Strategic Management
Introduction
Every business is subject to factors that affect the firm’s function as a whole. These factors are the ones attributed for the success or even the failure of a business. In a profit making business the firm obviously has to try and achieve this level of customer satisfaction as a way of staying ahead of the competition and making a profit. In this manner, the management of a certain organization should be guided by strategic management principle to be able to attain its business goal. Crafting strategy is not a responsibility in which managers can get by with opinions, good instincts and creative thinking. Herein, the management must ensure that the industry should have competitive advantage and that the company’s must be able to utilize its own competitive capabilities, resources, internal strengths and weaknesses ( 2003).
It is also important to consider the marketing environment of a certain organization. Herein, an industry’s marketing environment is composed of the actors and elements outside marketing which influences the ability of the marketing management in developing and maintaining the successful operation with its target market. In addition, the concept of marketing environment shows both opportunities and threats to the industry. There are two types of marketing environment: microenvironment and macro environment. The first type is composed of the forces close to the industry which affect its ability in providing service to their customers. This includes the industry’s suppliers, regulators, customers and competitors. On the other hand, macro environment includes the economic conditions, socio-cultural, legal-political, technological and natural environment. The main goal of this paper is to provide analysis for the micro and macro environmental forces which affects IBM.
a) Potential Impacts of External Environment to IBM
IBM is one of the leaders in developing, inventing and manufacturing the most advanced information technologies and systems such as software, computer systems microelectronics and storage systems. However, before IBM had become competitive, it faces different problems and issues in the past years. With this, the company had been through many changes just to ensure that the company will be adapted to the changing market environment. The external environments that affect IBM can be considered as one of the most important driving forces which may lead the company to become more competitive in the marketplace both local and international level.
Through these external forces, the company will be able to determine their best assets and utilized the most suitable management system to ensure that the company will adhere to its organizational goal of providing high quality products and services among its customer as well as giving them innovative and technologically advanced systems.
One of the potential impacts of this environment is to make IBM the most in-demand industry when it comes to computer and software products. Herein, the macro and micro environment of IBM make the company more adaptable from its business functions with regards to its software manufacture and to its hardware manufactures. The company can also realize that some of these environmental factors can be used to make the company a strong competitor. As noted, one of the most important external factors is the emergence of information technology. Since, IT is the main core of the IBM’s business operations and performances; it enables the company to provide state of the art computer systems, software and hardware for the customers worldwide.
Most importantly, these new information technologies also involve new deployment strategies that will bring broadband internetworking applications to the domestic mass market which may be useful for IBM. As part of these new methods of interactions between humans and computers, more individuals have been dependent on the electronic creation, storage and transmittal of personal, financial and other confidential information which demands highest security (1993). People rely mostly on computers because it provides them with complete access to time sensitive data, regardless of physical location. These devices includes mobile phones, office PCs, and home entertainment system that helps humans to access that information and work together in one seamless, integrated system.
Alternative Solutions
The management system and strategy of each and every organization is accountable for the maintenance of the organization’s strength and survival in the stiff competition in the world. Having been able to analyze the potential impact of the external marketing environment of IBM, it is therefore essential that the company should consider the implementation of different approaches in management. There are many marketing and management concepts, models and ideas that an organization can choose.
Due to the existence of competitions within and outside the marketing arena, it is therefore very significant for a company to establish strategic management and set a strategic plan for its development and improvement. It is for the reason that the twenty-first-century realities of globalization, rapid changes in technology, increasing competition, a changing workforce, changing market and economic conditions, and developing resource shortages all increase the complexity of modern management. Whereas strategic planning was a competitive advantage in the past decade, it is a necessity of global thinking in this century. Successful companies are, of course, the first to consider the global marketplace as their arena for competition
In this case, the two alternative strategies that IBM may use are the concept of total quality management and operations management.
Total Quality Management is a structured system for satisfying internal and external customers and suppliers by integrating the business environment, continuous improvement, and breakthroughs with development, improvement, and maintenance cycles while changing organizational culture. Furthermore, TQM is a set of management practices throughout the organization, geared to ensure the organization consistently meets or exceeds customer requirements. TQM places strong focus on process measurement and controls as means of continuous improvement (McNamara, 1999). The TQM philosophy of management is customer-oriented which will be suitable for IBM’s mission and goal. Moreover, if the company will utilize this, all members of a total quality management (control) will have the ability to systematically manage the improvement of the organization through the ongoing participation of all employees in problem solving efforts across functional and hierarchical boundaries. TQM incorporates the concepts of product quality, process control, quality assurance, and quality improvement.
Moreover, Total Quality Management is infinitely variable and adaptable. Although originally applied to manufacturing operations, and for a number of years only used in that area, TQM is now becoming recognized as a generic management tool, just as applicable in service and public sector organizations (1998).
Although, TQM encompasses many advantages for IBM, it also has disadvantage. Herein, the company may face problems in terms the human resources. IBM must be able to have skilful employees to meet the standards of the TQM, if the human resources will not be able to do their job effectively, the whole concept of TQM implementation will not be successful.
Operations management is all about transforming raw inputs in the form of labor, material, and capital into useful goods and services. The value that is added by both operations management and operations strategy is fundamental to most organizations. Operational activities are central to the provision of services and/or goods. Every organization that offers goods or services has an operations activity ( 1985). As far as the organization structure is concerned, some firms will have a discrete operations function. This might be called a manufacturing department, an operations system, or have no identifiable name at all.
Operations management focuses on carefully managing the processes to produce and distribute products and services. Usually, small businesses do not emphasize “operations management”, but they carry out the activities that management schools typically associate with the phrase “operations management.”
Major, overall activities often include product creation, development, production and distribution. Related activities include managing purchases, inventory control, quality control, storage, logistics and evaluations. A great deal of focus is on efficiency and effectiveness of processes. Therefore, operations management often includes substantial measurement and analysis of internal processes. Ultimately, the nature of how operations management is carried out in an organization depends very much on the nature of products or services in the organization, for example, retail, manufacturing, wholesale, etc. The only disadvantage of operations management is it is very complex and the operations and activities attached into it may cause some problems and conflicts within the management of IBM.
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