Capstone week 8-1

Action Plan

Marvin Ross

Excelsior

15 October 2017

Introduction

Every business must have a viable and effective strategic plan; but to bring life to it, it is necessary for managers to come up with an action plan. This action plan acts as a roadmap that guides the company through its objectives and ultimately reach its goals. An action plan provides a step by step guide on how a company can achieve its set vision, mission, and goals; it normally states the activities that are expected to happen in the following year, it creates a timetable for each activity and also has a thorough description of every individual's task and a follow-up process (Cramer, 2017). In most cases, an action plan is developed after the creation of the strategic planning process, after the setting of a vision, after the establishment of goals and objectives and after carrying out a SWOT analysis.

Steps for Developing an Action Plan

Define the objective

According to Völk, Degirmenci & Breitner, (2014), Apple Inc. customers are not very happy as the company is unable to produce other products that are as innovative as the iPhone. For this reason, it is pertinent that the company introduce innovative features into other products such as the Mac. The short-term goal here should be to ensure that Apple Inc. gains a competitive advantage while the long-term goal should be to maximize profits and increase their market shares.

Apple Inc. has also been facing challenges when it comes to shipping. The time frames within which they deliver their products are not consumer friendly in any way, this lowers their competitive advantage a great deal (Völk et al., 2014). This brings to life another objective for the action plan; to shorten the time frames of the shipment of products.

Team involvement in the action planning

The team I would involve in this action plan would be the marketing team, distribution team, and the innovations department at Apple. The innovations department would assist me in coming up with new innovative features that can be incorporated into the Mac system to ensure that it meets or exceeds the capabilities of its competitors and remains relevant in the marketplace. The marketing team would ensure that Apple Inc. is able to market their products to prospective customers locally and internationally. They would also be tasked with the responsibility of coming up with new ways of branding that would appeal to more customers. The distribution team would be tasked with the responsibility of finding out which ways would ensure that Apple products such as the iPhone and Mac, reach the customers who place orders within a short period. This would help solve the issue of late shipments. This entire plan should be viable after a period of six months.

Possible courses of action to take to achieve the objectives

Work out a concise action plan

The team will also need to develop a plan of attack. This plan should be developed in such a way that every member of the team is able to fully comprehend. Otherwise, if you make it too complicated, you may have to incur extra costs for training your team on how the plan works. For example, Apple Inc. could develop a list of the people they will need to call throughout the week, the mode of communication they will use (Email, Telephone, or even an in-person visit) and also how they plan to follow-up. In this case, the distribution team may need to make calls to the distribution companies; if they are constantly failing Apple Inc., they should probably cast a net in the technological world and find more competent distributors or at a minimum distributors who can enhance their current processes.

Branding

Building or Rebranding the company’s brand will help in attracting prospective customers. A company such as Apple Inc. could undertake efforts to rebrand by redefining their message and developing a marketing kit. Redefining the message involves stating the benefits they offer in brief and concise manner. Here, words that will confuse customers such as jargons, or clichés should be avoided. When developing their marketing kit, they could put up good reviews and success stories on their sites as potential customers will come by sooner or later (Sheth & Sinha, 2015). What they find will determine whether they are willing buy Apple products or not.

Change the action plan

If by any chance the initial action plan did not work as expected, do not be afraid to refine it. Listen to the feedback you get from your customers and the action planning team and refine the action plane accordingly. In most cases, the change that is needed to adjust the situation for the better will be very small. For example, Apple Inc. could change their initial action plan by introducing new innovative products that target both the high end and low-end customers.

Generating Publicity

Apple Inc. must come up with a plan to market and promote themselves just as their competitors are doing. Generating publicity can be done both online and offline. Offline publicity involves sponsoring of local and international events, running training courses, or even joining the chamber of commerce for business events. Online publicity, on the other hand, can be achieved through the creation of blogs or sites that focus on selling their expertise to their potential customers, writing guest posts, creating social media business pages like on Facebook and also engaging prospective customers on social media (Delaney, 2013). The primary channels of communication that will be used to reach out to the target market will be social media based because most users of the iPhone constantly surf the net. The marketing plan will also target students that mostly use laptops; by introducing features of the Mac that standout from other computers, Apple Inc. will be able to attract more customers and add to their customer base.

New management policies

The management team at Apple Inc. should implement the new action plan differently by adopting an open-door policy (getting rid of too much bureaucracy), constant follow up on the outcomes of the action plan (in a supportive manner), and providing the necessary resources for the implementation of the action plan as soon as possible. The resources required to achieve Apple Inc.’s. objectives will be in form of money and staff. The marketing team will need new employees as this effort will involve a lot of traveling and interactions with the public. The training of the new employees will also require additional capital to pay for the training services and materials, the new employees’ upkeep and basic necessities during the training. The innovations team will require resources to aid the development of software and hardware designs of the Mac systems.

Action	Resources	Time allocated	Responsible person	Deadline
Fast shipping of ordered products	Human Capital (new employees)	1 month	Distribution team	In six months’ time
Publicity/ Product Promotion	Human Capital (new employees) Training payment and training materials	6 months	Marketing team	In six months’ time
Creation of innovative features for the Mac	Software and hardware	3 months	Innovations team	In six months’ time

References

Cramer, J. (2017). Corporate Social Responsibility and Globalisation: an action plan for the business. Routledge.

Delaney, D. (2013). New Business Networking: How to Effectively Grow Your Business Network Using Online and Offline Methods. Pearson Education.

Sheth, J. N., & Sinha, M. (2015). B2B branding in emerging markets: A sustainability perspective. Industrial Marketing Management, 51, 79-88.

Völk, T., Degirmenci, K., & Breitner, M. H. (2014). Market introduction of electric cars: A SWOT analysis. Hannover: IWI.