Final Strategic Plan

Running head: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PLAN 1

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PLAN 7

Strategic implementation plan

Student’s name

Course title

Date

Strategic implementation plan

Introduction

Strategic implementation plan is a document that defines the implementation process of the proposed strategies to improve the performance and achieve goals of the organization. This document includes the decisions and activities that are necessary to turn the desired strategic goals into a reality. Typically, it outlines the short and long term outcomes, resources, assumptions the budget, and roles and responsibilities. Strategic implementation planning is very important because if there is no planning, the desired strategic goals remain unactionable (Zhang et al., 2018). This paper will therefore develop a strategic implementation plan for Microsoft Company that will include objectives, functional tactics, action items, milestones and deadlines, tasks and task ownership, and resource allocation. It will also recommend any organizational change management strategies that may enhance successful implementation. Finally, it will develop a risk management plan as well as developing key success factors.

Objectives

Strategies must look forward to achieve some objectives. The main objectives for Microsoft are;

· To reinvent productivity and business processes

· Create more innovative products and services

· Build the intelligent cloud platform

For each of the above objectives, Microsoft has specific strategies that it believes they will help the company achieve those specific objectives. Therefore, to implement those strategies, the following are the activities and functional tactics that will ensure that implement will be successful and the anticipated or expected outcomes. They include;

Goal 1

To reinvent productivity and business processes.

Actions

In order to reinvent productivity and business processes, Microsoft will expand its experience by collaborating with other firms of same interest, build more business process experiences, and also invest more on content authoring and consumption.

Outcomes

Through the above actions, Microsoft look s forward to develop and invent more products thus expanding its market all over the world. This will also enable the company to remain competitive in the hardware and software technology industry because it will create a differentiation between Microsoft and other players in the same field.

Goal 2

To create more innovative products and services

Actions

To create more innovative products and services, Microsoft will invest more on research and customer analysis. The company will select a group of researchers within the company and task them with the researching assignment which should take one month. The research will involve digging deep into the market both local and international and see what its competitors are doing, what the gaps in the market are and what the customer needs. The information collected from the research will enable the company to grow more innovative products and services that align with the needs of the customers and that close the existing gaps in the market. Information technology experts will use the information provided by the researchers and see which products ands services will need to be innovated so that they can do so following the needs of the customers. The company will need to allocate some amount of money for this exercise.

Outcomes

Using the information from the research, the company will make more innovative products and services. Another expected outcome is generating more revenue because there will be more sales and attracting more customers. This will enable the company to continue dominating the industry of hardware and software technology industry.

Goal 3

To build a cloud that provides the customers improved agility, faster time to value, solutions that differentiate its business, and cost reduction.

Actions

Create a more powerful and reliable model that is more attractive to enterprises and third party developers who will in turn enable applications to cloud platform and attach differentiated capabilities such as rich data management, identity management, advanced analytics, and machine learning.

Outcomes

The above actions are meant to develop a very powerful dynamics CRM 2016 Power BI that is believed to attract many customers from all over the world. This will help the company to expand its market.

Recommendation on organizational change management strategies

The best recommendation for Microsoft on organizational change management strategies to enhance successful implementation is to engaging the staff members. If the staff is not engaged in the execution of the company’s strategies, the process will definitely fail because the staff does not understand the strategies (Rothaermel, 2016). Therefore, engaging the staff involves;

· Preparing – the staff should be prepared to accept change because change is difficult and everyone in the company should be prepared for the hurdles that come with the change

· Include – competent employees should also be included in the planning process and not just managers alone. Employees are more aware of the company activities than managers do

· Communicate – the company should communicate the strategic vision to the staff and ensure that everyone understands their roles in delivering to strategic vision

· Clarify – it should be made clear to all employees on the expectations of the company. They should know how the company expects them to change, the manner in which they are expected to deliver and understand their functions within the strategy.

Risk management plan

Risks are those aspects that can be stumbling blocks to a company’s success. Therefore, the company needs to put up strategies to manage those risks so that they do not cause more harm to the company. The steps in risk management plan for Microsoft are;

· Identifying the risk – the risk management team will uncover, recognize and describe the risks that may affect the progress of the company

· Analyzing the risk – when the risks are identified, the next step is to find out the consequences that each can cause to the company

· Evaluating the risk – this is meant to determine the severity of each risk and if they need to be handled. This is also called risk ranking

· Treating the risks – the highest ranked risks are the ones to attend to immediately. The biggest risk for Microsoft is competition. Therefore Microsoft will treat the risk by creating differentiation, producing more innovative products, and reducing cost to attract more customers

Conclusion

Risk management is a process that every organization must employ to protect the company from failure. Risks can lead to big damage to the company if they are not identified and treated in time. Microsoft Company operates in a very competitive field and therefore its main risk in competition. Many companies are coming up in the industry. Therefore, to manage this risk, the company adopts the strategies that give the company a competitive advantage like reducing cost, creating differentiation, and developing more innovative products.

References

Kremljak, Z. (2017). Risk analysis of specific project problems. Annals of DAAAM & Proceedings, 74-82.

Rothaermel, F. T. (2016). Strategic management: concepts (Vol. 2). McGraw-Hill Education.

Zhang, X., Song, H., Gao, G., Ma, L., Liu, T., & Liu, L. (2018, December). Evaluation Framework for Strategic Implementation Process in Large Enterprises. In Third International Conference on Economic and Business Management (FEBM 2018). Atlantis Press.