Business Policy Development and Implementation
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Module8PortfolioProjectFirstRevision.docxRunning head: BUSIENSS POLICY DEVLEOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION 1
BUSIENSS POLICY DEVLEOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION 2
Business Policy Development and Implementation
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Business Policy Development and Implementation
Introduction
In a constantly changing organizational and business environment, companies are increasingly facing stiff competition. As such, they are compelled by the need to improve their performance and do things in the most desired ways in order to meet the needs of consumers (Gomes & Romão, 2013). In light of these patterns, organizations can no longer be dependent upon the traditional analytical tools. Instead, they have seen the need to use models and frameworks such as the balanced scorecard to examine the degree to which companies work to attain their mission and vision. In addition, strategic decision-making must also be done through observance of the constantly changing trends and patterns that may affect the status of an organization. In this report, I provide ways in which our team members made logical decisions and how we utilized the balanced scorecard framework.
Decision Logic and What Supported the Decisions
The decisions that we embraced in the Capsim project was driven by the desire to generate a competitive advantage over other rivals. Therefore, we saw the need to take a closer look at the use of decision-making strategies within our business and operational environment. The main decisions that we made were associated with issues such as product development, research and development, innovation, marketing, as well as human resources and finance. There are various factors that made it possible for the team to make strategic decisions. First, having ready access to information, ranging from the details of the potential markets for the organization’s products and services, as well as estimates of next year’s labor requirements, is important. The more accurate and complete the information is, the more effective the strategic decisions we made. For instance, we relied on technological tools such as information systems to provide the team with accurate information about business intelligence issues (Spetzler, Winter & Meyer, 2016). Decision-making on production and product development functions heavily relied on technological tools such as spreadsheets and databases to calculate the efficacy of different machines, and to introduce new products in the production process. In order to support marketing decisions, we utilized Big Data technologies and analytics to determine the effects of different pricing strategies and to keep the records of consumer profiles. These tools were also utilized to plan the launching of new products and services. Human resources decisions were made with the purpose of planning for the next round and determining the pay awards. Planning decisions also sought to determine employee records and rewards. Finance decisions were also made to draw up profit and loss statements and to calculate the cash flow forecasts. Most significantly, the strategic decisions that we made were instrumental in conducting investment appraisals for current and future business expansions.
The rationale of engaging in decision-making initiatives also emerges out of the growing need for the company to improve its ability to transform constantly and gain new insights into innovative ways in relation to the changing marketplace. This remained a major issue especially when it came to our need to attain the goals of total quality management programs. Decisions were made in order to develop and improve organizational procedures, guidelines, and rules that improve learning, creativity, and innovation (Papadakis & Barwise, 2012). As a team that involved itself in quality improvement initiatives, we essentially operated in introspective ways. As a team, we constantly sought to be dynamic and flexible, with the ability to adapt to constantly changing business environments. The decisions that we made were meant to increase our ability to drive, respond, and anticipate the continuously changing forces, requirements and expectations of both the external and internal environment. In order to realize competitive advantage, the team mainly utilized intelligence systems that store and use domain expertise and knowledge to support the process of problem-solving and decisions. These giant steps enabled us to overcome the expenses of buying-in expertise to support strategic decisions, which are often done in the short-run to solve business problems. Moreover, if we utilized internal experts and professionals, our knowledge and skills can be stored within the intelligence system. This comes with various benefits. For instance, conducting business intelligence supports decision-making activities thereby allowing the experts and team members to address more strategic or critical tasks. In addition, it enables the organization to gather, capture, and store valuable expertise that would otherwise been lost as a result of employee turnover or retirements. Further, business intelligence improved decision-making initiatives by enabling the team members ton efficaciously distribute and exploit knowledge throughout the organization, and thus proliferate a consistently high level of expertise across a number of sites.
Decision-making activities that we engaged in entailed the use of a collection of various analytical activities. They included: comparisons, explanations, predictions, and prescriptions. These activities are generic in the sense that they can be viewed across a wide range of strategic consulting engagements. Comparison entailed making decisions by conducting analyses that contrasted two or more strategically relevant entities along one or more dimensions. Examples of comparative activities included competitive cost analyses, analyses of consumer perceptions and behaviors, and assessments of the organization’s products and services in relation to competitors’ with the purpose of developing a differentiation strategy. Explanations involved diagnoses of competitive phenomena, including problems that specified causal relationships among strategically important variables. For instance, explanations included undertaking assertions such as profitability declines due to increases in sector capacity and price cutting by new entrants. Predictive decisions involved conducting forecasting and estimating the future events and occurrences, quantities, relationships, and impacts of present activities. For example, we sought to predict whether or not industry prices would reduce or increase in the next five years. After undertaking these predictions, the final decision-making activities involved developing solutions and recommendations, a process referred to as prescription. Recommendations were made to ensure that certain changes are implemented in order for the organization to gain competitive advantage. It also involved making specific decisions, initiatives, and policy formulations meant to address problems or opportunities. For instance, the company made recommendations to consolidate product lines by 30 percent or improve its capacity to diversify its products and services so as to increase its brand value and reputation. In light of the above decision-making activities, I have learned that strategic management has shifted its emphasis away from substantive issues, with a bias towards the issue of what is actually the best strategy. There is need to embrace a process view in which the issue becomes more inclined towards determining how best are effective strategies and decisions made. Within the process view perspective of decision making, controversies have emerged relating to the degree to which effective strategy would be better developed via a formalized planning system, or whether such systems act only as inhibiting factors. Strategy can be more effectively developed via the ad-hoc procedures in which choices emerge in reaction to the constantly-changing business environments and conditions.
` One of the issues that dominated our group meetings is how the organizational decision makers can actually act and what modes they can use to describe and explain the procedures of strategic decision-making. This enabled our group to effectively identify situations and factors within which certain processes are most efficacious (Tavana, 2012). Decision-making can be defined as the choice for a course of action to attain a desired future business and organizational state. In order for a choice to be made, there is an urgent need for the availability of interdependent participants or key factors. These participants should also be aware of the likelihood of making choices, and experience a degree of uncertainties on which course of action to take. Rationality and logic are key behavioral concepts of decision-making. They are founded on the presumption that decision-makers can effectively identify their preferred outcomes and seek methods of attaining them. In our case, we regarded logic and rationality as procedural concepts for describing how decision-makers seek to interpret their ambiguous worlds in order to take sensible actions and optimize outcomes. The most common approaches that are utilized in rationality-oriented decisions included describing some universal stages or procedures in decision-making, establishing sequential patterns in which the participants first become knowledgeable of, and formulate the problems. Thereafter, solutions are generated and analyzed in order to finally test and implement a solution that can generate the desired outcomes.
Balanced Scorecard
Five Principles of Strategy Focused Organization
The task of formulating organizational and team strategies is often a complex phase of strategic and operational management in which based on the given information, there is a need to develop the future directions for the effective functioning of the organization. In these processes, teams normally rely on the financial reports to represent the financial aspects. In so doing, they can overlook at first sight all the activities that are a part of forming a business’s success. If made wrong, these decisions can be fatal to an organization (Stefanovska & Soklevski, 2014). Therefore, there is need for the use of a balanced scorecard as a framework to enable teams to make future decisions based on their strategic plans. Organizations must never focus only on the financial aspects alone, but also on the internal processes and human resources. Strategic planning is a particularly important aspect that influences the work of any group and organization. Consequently, our team utilized the five principles of a strategy-focused organization to complete the Capsim competition.
The first principle sought to translate the strategy into operational terms. As a strategy-focused team, we translated our business strategy into rational architecture of a strategy map and balanced scorecard. In so doing, we created a common and understandable point of reference for all departments. Through strategy maps, we were able to address the possible shortcomings of the industrial age’s tangible asset measurement systems (Stefanovska & Soklevski, 2014). The measurement connections of cause and effect relationships in strategy maps enabled the team to determine how the intangible assets would be transformed into tangible and financial outcomes. In particular, the scorecard’s utilization of quantitative but non-financial metrics such as cycle time, market share, innovation, and consumer satisfaction enabled the value creating process to be described and measured as opposed to being inferred.
The second principle that guided our strategy portfolio is the alignment of the team to the organizational strategies. Like other organizations, our team was traditionally built around the functional specialties such as finance, marketing, and research and development. Thus, the team’s functional silos emerged and became major deterrents to strategy implementation, since the team experienced difficulties in communicating and coordinating across these specialty functions. However, the team broke down these barriers and ensured that we replaced the formalized structures and reporting systems with strategic themes and priorities. This effort enabled the team to have a consistent message and collection of priorities.
The third principle will be used as a tool to make each strategy to be every member’s everyday work. As a strategic-focused team, we will encourage members and employees to understand the strategy and undertake their daily business environments in ways that contribute to the success of these strategies. This may not be a top-down decision. Instead, it will be in form of a top-down communication. Under this arrangement he team will ensure that people who are far from the corporate and regional headquarters still get ways of undertaking their business tasks and activities. This will contribute to the realization of the company’s overall strategic objectives. Therefore, all employees will undergo training on major concepts such as customer segmentation, variable costing, and database marketing.
The fourth principle states that marketing should be made to be a continuous procedure. In conformity to this principle, the team put in place a program to ensure that the marketing functions are done on a regular and endless basis. Instead of being a yearly event, the team worked to ensure that marketing functions are done perpetually and on a monthly basis. The fifth principle states that there is need to mobilize change through executive leadership. In order to work towards this goal, team members expressed their commitment to provide openness and willingness in embracing organizational changes (Niven, 2011). This was attained by launching communication initiatives to encourage team participation in change activities. The team also ensured that there was team cohesion and active coordination of these changes. Strategy implementation also required placing attention and emphasis on the change agenda and performances against the targeted outcomes. Our strategy-focused team also nurtured energetic leadership to utilize every opportunity to realize breakthrough performance and productivity. Using collaborative approach to change management enabled company leaders to make all members feel as part of the change agenda, thus minimizing resistance to change.
Recommendations for Improving Team Performance
There are various strategies that could be employed to ensure that the performance and productivity of the team is improved. First, a training program could be introduced to constantly sharpen and improve the skills of team members. Training would enable team members to find effective ways of addressing competitive challenges that constantly emerge on a regular basis (Franz, 2012). The primary goal of team training would be to improve competencies in order to allow effective synchronization, coordination, and communication between team members. The first step of team member training would entail developing team training requirements. Team training effectiveness would be designed and the tools, methods, and competencies would be mixed to form the instructional strategies utilized for team.
Team performance and productivity will also be improved by introducing a participative and collaborative decision-making environment in which team members differing views are respected and welcomed. Reasonable tolerance for mistakes and freedom for experimentation can help the team to improve the task that members are assigned to perform. The benefits of putting in place a positive team climate in the organization include organizational protection, personal development, and improved processes (Wildman & Griffith, 2014). By improving the work environment, the company can effectively achieve the goal of having better products and services, as well as mutual give and take, cooperation, and mutual respect. By being collaborative, team members’ environment of trust is improved. This results in cooperation, mutual respect, and better processes and products. Establishing a collaborative and participative team environment also helps to provide members with positive energy, enthusiasm, involvement, and excitement that energize team members to maximize their performance.
Career Learning
There are several lessons that I have drawn from the Capsim simulation. For instance, I have learned the importance of performance measurement in organizational strategy development. With performance measurement, an organization can effectively monitor the implementation of its goals and seek to understand when the plans are successful or not. In doing so, team members will effectively improve their strategies. Therefore, performance measurement systems such as the balanced scorecard need to do several things for them to be effective in monitoring and evaluating business success. For instance, the balanced scorecard can enable the organization to assess whether or not it is getting the expected contributions from employees and suppliers, the elements of its internal groups and the anticipated returns from customer groups. In addition, performance metrics can help the organization to evaluate whether or not it is providing each stakeholder group with what it needs to continue contributing to the organization to meet its primary objectives.
Conclusion
Organizational leaders and team members make numerous decisions on daily, monthly, and annual bases. These decisions have an immense impact on a team’s competitive advantage. Therefore, the strategic decisions must be informed by the most accurate bodies of evidence which may require the use of metrics and models for monitoring performance. One of the most popular measurements is the balanced scorecard, which can guide leaders to make informed decisions.
References
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