BUS 499 Business-Level and Corporate-Level Strategies Essay

Please use US English!! More information attached.

Consider the corporation you have selected to use in your first three assignments. Identify one of the firm’s major competitors that you would consider working for.

Research the company on its own website, the public filings on the Securities and Exchange Commission EDGAR database, the University’s online databases, the Nexis Uni database, and any other sources you can find. The annual report will often provide insights that can help address some of these questions.

You will do a 15-minute presentation to the Board of Directors of the corporation. Develop an eight- to twelve-slide PowerPoint presentation with speaker notes or record a video based upon Assignments 1 through 3.

You may choose to compare your chosen corporation to a major competitor with whom you would like to work. You will make recommendations to the Board of Directors based upon your analysis and decision on why the corporation remains or is not a good fit for you.

Requirements

Determine the impact of the company’s mission, vision, and primary stakeholders on its overall success as a competitive employer in the industry.

Create a SWOT analysis for the company to determine its major strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Based on the SWOT analysis, outline a strategy for the company to capitalise on its strengths and opportunities, and minimise its weaknesses and threats.

Discuss the various levels and types of strategies the firm may use to maximise its competitiveness and profitability.

Outline communications plan the company could use to make the strategies you recommend above known to all stakeholders.

Assess efforts by this corporation to be a responsible (ethical) corporate citizen and determine the impact these efforts (or lack thereof) have on the company’s bottom line. Provide specific examples to support your response Develop an executive-level PowerPoint presentation with 8 slides with speaker notes and appropriate graphics or professional video.

Go to Basic Search: Strayer University Online Library and locate at least three quality references. Note: Wikipedia and similar websites do not quality as academic resources.

References must be submitted on a Works Cited page using SWS format.

Use the Assignment 4 Template [PPTX] to ensure that your assignment meets the above requirements.

The specific course learning outcome associated with this assignment is as follows:

Develop a corporate presentation based on a SWOT analysis, strategies for maximising competitiveness and profitability, a communications plan, and an assessment of efforts related to ethics.

Grading for this assignment will be based on answer quality, logic and organisation of the paper, and language and writing skills, using the scoring rubric.

BUS 499 Business-Level and Corporate-Level Strategies

When the name Dell is mentioned, what comes to the mind of many people is personal computers since the name is widely known for its link to computers.

However, since its founding, the company has continued to grow and expand beyond the personal computers market to engage in other products and services such as IT (Swab & Gentry, 2018). The company now has a stake in servers, networking, storage, and data protection alongside its products, such as monitors, PCs, and printers.

The company went public in 1988 as Dell Computer Corporation, and began a stiff competition with Compaq later in 2001. The company faced tough times from 2013 when smartphones and tablets became widely accepted, prompting the company to initiate the privatisation process (Swab & Gentry, 2018). This paper aims at discussing strategies used by the company to operate both at the business and corporate levels.

Business level strategies

The business-level strategy aims at meeting customers’ needs and satisfying them by offering high-quality goods and services to meet the needs and increasing operating profits (Hitt & Hoskisson, 2020). The pivotal focus is to position the company against its competitors. Staying at the cutting edge and influence market and technology trends in the long-run.

The three core values of Dell Inc. are Listen, Learn, and Deliver. These values have made the company successful in the IT sector by offering its products and services to meet customer needs.

The success of the company has been on unique customisation, cost proposition, and delivery. The company’s focus turned to upgrading its strategies into meet the changing environment in the sector (Swab & Gentry, 2018).

The business strategy has always centred on several core elements, which include mass customisation, direct sales, partnership with suppliers, build-to-order manufacturing, customer service, just-in-time inventories, market segmentation, and information sharing and extensive data with both customers and suppliers.

Dell now has strategies that focus on individual customer needs, unlike before, where the focus was on government and commercial customers (Hitt & Hoskisson, 2020). The personal computer trend has shifted towards smaller and more communication-oriented and integrated products.

The market has experienced high demand for portable devices such as laptops, smartphones, and notebooks. This has forced the company to adopt a strategy of manufacturing computer products which meet that need (Swab & Gentry, 2018).

The core competencies used by the company to meet specific product markets have been instrumental for the company. Growth in technology and advancement in product differentiation makes customers have more expectations of high –quality and advanced products at a low process (Lee & Barney, 2016).

To meet these demands, Dell has focused on its cost leadership skills and customers’ buying behaviour as well as differentiated products to create value for the customers. The cost leadership-differentiated strategy enables the company to make goods and services with an emphasis on low cost and high differentiation (Hitt & Hoskisson, 2020).

This means the company has to lower its costs and produce products that are highly differentiated from its competitors. Through this strategy, the company has been able to build skills that can adapt quickly to rapid changes in the market and new technologies in both internal and external environments (Swab & Gentry,2018)

To balance its objectives, the company has three initiatives which, include manufacturing systems, quality management, and information networks. These initiatives have been instrumental in the continuous enhancement of products and cost reductions.

Such efforts have also enabled employees to improve communication and work flow, as well as identifying and resolving problems. Information management has helped the company improve customer services through customised assembly process (Hitt & Hoskisson, 2020).

The flexibility of this process aims at meeting customers’ orders through a faster manufacturing process.

Total quality management is a strategy used by the company to run innovation that emphasises the commitment to its customers as well as continuous improvement of processes through problem-solving and data-driven approaches usually based on the empowerment of employees (Lee & Barney, 2016).

The strategy eliminates inefficiencies in manufacturing and lowering costs hence allowing the company to offer products and service at low prices as expected by customers.

Corporate-level Strategies

Corporate strategies of any business focus on success through a mix of business units that allow the company to remain competitive. It aims at making a business more than just a unit through development of important relationships for sharing resources and avoiding duplication of efforts.

The computer industry today is one of the most critical and unpredictable sectors across the world. It forms the foundation of all information technologies, accounting for more than 5 percent of global GDP (Chang, 2010).

Computers are crucial across many industries for telecommunication, automobiles, consumer electronics, and medical research among others.

Although there was recorded growth in computer purchases until 2008, today computer markets have changed immensely unlike 20 years ago (Lee & Barney, 2016). There have been innovative and technological trends in the industry, forcing companies in this sector to keep in touch with latest movements and trends technologically.

Dell company has also established multiple factories across the world in order to meet their customers’ needs at a local level and ensure products are received over a short time.

The company also partnered with its suppliers to set their stores next to Dell factories to reduce transportation costs and also provide the company with quick inventory levels (Swab & Gentry, 2018).

Additionally, the company is making acquisitions of new related companies in order to provide the company with services that the company does not offer (Hitt & Hoskisson, 2020).

This entails acquiring companies which manufacture smartphones and tablets in order to remain afloat with technology. The company is also acquiring smaller companies which are into software and networking in order to diversify its products and services.

Dell Inc. has remained at the top of the market despite technological and innovative trends in the whole industry. The main driving force in computer industry in the recent years has been internet and applications forcing Dell to adopt a strategy of simplified PCs or computers with specific applications (Swab & Gentry, 2018).

Additionally, companies are purchasing computers based on processing power and server visualisation. For instance, Dell began offering Linux notebook systems to fit into the demands of the market, becoming the first company to offer such a product line.

The company has also been striving to offer products with high data storage, data transfer as well as products that offer functions of connecting appliances to PCs (Chang, 2010). The company has also focused on offering computers and electronics at low prices through direct sales.

In the past few years, Dell Inc. began to focus on social media and e-commerce strategies in order to reach out to potential as well as its loyal customers (Chang, 2010). The strategy has been working for the company through transmission of its messages and products lines trough Twitter, Facebook, among others.

The strategy was adopted because of the changing nature of communication in the recent times where companies are choosing to use social media and e-commerce to reach directly to their customers.

In order to improve efficiency and remain the leading company in the information technology sector, the company had to adopt ways in which it will ensure the company remain present across the world through social media.

Competitive Environment

Dell has faced intensive competition from companies in the computer sector who have tried to set distribution to retain stores around the globe to drive Dell from the market. This forced Dell to respond by partnering with suppliers to set their stores near Dell factories in order to increase efficiency and convenience to its loyal customers (Swab & Gentry, 2018).

The competition has been stiff, with Compaq edging out Dell in 2013 as the leading suppliers of computers. This was because Compaq simplified its product delivery process in order to allow customers to buy its products rather than Dell’s products.

Competition in this industry has been fierce because the companies use the same differentiation/cost-leadership strategy. Dell has not been struggling, in this strategy and this made it face decline in demand of its products because of price.

Companies that are involved in computer manufacture include Apple, Lenovo, HP, Acer, Compaq, and Toshiba, among others. Apple has been successful in differentiation while companies like Acer, Lenovo, HP, and Toshiba have succeeded in cost leadership (Chang, 2010).

Dell’s differentiation strategy has been copied by its competitors, sending the company to the drawing board in order to remain unique. The cost-leadership used by Dell has not been strong because other companies have been able to offer products of similar quality at low prices than Dell.

As such, the company depends on other aspects of running the company in order to gain competitive advantage in the recent years. HP has had advantage in selling its PCs in other countries while Dell has been US-Centric in its approach (Swab & Gentry, 2018).

This has enabled HP to gain popularity overseas although Dell responded to such competition by acquiring smaller upcoming companies which are based in different countries in order to diversify its production and gain larger market share.

Market cycles

Slow-market cycles refer to markets where resources are protected and companies maintain competitive advantage or monopoly in the market in a way that competitive pressures cannot affect the markets. These kinds of markets are rare to find unlike fast-cycle and standard cycle markets.

Fast-cycle markets are markets with high competition, forcing companies to continuously innovate new ways of marketing and new products, as well as counter attack new strategies used by other competitors in order to remain relevant in the market (Lee & Barney, 2016). As such, companies may not rely on singular resources because the market cycles are very fast.

The needs of customers usually change fast and therefore companies should be in the look out to identify any arising gaps and new trends in order to design products that can meet the customer demands.

Competitive environment for Dell Inc. would be different if the company existed in these types of markets. In a slow-cycle market, Dell would be using the cost-leadership/differentiated strategy in order to reduce its products because of less or no competition.

The company would also not see the need to differentiate its products to match them with new technologies since it would be the only existing or leader in computer technology.

As such, its products would be expensive and not able to fit in the current technological age (Chang, 2010). On the other hand, in a fast-cycle market, Dell has been able to go out of its way in order to offer products which match this era of technology, as well as manufacture products that fit the demands of customers.

Competition allows companies to offer the latest designs of products and services at low cost to the benefit of customers (Lee & Barney, 2016).

References

Chang, H. F. (2010). Analysis of the innovation strategy of technical‐intensive industries: scenario analysis viewpoint. Business Strategy Series, 11(3), 152–157. doi: 10.1108/17515631011043813

Hitt, I. & Hoskisson. (2020). Strategic management: Concepts and cases: Competitiveness and globalisation (13th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning

Lee, Y., & Barney, J. B. (2016). Strategic Factor Markets. The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management, 1–2. doi: 10.1057/978-1-349-94848-2_519-1

Swab, R. G., & Gentry, R. J. (2018). Vision. Drive. Stamina: How Dell Became the Company with the Power to Do More. doi: 10.4135/9781526437921

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