Provides the market results of the current year and the previous year. When you click on the tabs at the top of the chart, different company data and data for each of the three products will be displayed.
- Make Decisions - This is where you input your pricing and product development budget (R&D %) strategy decisions.
- View Summary - This provides a summary of important information for each round (year) of the simulation. Here, you can determine your personal score. An advisor will tell you how you are doing.

Module 1 - SLP
STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PROCESS/VISION, MISSION, GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

Simulation
To begin the MGT599 SLP sequence, you first need to first run the simulation using the Default Decisions. In other words, use the prices and R&D percentages that are already there (do not change any decisions made by Joe Thomas).
Capture or collect the results for each product (X5, X6, and X7) for each year that you run the simulation. Copy (using Excel, by hand, or some other method) the financial results and marketing results, as well as the information provided by your Advisor.
REQUIRED READING:
Read the following scenario carefully before you proceed:

SCENARIO
It is December 15, 2015. Joe Thomas, the VP of Marketing at Clipboard Tablet Co., is smugly patting himself on the back for how well he has done with pricing and product development on the three products, X5, X6, and X7. Of course, Joe knows his strategy was not creative at all - i.e., he did not change any prices or R&D allocations over the four-year period (actually six years, counting 2010 and 2011). But he is certain that he really did not need to change anything anyway, and that his overall performance is proof of his good work.
Sally Smothers, the CEO of Clipboard Tablet Co., knows better, and she fires Joe (but why did she wait so long?).
You are hired to replace Joe. And now, here you are, on Dec. 15, 2015, as the V.P. of Marketing of the Clipboard Tablet Co. You are ready to move the company ahead into 2016. Your boss, Sally Smothers, expects you to make intelligent and informed product development and pricing decisions (after all, you are an MBA).
Session Long Project
Write a 6- to 7-page paper (not including cover and reference pages), using Sally's instructions, which follow:
Sally asks you to review the past four to six years to see what was going on in terms of product development, sales, pricing, and performance. You collect all of the data and write a report (your report is due on Sally's desk by January 2, 2016).

KEYS TO THE ASSIGNMENT:
The key aspects to this assignment that are required to be covered in your paper include:
1. A review of each product - X5, X6, and X7 - its life cycle, and how each product stacks up in terms of price and performance.
2. Financial review for each product - X5, X6, and X7 - sales, costs, profitability, prices, unit margins, etc.
3. Market review: New Sales, Repeat Sales, Market Saturation, etc.
4. Propose an alternate strategy: A general idea of how you might do better with these products: what pricing and R&D allocations, etc., you would have put in place over the last four years, 2012 - 2015. In short, what would you have done differently than Joe Thomas at each decision point? Be specific!

TIPS AND SUGGESTIONS:
Please note the following tips and suggestions:
- Include a cover page and reference page, in addition to the 6-7 pages of written analysis described above.
- Use section headings as appropriate. Use graphs, charts, or figures strategically - but do not use these as "space fillers." Include large tables or graphics in an Appendix instead.
- Cite and reference all sources that you use in your work, including those that you paraphrase. This means include citations and quotation marks for direct quotes, and citations for that information which you have "borrowed" or paraphrased from other sources.

Attachment:- Case.zip