Final Milestone PDF

Preview

Summary

milestone 3...

Description

Running Head: AMERICAN APPAREL MILESTONE THREE

FINAL PROJECT MILESTONE THREE Jasmine Thomas Business Foundations

1

AMERICAN APPAREL MILESTONE THREE

2

OL 501 Milestone Three Worksheet In this milestone, discuss what the company needs to do to change direction and its success. Complete the following: 1. Based on the environmental (SWOT/TOWS) analysis you conducted on your chosen organization, what strategy would you recommend moving the organization in a new direction? The strategy should be a high-level explanation of what issues you uncovered in your analysis and how to improve the organization’s market and financial performance. American apparel SWOT analysis indicates the firm has strong leadership with location advantages that enhance its geographic presence. Based on the TOWS analysis, the changing consumer preference makes the market presence to appear weak in that competitive trends are marked with inflation. Therefore, the company should leverage its strength by exploiting external opportunities, which minimizes the threat of changing consumer preferences. To improve the company's market and financial status, vertical integration of the value chain can help in the exponential growth of the consumer base, embed innovation within the business, and reduce interest rates, all of which will increase company income through strategic competitiveness (Ravanavar, 2012).

2. Identify the key functional organizations involved in implementing your chosen strategy (marketing, operations, accounting, sales, HR, etc.). What role does each functional organization play in implementing the strategy? Based on the TOWS analysis, functional organization for competitive strategy implementation will include operations departments. The primary function will be to use the geographic presence strength to enlarge the consumer base by dispersing their target market.

AMERICAN APPAREL MILESTONE THREE

3

Marketing function will be to enhance the company’s online presence using diverse social networking channels, which will exploit the growing e-commerce platform (Bhattacharya & Polman, 2017). Additionally, the marketing function can turn the weakness of consumer change in taste by generating positive strategies that will generate positive outcomes for consumers when it comes to their products through word of mouth or social media advertisements. With the threat of losses, the human resources function in strategic competitiveness will be to cope with competitive pressure by increasing research and development expenditure, competency, and sustainability.

3. Develop a basic (high-level) plan to improve organizational performance, which should include the goals for profitability based on specifics from your financial and environmental (SWOT/TOWS) analyses. It should explain in detail how the goals are in alignment with the company mission/vision and values. Workplace diversity creates an opportunity for high cultural intelligence within an organization, which is crucial in taking globalization as a growth opportunity rather than a threat (Bhattacharya & Polman, 2017). With a global presence, the company can leverage diversity to maximize value for money and economic conditions through differentiated labor supply. Exploiting the creative thinking capabilities of all its employees from different dimensions reduces stress in the workplace by increasing employee morale leading to delivery of new and creative products that improve not only organizational performance but also product performance in the market, which aligns with company mission of being creative.

4. How do the strategy and performance improvement plan affect the organization's

AMERICAN APPAREL MILESTONE THREE

4

functional departments (marketing, operations, HR functions, etc.)? With the strategy and performance implementation, the functional departments are presented with a better approach for progress by offering broader internal and external environmental factors with the probability of driving positive sales and intensifying the impact on the consumers. Areas that need focused changes both in the long and short term are identified and addressed. With this planning, departments' dynamic nature is ranked based on strategy effectiveness and urgency, limiting harm and threat possibilities (Bhattacharya & Polman, 2017). Moreover, the brand image will be reinforced by the sustainability of strategic competitiveness, which will pattern the departments based on consumer and market patterns.

5. What specific KPIs will you use to effectively measure the success of the strategy? Explain how/why these KPIs align with the identified strategy and the organization's mission, vision, and values. You should provide at least one KPI for each objective of the strategy. Consumer contentment increases employee creativity, and the company's financial performance are the key performance indicators (Ghazinoory et al., 2011). These align with the competitive strategy of leveraging opportunities in that they make business operations innovative, decrease cost, and improve efficiency, resulting in faster product movement. The growth in each segment will see a rise in consumer base with lower financial costs on the company side since the consumers prefer innovative products.

References

AMERICAN APPAREL MILESTONE THREE

5

Bhattacharya, CB & Polman, P. (2017). Sustainability Lessons from the Front Lines. MIT Sloan Management Review, 58(2):71-78. Ghazinoory, S., Abdi, M., & Mehr, A. M. (2011). SWOT methodology: a state of the art review for the past, a framework for the future. Journal of business economics and management, 12(1), 24-48. Ravanavar, G. M., & Charantimath, P. M. (2012). Strategic formulation using tows matrix – A case study. International journal of research and development, 1(1), 87-90....