Strategic Planning Essay Exploring Issue-Based Model

Question

Task: Answer any TWO of the following questions in an essay format. All questions are weighted equally. The two essays are to be submitted in one document, clearly referenced and they must be your own individual work. Normal rules of plagiarism apply.

1. Critically evaluate one model or technique that can be used to generate strategic options for the future of a company. Provide examples to illustrate your points.

2. What are the key points and strategies recommended by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) model? Critically evaluate the usefulness of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) model in performing a Portfolio Analysis or a Strategic Business Units (SBUs) analysis.

3. To what extent does the 'design' approach to strategy development give us a complete understanding of how strategies come about? Use relevant academic literature and examples from industry to support your answer.

4. Cirque du Soleil challenged the conventions of the circus industry. It created uncontested market space that made competition irrelevant, by shifting away from the traditional circus show. It moved towards creating impressive professional dancing and acrobats’ performances.
Actually, one of the first Cirque du Soleil productions was titled “We Reinvent the Circus.” What kind of strategy has Cirque du Soleil followed? To what extent is this kind of strategy sustainable for the medium to long term survival of an organization? You can use this example or/and other examples from any industry to support your answer.

5. Outline how budget airlines such as Ryanair and Easyjet have configured their value chains to achieve competitive advantage in the passenger air travel market. To what extent are these strategies likely to provide competitive advantage in the long-term?

Answer

Answer 1
Introduction
According to the research on strategic planning essay, the strategic options and procedure in an organization is the development of a way, ensuring decisions as well as assigning resources important to attain the ultimate objective. The strategic options help as a road mapping to aid a company or business outline and acknowledge how to get where objectives of the company want to achieve in future. This section of strategic planning essay will evaluate and discuss the issue-based strategic option model or planning technique for effective solutions for a company.

The issue-based strategic technique is concerned with the current and recurrent projects in the future. This target to recognize the main problems a company faces currently-on the other side, it starts with the challenges to point out issues prior expanding, changing the policy and others (Judahet al., 2016). It is generally implemented as a short-time (around six to twelve months), a micro-focused procedure in the company. The issue-based plan developed within this strategic planning essay is most effective for entrepreneurial or small resource-based companies. The management team or company stakeholders underline the main challenges as well as objectives as an initial step. On the second level of the strategic model application; a company would make action plans to disclose and point the challenges, involving budget allocation (Judahet al., 2016). From then on, the strategic management team in the company would execute and record progress. Afterwards, issue-based planning has been applied and the core challenges that have been recognized are solved, then the company may consider changing to a larger, more critical system management model.

Evaluation of Issue-based strategic plan model
According to Shende& Panneerselvam (2019), it is stated in the strategic planning essay that in the issue-based strategic planning and evaluation stage related to the business policy development, one of the different process included in this model should be applied to evaluate an organization’s market, problems (both external and internal), resources, threats and opportunities. Herein strategic planning essay, the main goal of the systematic analysis should be as per George, Walker& Monster (2019), to underline what a company wants to achieve, the achievement and strengths this could bring to allow on achieving the aim as well as limitations, which required to be addressed previously to addition and application. The issue-based strategic planning assessment model has the capability to involve assessing one organization's macro and microenvironments, increased different competitive markets, determining what are the main market forces at the trend, operation and rating competitors among others.

Compared to the advantages and process automation stages in issue-based strategic planning, Heath(2018), has pointed out that one of the main concerns in this model application is limited resources for the plan in any company. It could be said that usually, the issue-based strategic plan techniques tend to many challenges to address for a company. In this regard, it could be said that addressing various challenges with the vision and stakeholder planning needs time and matter of cost is also included this case of strategic planning essay; thus, this model application is time-consuming and not cost-efficient. On the other hand, currently, Schrader (2020) has pointed out that often limited previous success reaching determined objectives in a company is also a challenge in the issue-based strategic planning model. Additionally, it could be seen that no buy-in for the systematic planning procedure is also another problem here. Though these challenges are by and big, conceptual as well as could be mitigated with the help of analytical, systematic and practical plan. Studies have provided information that organizations that make systematic plans outperform those that do not apply it.

Example of the issue-based strategic planning model
It could be seen in the present context of strategic planning essay that when a company already operating in the market for 1 or 2 years, has various recent challenges as well as very limited resources in the context of employees and funding, then the company must effectively consider applying issue-based plan. After that, the application of this strategic planning (after one year), the company's microsystems would be much effective and ready for processing more future-oriented planning (Blahnaet al., 2017). In this regard, an extra benefit of the applied issue-based strategic plan is that this generally gets much effective buy-in from the internal and external planners as their policies are not ruminating on recent main challenges, while the planners are being requested to visualize far-reaching objectives, which may outcome in even more challenges to underline very soon. On the other hand, issues-based planning model procedure is effectively matched for a company, which confronts various significant and prolific recent, organizational challenges; for instance, in company top functions, functions, recruitments, fundraising and others(Laubert & Geiger,2018). The procedure makes sure that a company should strengthen its internal functions prior to any plan for important visioning, future achievements and others. The procedure generally offers rather short-time planning (that is six to eight months or a year), which are mostly within the company. After the issues-based planning model has been mostly applied, companies may process more long-time planning, that is three to five years out.

On the other hand, the issues-based strategic plan model illustrated in the strategic planning essaycould be applied through developing "plan for a plan" to develop entire systematic planning procedure (that is planning for planning stipulates; desired outcomes from the systematic plan, time limit of the plan, respective people who would be included and time, control to offer an ultimate strategic plan and others (Naughton,2018). In this phase, the board planning group should be responsible for certain operations.

Conclusion
From the above strategic planning essay, strategic planning and its importance in a company have been understood. This strategic planning essayhas chosen issue-based strategic plan model with its evaluation. From the study, it could be said that strategic planning is a time-consuming process and needs various internal organizational information to collaborate for finding efficient future solutions for a specific company. On the other hand, it could be said that the strategic planning process is helpful in identifying the internal strengths and weaknesses along with underlining how to progress with operations to achieve objectives. Additionally, it has been understood that strategic planning is also helpful in achieving competitive advantage in the current market.

Answer 2
Introduction
The Boston Consulting Group model is considered as a strategic planning firm, which is helpful for companies to develop their competitive advantage and performance through operating on the core areas such as the effective application of tools, development of policies and development in functional services. There are some of the core sections or key points under which the BCG growth matrix has been divided and organizations get effective information as they put information and resources in these categories for proper analysis of their business growth opportunities. It could be understood that Boston Consulting Group model is effective for product portfolio analysis for organizations and understand opportunities in the current market.

Key points in Boston Consulting Group (BCG) model
The key points and recommendations of the BCG matrix model could be divided into four main categories within this strategic planning essay. Items in the question marks category are in a market that is developing quickly and of that, the product(s) have a lower cost of most of the sector. Question marks are the most confidently escalated items and needcomprehensive speculation and possessions to enlarge their part of the generalstatus of the sector (Shanbhag, Dutt & Bagwe, 2016). Interests being mentioned to inscriptions are normally sponsored with incomes from the income of the Cash Cow category. In the most ideal situation, a firm would in a perfect world need to transform question marks into stars. In the event that question marks do not prevail with regards to turning into a market chief, they wind up turning out to be hounds when showcase development decreases. In the strategic planning essay, items in the question marks quadrant are in a marketplace, which is emergingspeedily and of which the product(s) have a low piece of the pie. Question marks are the greatestconfidentlythoughtful items and needcomprehensive speculation and assets to build their part of the entire sector.

Items in the Dogscategoryare in a marketplace, which is emerging gradually and of which the product(s) have a low piece of the part of the entire sector. Items in the Dogs categoryis normally ready to support themselves and give incomes, yet the items will never arrive at the Stars category. Organizations ordinarily eliminate items in the Dogscategory except if the items are correlative to existing items or are utilized for a serious reason(Afriyieet al., 2018). Cash Cows category is the most creativemakes and should be "tired" to offernevertheless much cash as can be predictable. As designated by the growth-share framework, businessesmust notbe hooked tocash bovines to instigate growth yet impartial to help them so they couldsave up thecurrentpart of the entire sector. Items in the star category are in a marketplace, which is emergingswiftly and of which the product(s) have a higher market share. Items in the Stars category are advertise driving items and need a huge project to gripon the marketplacestatus, supportingexpansion, and increase an upper-hand (Keelson, 2017). What is the usefulness of the BCG model in the execution of a portfolio analysis in regards to the case scenario of strategic planning essay?

The portfolio analysis approach separates itself from other incorporated arranging methods by characterizing the vital job of every item dependent on the development pace of the item advertise just as the serious piece of the pie. The distinct jobs are then incorporated into a technique for the whole item portfolio, seeing the item arrangement of huge contenders. Along these lines, contrasts in development potential and a relative section of the entiresector add to the assurance of which items speak to speculation openings, which ought to give venture assets and which ones ought to, in the end, be wiped out from the portfolio (Hersen, Silva & Timofeiczyk Junior, 2018). The reason for utilizing the section of the entire sector lies in the aggregation of proof that the piece of the pie is solid and emphatically associated with the gainfulness of an item. The way that organizations with critical pieces of the overall industry current low prices legitimize this relationship. The low budgets are because of economies of scale and the knowledge bend. The economies of scale coming about because of the decrease of unit cost as the number of units created, albeit increasingly significant underway, can likewise be accomplished through advertising, deals, dispersion, organization, innovative work. The experience bend, which likewise permits the decrease of expenses as the components created increment, has as a wellspring of the rise of original creation forms, improved execution of creation gear and item re-structure.

It should be noted in the strategic planning essay that the development plot lattice approach marginally changes the utilization of a specific section of the entire market, because of the accentuation given in the comparative piece of the market share. The piece of the pie is comprehended to be the proportion between the deals of an item, for instance, by one nation and the deals of the result of the biggest contending nation, both in units. Correspondingly, Didia & Ateke(2017) utilizing the BCG lattice to demonstrate their significance as a guide to the instructive administrator of secluded advanced education organizations in the inside of the province of São Paulo, utilized ten per cent as the limit rate for development. Nonetheless, there is no agreement in mainstream researchers concerning the meaning of the limit among "high" and "low" development for the market development rate. Kader & Hossain(2020) have pointed out that investigating the espresso send out a market in Rwanda, Africa, measured in the examination a marketplace development pace of six per cent as a cut off among "higher" and "lower" development.

Conclusion
From the above strategic planning essay, it has been understood that there are two main levels such as competitive advantage and state (that is relative market position) and sector-specific effectiveness ( the growth level of any sector) should be taken into consideration for helping the analysis of the main capability of an organizational brand portfolio or product portfolio, and provide information for future investments policies. This strategic planning essayalso underlines that these two factors scope the likely effectiveness of a company portfolio in terms of needed cash or finance to back the element and cash operated by this.?

Reference list
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