Peer Critique & Review!

The grand question is “Do you know where your organization is headed?” if you can’t answer that, you may consider conducting a SWOTT analysis. SWOTT analysis examines the strength, weakness, opportunities, threats and tends of the organization. The examination of these aspects internally and externally along with taking action, ensures success in the future for the organization. According to, “SWOTT Analysis: Do You Know Where Your Organization Is Heading?" (2006), “Organizations today face increasing levels of local and global competition, and a successful past doesn’t guarantee a successful future”. This examination should be done often to help the members of the organization take an honest look at its strength and weaknesses. In order to keep the organization growing, prosperous and competitive leadership needs to address the results of the SWOTT analysis.

Identifying and economic, legal regulatory forces and trends

“It is important for every organization to interact and transact with its environment because the business environment has direct relationship with the organization” ("5 Factors That Influence Business Environment", 2016).  There are factors regarding economics such as the country’s economic system, its structure, and economic policies, how the capital market is organized, and nature of factors of production, business cycles socio-economic infrastructure. According to "5 Factors That Influence Business Environment" (2016), “Legal factors involve how flexible and adaptable the law and legal ruled that govern the business are. Legal provisions may also contribute to more or less income depending on the environment of operation”. There are ways to capitalize on trends before competitors. One is to distinguish between short-lived fads and long-term trends. “The idea is to wind up with a business model in which revenues are much larger than costs for a long period” ("5 Factors That Influence Business Environment", 2016). The Fitbit Flash division will look at how Fitbit leads it competitors such as jawbone, Xiaomi and Apple and correlate if they have any familiar applications such as “Flash”. When recognizing economics, we will recognize Fitbit being a big impact on the New York exchange valuing at an astonishing 3.8 billion. This will play a major role in the production of this application.

Critique how well the organization adapts to change.

Fitbit had a year of tumbling sales, manufacturing problems, and a plunging stock price. According to "Fitbit CEO Offers Turnaround Strategy After a Tough Year" (2017), “Although Fitbit's sales of its eponymous fitness tracking gadgets hit a record of $2.2 billion in 2016, the fourth quarter was a world of hurt. Amid a glut of inventory and weakness in China, sales for the all-important holiday quarter dropped 19%, Fitbit finally confirmed on Wednesday, after two earlier warnings to Wall Street about problems in the quarter”. The CEO Mr. Park instantly put in place a multipronged strategy, offering the Smartwatch with a health and fitness emphasis in the second half of 2016 year. He indicated he knew 2017 would be challenging but he had a good foundation to work from. Since Fitbit reports 353 million in Revenue, sells 3.4 million devices in 2017 second quarter and up 14% sequentially, ("Press Release Details ", 2017). Our division believes when the smartwatch drops before the holidays along with our new applications Fitbits revenue will be even higher. Fitbit views change as an opportunity to strategize and execute.

Analyze and explain the supply chain of the new division of the existing business

A supply chain is a network between a company and its suppliers to produce and distribute a specific product, and the supply chain represents the steps it takes to get the product or service to the customer ("Supply Chain", 2017). While Fitbit business is becoming more complex small mistakes in the supply chain can quickly impact the bottom line. While functions of operations, customer service and overall quality are important, a reporting structure helps bring attention to manufacturing issues. The Fitbit Flash division will look at client relationships and observe present competitive businesses. The division will make sure sales projections are met and when all problems are brought to the attention of customer service they are quickly addressed by the operations team. Gross margins will be examined as well such as tooling equipment and component scrap, increased rebated and promotions, increased return reserve and increased warranty reserve for legacy products. These will be highly examined due to Fitbits 2016 gross margins taking a 9.4 % or 178 million hit related to these margins ("178 Million Reasons Why Fitbit Needs an Operations Executive ", 2017). These items were hit due to poor execution and at the time could be helped with the focused operations team.

Discuss the primary internal organizational considerations for the development of a strategic plan

A comprehensive strategic plan includes a situational analysis that considers internal strengths and weaknesses. Analyzing a company's current strengths and weaknesses provides a wealth of insight helpful in accomplishing internal goals and internal analyses can provide advantages for achieving external goals, as well. Analyze all components of your businesses when identifying internal strengths and weaknesses (David, 2017). The primary internal organizational considerations for the development of our strategic plan will be to review external opportunities and threats, spot any competitive advantages, financial ratio and production systems. This will allow us to develop the tactics we will use to achieve our strategic objectives.

Identify the major issues and or opportunities the company faces based on your analysis

Fitbit like any other company will have issues and opportunities. Most companies with strategic plans can survive the issues and take full advantage of the opportunities if they want the company to succeed bad enough. Some issues that arose earlier on was the developing strong relationships with its consumers and using its brand name to its advantage. The opportunities they must ensure stability in a competitive market is developing accessories and applications such as “Flash”. The main opportunities are affordability and innovation through research and development. Some threats may consist of longevity, privacy issues and new products lacking internet capability.

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