Corporate Strategy

Corporate strategy as the name suggests is used for developing the strategies that determine an organization’s long term goals, objectives and most importantly a vision. In other words, corporate strategy helps formulating plans to achieve its objectives. For example, a manufacturer of computers and consumer electronics products will have a vision of establishing itself at the helm of its chosen industries.

It is needless to say that strategy or proper planning is required today to achieve set objectives or goals. Some strategies are successful and others are not. This can be due to many reasons. The path for realizing the objectives might have had issues. The objectives themselves might have been too unrealistic to be achievable, etc. So, strategy formulators must always keep in mind the situations or the environment that persists during strategy formulation.

This involves making decisions after scrutinizing various alternatives. A decision once taken by the top management will trigger hundreds or perhaps thousands of small decisions by middle and lower level management for achieving the set objectives.

In order to take the right decisions, top management uses various tools and techniques. These tools and techniques help in taking the decisions that are best among the alternatives available. Some of the tools include

SWOT Analysis: SWOT Analysis is an analysis technique which involves analyzing various internal and external factors of an organization. The word SWOT is an abbreviation for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. SWOT analysis helps in understanding what are the advantages and disadvantages within and outside of a firm. One can find several questions, essays and case studies on SWOT Analysis in our solution library.

PESTLE Analysis: PESTLE analysis is more complex in comparison to SWOT analysis. While SWOT analysis involves just internal and immediate external factors, PESTLE analysis discusses the external factors in detail, not just for an industry, but for the whole economy as such. P is political, E is economic, S is social, T is technological, L is legal and E is environmental factor analysis. This is done to know the political, economical, social, technological, legal and environmental factors that affect business in a country. Similar to SWOT analysis, our solution library contains different questions and case studies on PESTLE analysis as well.

Porter’s Five Force Model: Porter’s Five Force Model or Five Force Analysis is used as a framework to know the level of competition in an industry. Porter’s Five Force model is an interaction of five forces in market which include (1) the bargaining power of suppliers, (2) threats of new entrants, (3) threats of substitute products, (4) bargaining power of buyers and (5) industry rivalry. Each of these factors can further be analyzed with many sub-factors. This overall analysis will help in determining whether or not a particular industry is attractive in terms of profit.

Growth Share Matrix: Growth Share matrix is used by organizations to analyze their production lines or business units. The analysis is useful in appropriate resource allocation. The matrix is represented by 4 diagrams such as Cash Cows, Dogs, Question Marks and Stars. Each of these represents an organization with different profit earning capacities.

Competitor analysis: As the name suggests, this technique is used in the analysis of a business organization’s competitor. This analysis can provide an insight on the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses. The information from the analysis not only provides insights about the competitor’s present moves, but also future moves, which can be very helpful in formulating a counter strategy within no time. Such analyses reduce the scope of baseless assumptions that may or may not be true all the time.

Case Studies: These are some of the topics that you can find in our Corporate Strategy Solutions. Other than these, there are several case studies from Ivy League Universities that you can find on corporate strategy.