Strategic management and planning assignment help study online: Essay on corporate startegy for shoe maker in United States – Dell

3. Future Scenarios Plan

The firms Strategic vision is the heart of the critical matter which helps us in finding out the answer to the new markets should Dell enter and how and what would help Dell in gaining competitive advantage in the new markets (Schoemaker, 1997). The company’s vision helps in finding the shared understanding of what the firm should be and what changes should be made in the firm.

3.1 Best Scenarios

The scenarios are built for the examination of the external environment of the company and mainly it is used for finding the major uncertainties and the trends which are affecting all the players in the South African market. Some of the researchers believe that strategic vision building is being carried by a school of strategy which is called the ‘resource-based view’ (Wernerfelt, 1984) (Sanchez, Heene and Thomas, 1996). The researchers who proposed this resource-based view believe that the successful firms most of the time bundles some of their unique capabilities and the resources too which are owned by them.

 Thus even Dell can find out its best resources and  capabilities which it can combine together  for entering the South African market for Dell PC’s and laptops. If the core capabilities  are found to be durable, hard to imitate,  defensible and  scarce then they can define it from a stronger base for the organizations  to achieve sustainable competitive advantage as well as surplus profits too. On the other hand the resources and capabilities should show very well alignment with the major and vital success factors of the industry in future too.

3.2 Envisioning the future

Envisioning future is very critical because the human vision while predicting the future is found to be very biased  that is why back in 1920’s it was very difficult for the  defence leaders to predict the effect of airplanes on the naval warfare and in the same manner it is very difficult for us to find the impact of PC’s and laptops  over the next coming decades and the only reason which is found to be responsible for it is, we being the sufferers of over-confidence (Russo and SChoemaker, 1992).

 Therefore the managers need to expand their arena of thinking and imaginations in order see a very wide range of future which are possible which will help Dell to reach in the better positions where it can take better advantage of the unexpected opportunities and the best tool for helping in doing so is scenario planning which the managers of today in Dell can use. The disciplined technique which helps in imagination of all the future possible scenarios which are applicable to a greet range of issues is called Scenario Planning (Schoemaker, 1997).

 Developing scenarios for Dell will help in:

•  Anticipation of the cost containment
•  Regulatory control in health care section
•  Environmental liability towards South Africa
•  Assessment of the  impacts of deregulation in the electric utilities
•  Development of strategic vision for the R&D division of Dell
• Aid the  analysts of Wall Street to look into the future changes along with tracking these changes which might occur in the industry in future
• Help the firms in finding the impact of Internet on the insurance brokers, travel agents and newspapers (Schoemaker, 1997).

3.3 Building Blocks and Scenarios

Some of the building blocks which are helpful in constructing the scenarios are:

• Drivers of Change
•  Basic Trends
•  Key uncertainties
•  Rules of Interaction
•  Multiple Scenarios

The relationship between these building blocks can be seen from the figure 1 below.

Source: (Schoemaker, 1997).

3.4 Strategic Planning

The best tool for strategic planning is Scenario Planning because it simply turns the huge amount of data into limited number of possible or happening states or scenarios. Every scenario is short story which tells us about the interaction of various elements under specific conditions. Quantitative models can be created wherever there exists, a relationship between elements which can be formalised. Such kind of scenario should be evaluated for plausibility as well as internal consistency.

Scenarios are something much more than simple outputs from complex situation model and they try to interpret these outputs by studying and identification of these patterns and clusters amongst the various millions of possible outcomes which might have been generated through computer simulation. Thus the main aim of scenario planning is to organise all the possibilities in the form of simple narratives which can be grasped in easy manner and simple to use than the huge amount of data or formal models. Scenarios are created to challenge the existing mind set  (Schoemaker, 1997)t.

 Once the strategic scenarios are being developed the executive team of Dell should disseminate or pass them on simply all through the organization in order to stimulate the managerial thinking or on the other hand these scenarios can also be used for evaluation of the proposals too (Schoemaker, 1997).

 3.5 Scenario Construction

 There are basic ten steps which need to be followed for scenario construction and they are listed below:

3.5.1 Defining the Issues

 Setting the time frame and then setting the scope of analysis which is done in the terms of geographic areas, products, markets and technologies. The time frame depends upon numerous factors like the life cycle of product, horizon for competitor planning, rate of the changes in the technology and political elections and many more.

3.5.2 Identification of the major Stakeholders

 To find out who all will have interest in these issues and who will be affected by these issues  and who all can  have some or the other influence on the issues . Some of the major stakeholders identified for Dell in the South African markets are:

• Customers
•  Competitors
•  Shareholders
•  Suppliers
•  Employees
•  Government

3.5.3 Identification of the Basic Trends

In this basically the PESTLE analysis is being done, which helps in finding how the political, economic, societal, technological, legal and environmental trends will affect these issues identified.

3.5.4 Identification of Key Uncertainties

 Identify the possible uncertainties in the political , economic. societal, technological, legal and environmental factors and then the possible outcomes of  for each uncertainty are being found.

3.5.5  Construction of initial Scenarios

 Once the  uncertainties and the trends of the PC or laptop industry in South Africa have been identified  all the main factors or the requirements for scenario construction  get available.

3.5.6  Checking for Consistency and Plausibility

 There are three tests which need to be conducted  for internal consistency which deals with :

•  The trends
•  The combinations of outcomes
•  Reactions of the major or prime stakeholders

3.5.7  Construction of learning scenarios

 From the process of constructing the mechanical scenarios and  then checking them for consistency some general kind of themes emerge. Then the main goal is to find and identify the main themes which are found to be strategically relevant and then arranging the possible outcomes  all around these themes (Schoemaker, 1997). Naming of the scenarios is very vital part of this process like Dell might like to go for  being concerned with  liability of  the hazardous waste in the near future then it can go for scenarios like “  Environmentalism Loses” etc.

3.5.8  Identification of the Research Needs

 In order to understand the key  trends and uncertainties and trends you need to do extra  research and at this stage the learning scenarios help  in revealing the blind spots. Like in case of Dell  it knows a lot about its  industry but it does not have any technological edge in terms of innovation. SO it must try to invest more in  R&D  in order to study new technologies so it needs to master new domains like artificial intelligence ( in order to make its PC’s smarter),  electronic miniaturization (  to exploit the factors of portability) and information highways ( in order to enhance the  connectivity) and much more (Schoemaker, 1997).

3.5.9  Development of Formal Models

 The internal consistencies needs to be re-examined after further research and try to assess that  which actions should be formalised  through quantitative model. The formal creation of the models also helps in  lifting or uncovering the  hidden assumptions as well as the mental make (Morecroft and Sterman, 1994).

3.5.10  Create Decisions Scenarios

 Now the process should be converged towards the scenarios which will be used for testing the strategies and generation of new ideas for Dell. Now retracing of the steps from 3.6.1 to 3.6.8 is being done to find whether  the learning scenarios really provide  solutions for the real faces which the company is facing.

3.6 Conclusion

 Thus from the above scenario planning for Dell for tapping South African market it is quite evident that it although leads worldwide in its supply chain management but this core competency is quite imitable , so it needs to strengthen its R&D department to  develop technological emphasis  which can be brought in the organization by combining the efforts of both the marketing group means well as the R&D department of Dell which will help it on focussing to the needs of the customers mainly in the business segment. Thus Dell should try to gain a competitive edge  by transforming the whole industry by not being driven by the hardware components rather it should apply more emphasis  on its end users and the software component and should focus on the  home entertainment systems and  communication devices and the  desktop systems which will help it in realising its strategic vision. The strategies it can adopt for fulfilling its vision might include  software joint ventures,  specialization in product line,  open architecture promotion and  developing compatibility with IBM too.

if you want Marketing Management Assignment Help study samples to help you write professional custom essay’s and essay writing help.

Receive assured help from our talented and expert writers! Did you buy assignment and assignment writing services from our experts in a very affordable price.

To get more information, please contact us or visit www.myassignmenthelp.Com