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Strategic Management
Zeivier Reyes
University of Phoenix
MGT 578
Dr. Stuart Gold
May 17, 2007
Strategic Planning
Strategic planning plays a big role in today's market. What this mean is the process of developing and maintaining a strategic fit between the organization's goals and capabilities and its changing marketing opportunities. It involves defining a clear company mission, setting supporting objectives, designing a sound business portfolio, and coordinating functional strategies (Armstrong, Gary, Kotler, Philip, 2003).
Lessons learned
Environmental Scanning
Identifying the factors that characterize a company's strategic situation is the basis for the strategy process. These factors can be classified as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Analyzing these factors using various tools enables a manager to formulate strategies more effectively (University of Phoenix, 2007).
In this simulation, one determines a long-term objective for a bicycle manufacturing company on the basis of internal and external information. Using the long-term objective as a framework, one isolates the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the company. Then one performs strategic analysis using a tool known as the Matched Pair Analysis to identify strategies that enables a company achieve its long-term objective.
According to the University of Phoenix Week Three overview (2007), SWOT is one outcome of doing an environmental assessment. It thus becomes a central tool a manager should use when developing plans for the future. A company that is aware of its weaknesses and threats can either hire people who are better in those areas and train its st ...