Question

Samsung is a conglomerate (Multinational Corporation) consisting of multiple strategic business units (SBUs) with a diverse set of products. Samsung sells phones, cameras, TVs, microwaves, refrigerators, laundry machines, and even chemicals and insurances. This is a smart corporate strategy to have because it spreads risk among a large variety of business units. In case something might happen to the camera industry for instance, Samsung is still likely to have positive cash flows from other business units in other product categories. This helps Samsung to cope with the financial setback elsewhere. However even in a well-balanced product portfolio, corporate strategists will have to make decisions on allocating money to and distributing money across all of those business units.

1. Evaluate the strategic support of IS for the company internal and external competitive position use the appropriate strategic tools.

2. The strategic impact grid defines what the use of information systems resources should be going forward. How the relationship between strategic importance and generic IS strategies will help the manager of this business to take their strategic decision (either to continue, divest, expand or focus on certain segment)?

3. CSFs define the most important ingredients of the business success for the IS strategy, Identify the CSFs of the company based on the Objectives-CSFs-IS applications. Identify at least three objectives.

Answer 1

Solution for 1, 2, and 3:

A strategy is called as a plan of actions taken by management to achieve the company’s common goal and other goals. It determines the success of the company.  

Strategic analysis refers to as the process of conducting broad research on the company and its ongoing environment to calculate a strategy. The definition of strategic analysis may be different from an academic or for business perspective, but the process involves mostly with these mentioned common factors:

1. Identifying and evaluating the data relevant to the company’s strategy

2. Defining the external and internal environments and to be analyzed

3. Using the several analytical methods like SWOT analysis, value chain analysis and five forces analysis, etc

Strategy means it is a plan of actions taken by management to achieve the company’s main goal and other goals.
Strategy determines the success of a company.
The company is essentially asking itself is a strategy, like as Where do the company want to play and how are they going to win?

Vision and the Mission of the company

For developing a business strategy, a company needs to be very and well-defined understanding of what is it and what is represents and analysts needs to look at the following

What it wants to achieve in the future is called Vision

What the business is and the company deals with and what it is looking in it is called Mission and

The fundamental beliefs of the company or an organization reflect its commitments and morals or ethics is called Values

After doing and getting with a deep understanding and analysis of the company’s mission and values analysts or strategists can help the business and intimate the management to undergo a strategic analysis. The main purpose of the strategic analysis is, to analyze an organization’s or company's internal and external environments, assessing the current strategies, and generating and evaluating the successful strategic alternatives.

SWOT analysis and Boston Consulting Group matrix analysis explained that Where do we put most of the money and where should we perhaps divest. The Boston Consulting Group matrix uses Relative Market Share and the Market Growth Rate for determining the analysis.

The Boston Consulting Group Matrix used this variable to measure the company’s competitiveness. The nearest measure for Relative Market Share is the company’s share relative to its largest competitor. So for example, if Samsung company has a 20 percent market share in the mobile phone industry and (Apple) its largest competitor has 60 percent. So, the ratio would be 1:3 it implying that Samsung has a relatively weak position. suppose, If Apple only had a share of 10 percent, the ratio would be 2:1 it implying that Samsung is in a relatively strong position, which might be reflected in above-average profits and cash flows. here the cut-off point is 1.0 meaning that the smallest company should at least have a similar market share as its largest competitor in order to have a high relative market share. The assumption in this framework is that an increase in relative market share will result in an increase in the generation of cash.

Market Growth rates - it is used to measure the company's growth and its market value

The analysts or strategists can question frequently on the current situation and of the competitors and search for the solutions

Stars are the other business units that have high market share which is called potential market leader in a fast-growing organization or company.

The following Strategic Analysis process grid gives a high-level overview of business strategy, its implementation, and the processes to lead to business success.