The first step in conducting your global industry comparative analysis is to choose an organization.
As promised, Gustavo sends you a detailed e-mail. With his requirements in mind, develop an organization profile of about 6–7 pages in length. The profile you develop should incorporate the components described here and in Steps 2–5 below.
Choose from the list of organizations provided and note your choice in the Project 3: Choice of Organization discussion.
The selection will be awarded on a first-come-first-served basis. The faculty will approve your choice and post it in the table in the discussion area.
After you have chosen an organization, continue to the next step, where you will provide your organization’s background information in your organization profile.
Subject: targetting an 8-10% annual revenue increase
Hi,
Thanks for taking on this task for me. Here are the details—
This project will have three parts. Your first task is to conduct a thorough analysis of our resources and capabilities. This organization profile needs to address our existing strategy, people, skill sets, and what we can do to increase our market share and profitability. We know we won’t be able to make that 8 percent target domestically, so we need to set up shop overseas and tap into foreign customers. We’ll need a strategy, an analysis of the global competitors trading in our target market today, an overview of potential stakeholders, and an evaluation of our own capabilities. Finally, we must lay the analytical groundwork for what could become a fully developed business plan.
Although this is a major initiative, keep in mind that cost reduction is important. Assess what resources and personnel in the organization today can facilitate this move.
The second part of this project is to conduct an industry analysis to evaluate the external environment, including international competitors across our industry. How difficult will it be to enter a new international market from a position of strength? What should we produce that is both attractive to our customers and competitive in the new market? Are there any legal and regulatory issues we need to be aware of in the United States or abroad? In short, how can we best compete against those firms already doing business in our proposed area? How do we differentiate ourselves from them? What can we produce that our new country’s customers will want to buy? What about the potential to export from that country?
Finally, we’ll need a new country risk assessment. Which is the best country to expand into? Our strategy people have created a list of possibilities, but you will direct the analysis. It will be a new market for us—do not assume we have any infrastructure there. What are the risks in the proposed area and how can we mitigate those risks?
We need to be aware of legal, cultural, and market forces. You can recommend an expansion of our products into your chosen country, establish new value-chain activities, or strategize some combination of the two. That’s your call. You need to choose a country that will be the best fit for what we do and who we are.
Keep in mind that cost reduction is important. Let’s also look at countries that don’t demand wholesale re-engineering of our organizational processes. We need to expand, but let’s minimize risk and avoid needless costs where we can.
I’d like to see your report in three weeks.
Best,
Gustavo
Now that you have chosen your organization, you need to create an organization profile. As you begin to develop your organization profile, the first step is to gather information about your organization’s background. Do some research on your organization’s website and using the UMUC library. Write up the background information and include the following:
Introduce the organization. What business is it in? For help, see Finding Company Information.
Describe the company’s recent financial performance. Consult Finding a Company’s Annual Report for help.
State where the organization is located and who its major customers are.
Provide a brief history of the organization.
State the size of the organization in terms of employees and revenues.
Describe the organizational structure and identify major roles or functions of key individuals in the organization. For help, read Finding a Company’s Leadership Information
The next step in developing your organization profile is to determine the strategy and competitive position for your organization. Include the following information in your profile:
Perform a detailed assessment of your organization’s current business strategy and recommend specific actions to gain and sustaining superior performance in relation to your organization’s competitors.
Locate and review your organizations’s mission, vision, and core values. Review Global Strategy as Business Model Change. Then, apply what you have read to aid your evaluation of the strategic intent of your organization.
Determine the strengths and weaknesses of your organization. In addition, determine the core competencies your organization can build on to create competitive advantage in the global environment. Read Global Competitive Advantage.
Provide a clear picture of the organization’s operations (value chain), products, and position in the marketplace. Provide a summary of the core competencies, sales history, corporate structure, current leadership of the organization, and its global and domestic operations.
When you have completed your strategy and competitive position assessment, continue to the next step, where you will develop the organization’s competitive strategy statement.
As you continue developing your organization profile, include the following information in your competitive strategy statement:
What is the current mission and is it clearly stated? If it is not clearly stated, what do you believe the organization’s mission to be? Is the mission compatible with or does it provide a competitive advantage? From your analysis of your organization’s competitive advantage, what is the biggest strategic challenge facing your organization?
What are the key organization processes? Use Porter’s Value Chain Model to guide your analysis. Draw a diagram of your organization’s value chain. Identify the key processes used. Where does your organization add value as a way of gaining a competitive edge? Only include those processes that are critical to gaining a competitive edge.
Summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the organization for strategy formulation compared to competitors. Address the major factors that may lead to the organization’s success or failure.
When you have completed the competitive strategy statement, continue to the next step, where you will discuss the organization’s market and financial performance data.
In the final step of completing your organization profile, briefly summarize the organization’s financials for the past five years. For guidance on finding this information, see Business Research: Finding a Company’s Financial Information. What information do you need to assess the performance of your organization? (Financial data and tables can be attached in an appendix. Appendices do not count toward the 6–7 pages that you are limited to for this profile.)
In your organization profile, discuss the implications of the market and financial performance data you have presented.
You may submit your organization profile (Steps 1-5) in the box below for feedback. In the next step, you will begin the industry analysis.
Use the following filename protocol: lastname_firstname_Project3_OrganizationProfile
Before you submit your assignment, review the competencies below, which your instructor will use to evaluate your work. A good practice would be to use each competency as a self-check to confirm you have incorporated all of them in your work.
1.1: Organize document or presentation clearly in a manner that promotes understanding and meets the requirements of the assignment.
5.2: Assess the implications of legal, ethical, and cultural (national) standards on an organization’s operations in global markets and make recommendations for appropriate actions.
6.1: Identify the general (external) environment in which an organization operates and discuss the implications for enterprise success.
6.2: Evaluate the strategic implications for domestic and international markets of an organization’s industry.
6.3: Analyze an organization’s internal strengths and weaknesses for strategic value.
6.4: Develop and recommend strategies for an organization’s sustainable competitive advantage.
7.4: Analyze the impact of international and foreign laws on US organizations acting domestically and abroad.
8.1: Evaluate major business/organizational systems and processes and make recommendations for improvement.
9.1: Design organizational structure, systems and processes that support the strategic goals of the organization.
10.1: Apply relevant microeconomics principles to support strategic decisions for the organization.
12.1: Assess market risk and opportunity.
13.1: Identify and analyze new opportunities.
13.2: Create and implement new initiative or enterprise.
13.3: Create and manage new enterprise.
Understanding your organization’s industry is essential to making useful strategy recommendations to Gustavo. You will develop a 6–7 page analysis of the industry in which your organization belongs. Your industry analysis should incorporate the components described here and in Step 7 below.
You should appreciate that whatever happens in the industry will influence your organization. Who are the competitors? Is it easy to start a business in this industry? Are there significant entry barriers? What are the dominant characteristics and current trends in your industry?
Discuss industry size in terms of the number of companies, total employment, capital investment, major customers, and annual revenues. What are the driving forces of change in the industry, (e.g., innovation, technology, and buyer preferences and lifestyles)? State how organizations compete within the industry and identify the critical success factors in this industry.
When you have addressed the trends in your industry, continue to the next step, where you will apply Porter’s competitive forces model to analyze the industry.
Review and apply Porter’s five forces model to your analysis. Tailor the Porter model to the industry and integrate the complete figure of the model within the narrative of the report. What is the competitive structure of the industry? Describe the following:
Entry barriers—How difficult is it to enter this industry? Are there several players competing for profitability? Are there significant threats of new entrants?
Intensity of rivalry—Identify your organization’s top three competitors. Discuss industry rivalry. Is competition intense?
Bargaining power of buyers—Who are the buyers in this industry? What kind of influence do buyers have on the competitors in the industry? Globalization makes it easier for buyers to source products worldwide. Is this the case in this industry?
Bargaining power of suppliers—Provide a profile of the suppliers. Suppliers with significant industry influence can play a major role in the marketplace. For instance, DeBeers, the world’s leading supplier of diamonds, has enormous bargaining power in the diamond industry.
Threat of substitutes—Carefully distinguish between similar products in the same industry. A substitute product for eye glasses would be contact lenses. Train travel is a substitute for travelling by car.
You may submit your industry analysis (Steps 6–7) in the box below for feedback. In the next step, you will look at specific countries for possible expansion.
Use the following filename protocol: lastname_firstname_Project3_IndustryAnalysis
Before you submit your assignment, review the competencies below, which your instructor will use to evaluate your work. A good practice would be to use each competency as a self-check to confirm you have incorporated all of them in your work.
1.1: Organize document or presentation clearly in a manner that promotes understanding and meets the requirements of the assignment.
5.2: Assess the implications of legal, ethical, and cultural (national) standards on an organization’s operations in global markets and make recommendations for appropriate actions.
6.1: Identify the general (external) environment in which an organization operates and discuss the implications for enterprise success.
6.2: Evaluate the strategic implications for domestic and international markets of an organization’s industry.
6.3: Analyze an organization’s internal strengths and weaknesses for strategic value.
6.4: Develop and recommend strategies for an organization’s sustainable competitive advantage.
7.4: Analyze the impact of international and foreign laws on US organizations acting domestically and abroad.
8.1: Evaluate major business/organizational systems and processes and make recommendations for improvement.
9.1: Design organizational structure, systems and processes that support the strategic goals of the organization.
10.1: Apply relevant microeconomics principles to support strategic decisions for the organization.
12.1: Assess market risk and opportunity.
13.1: Identify and analyze new opportunities.
13.2: Create and implement new initiative or enterprise.
13.3: Create and manage new enterprise.
You may recall from your meeting with Gustavo that he wants your expert analysis of the external business environment in which your organization is likely to operate in the future.
As you prepare to select a new market for your organization to expand into, remember that you will need to accomplish one of the following options:
•offer your organization’s products in that country
•establish value-chain activities in that country
•some combination of the first two options
If you work for an organization that already operates in more than one country, for the purpose of this report, you will select a new country (i.e., a country in which your organization does not currently operate and that has zero to minimal revenue). A list of candidate countries is given below. For help, visit http://sites.umuc.edu/library/libhow/businessresearch-countries.cfm.
Your choice of a country is on a first-come-first-serve basis. Please reserve your choice in theProject 3 Discussion area.
Gustavo is seeking your advice regarding the international expansion and global market opportunity assessment. Review the blueprint for international expansion in the business journal article, Going International.
You should also consider principles of international strategy for doing business in your selected country. What products are good candidates for generating additional revenue for your organization from expansion into the selected country? Please provide a detailed analysis as per final report format guidelines.
When you have completed your international expansion and global market opportunity assessment, continue to the next step, where you will perform a PESTEL analysis.
As part of your country assessment, Gustavo also expects a PESTEL Analysis of your selected country in relation to the industry in which your organization operates. In other words, you are looking at the country through the prism of the industry in which your organization conducts business.
When you have completed your PESTEL analysis, continue to the next step, where you will assess the organization’s global value chain.
What activities, if any, in your organization’s value chain are candidates for relocation to the country selected in Step 8? If there are no activities that can be relocated, please explain why. If there are activities that can be relocated, provide a brief justification and examine the challenges you see in coordination of the global value chain after the proposed value-chain activities of the organization are set up in this country.
When you have assessed the organization’s global value chain, continue to the next step, where you will evaluate cultural issues relevant to your organization’s operations.
Include information about the following cultural issues in your analysis:
What cultural differences are likely to influence your organization’s operations (e.g., marketing, human resources, etc.) in this country? For background and guidance, consult International Cultural Differences and read about the impact of culture on best-practice production and operations management.
Would your organization’s products need to be localized or marketed differently in this country? Explain why or why not. See Conducting Market Research for help.
Are there any issues that your organization’s corporate social responsibility or compliance program may need to address while operating in this country?
When you have completed your assessment of cultural issues, continue to the next step, where you will submit your final report.
This report should include not only your analysis and recommendations from Steps 8–12 above but also your analysis from Week 1 (week 5 of the course) (organization profile) and week 2 (Week 6 of the course) (industry analysis).
Steps
Content
Submit?
Graded?
Page limit
Week 1 (Week 5 of the course) Steps 1–5
Organization profile
Optional
No
6–7 pages
Week 2 (Week 6 of the course) Steps 6–7
Industry analysis
Optional
No
6–7 pages
Week 3 (Week 7 of the course) Steps 8–11
Country risk assessment
No
No
n/a
Week 3 (Week 7 of the course) Steps 1–12
Final report (graded)
Required
Yes
14–15 pages
Your final report should include an executive summary guide followed by the main body of the report. Each section should clearly support your analysis. As you begin your executive summary, you might use this template for the first sentence, representing the outcome of your three-week analysis:
“It is recommended that (selected client organization) enter the (named country) with its (specified product).”
Your final report should follow these guidelines:
14–15 pages, excluding the title page, table of contents, reference page, and appendices
in-text citations and references should abide by APA format
12-point Times New Roman font
one-inch margins
double spaced.
Your final report should include the following components:
Title page
states the organization’s full legal name, country, and the organization’s product
recommendation for [NAME OF ORGANIZATION] to enter [COUNTRY] market for [PRODUCT]
date and your name
Table of contents
page numbers for each major section
Executive summary (see note below)
summarizes the results of your analysis and how you arrived at the recommendation
belongs on a separate page from the introduction to the paper
Introduction (first page of paper body)
states the purpose of the paper
tells what the paper will do
introduces the industry, country, and organization by name
Analyzing organization’s resources and capabilities
choice of organization
organization profile
strategy and competitive position of the organization
organization’s competitive strategy statement
market and financial performance
Understanding your organization’s industry
trends in your industry
analysis using Porter’s five forces
Analyzing country’s external environment
selection of a new country for market expansion
international expansion and global market opportunity assessment
PESTEL analysis
global value chain
cultural issues
Conclusion
One- or two-page summary of your recommendations and your rationale
Reference
APA-style reference page
Appendices
large data tables
Use the following filename protocol: lastname_firstname_Project3_FinalReport
Before you submit your assignment, review the competencies below, which your instructor will use to evaluate your work. A good practice would be to use each competency as a self-check to confirm you have incorporated all of them in your work.
1.1: Organize document or presentation clearly in a manner that promotes understanding and meets the requirements of the assignment.
5.2: Assess the implications of legal, ethical, and cultural (national) standards on an organization’s operations in global markets and make recommendations for appropriate actions.
6.1: Identify the general (external) environment in which an organization operates and discuss the implications for enterprise success.
6.2: Evaluate the strategic implications for domestic and international markets of an organization’s industry.
6.3: Analyze an organization’s internal strengths and weaknesses for strategic value.
6.4: Develop and recommend strategies for an organization’s sustainable competitive advantage.
7.4: Analyze the impact of international and foreign laws on US organizations acting domestically and abroad.
8.1: Evaluate major business/organizational systems and processes and make recommendations for improvement.
9.1: Design organizational structure, systems and processes that support the strategic goals of the organization.
10.1: Apply relevant microeconomics principles to support strategic decisions for the organization.
12.1: Assess market risk and opportunity.
13.1: Identify and analyze new opportunities.
13.2: Create and implement new initiative or enterprise.
13.3: Create and manage new enterprise.
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