MGT9706M Strategy in Context Assignment Sample
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Executive summary
The study determines the strategy of Microsoft for the development of the business market. The useful tools and technology for the change of the software and hardware in the computer are determined in the study. The pros and cons of Microsoft’s strategy are determined in the study with effective tools. The study discusses the four strategic tools for the growth of the business market Microsoft. The competitive positioning of Microsoft is determined in the study with the best target market and customers. The CASE analysis framework is also analyzed in the study with the diamond strategy for the growth of the business market.
Introduction
The strategic management of the company is to make the rapid planning, review, tracking, and evaluation of the software standards. Strategic management is a vast concept in the workplace of the company that processes the earlier steps of the organization. The strategy helps for the growth of the performance of the company in the technological purpose. The study is going to determine the pros and cons of the strategy of the Microsoft company. The company follows the CASE analysis framework that is going to discuss in the study with context, situation, problem, and solution. In addition, various strategic tools in the workplace of Microsoft for the growth of the company are going to be determined in the study.
Main body
The pros and cons of Microsoft’s strategy
The Corporation’s generic Microsoft strategy is aligned with the intensive strategies for the growth of the operating system. Strategy in Microsoft conducted by them in their workplace by following methods, plans, and activities in the workplace to manage the application of electronic gadgets (Wijayanto et al. 2021). The generic strategy of the company indicates the general approaches to make sure the competitiveness of the business. The generic competitive strategy of Microsoft supports the attractiveness of hardware and software of computers. On the other hand, the intensive strategies of the company present the approaches that use to make sure about the best performance of the business in the marketplace. The rest of the strategies of Microsoft have a supporting role in the software and hardware of the computer business.
Pros
The cash machine is the main part of the advantages in the strategy of Microsoft that help to operate the cash flows of the company in the measurement of the annual revenue. Microsoft has a set of business segments in the franchise business such as office, windows, X box, and server division that is another major advantage in the business market. According to Onnen, (2019), the Microsoft store lives on the strategy of Microsoft that build the operating system of the company. As a consultant, it can be found that the cloud is one of the major pros in the strategy of Microsoft that uses the internet to provide the best application to the people.
Microsoft works with about 365 staff who are allowed to access the documents remotely and emails. All the employees facilitate the sharing of the updating the files from the numerous diverse locations. NONGO et al. (2021), stated that best practices in the company are management of the strategy, policy, and practices for the growth of the business market. The export strategy helps to minimize the risk and capital investment for the company (Rothaermel, 2018). Application of the IT sectors has huge support to the strategy of Microsoft that allows the customers to get the running access of the business in the market.
Cons
There are many cons to the strategy of Microsoft for lack of focus with the aggressive investing in the new business. The company has the different departures of the executives with the tools and server division. The executives of Microsoft show the best opportunities from the executive’s companies such as Apple, Facebook, Google, etc. According to Gotsch et al. (2019), Microsoft fails to take the access of iPod that affects innovation so the stoke price is decreased in the marketplace. Microsoft has benefited from the improvement of the economy through the higher spending on tools and technology.
The approaches of the global strategy promote the establishment of the brand image and manage the reputation of the brand. As a consultant, it can be evaluated that the licensing strategy has the major cons in the way of maintaining the control over the use of the technology to the firms of Microsoft. Thelwall (2018), stated that Microsoft uses the information from the publishers to create a database. Many people are rightly concerned about the security implications in the work that premises in the Cloud system. The new software of Microsoft is released onto the market that helps to get excited about the advantages of the computers and other gadgets.
CASE analysis
The strategy Diamond is a simple way to show the various parts of the strategy for the growth of the business market. It has four parts such as Arenas, Staging, Vehicles, Differentiators, and economic logic that determine the strategic way to solve the problems.
| Context
· AI technology · Geographical areas |
Situation
· Risk at the time of adopting new technology · Competitors |
| Problem
· Meet the customers demand · Use of new tools |
Solution
· Training of employees · Reduce cost of production |
Table 1: CASE analysis framework
(Source: Self-created)
Arenas
The Microsoft Corporation is the best practices in the range f the strategic operations for the growth of the business market. As a consultant, it can be said that market Penetration is the primary intensive strategy that uses for the growth of the business in the marketplace. The strategy of Microsoft is to match with the publications and give the best outcomes in the software and hardware (Kousha and Thelwall, 2018). Microsoft uses social media to promote its services and its target market is the young people of the world who are educated. In the workplace the company, the core technology of AI is used to solve the problem, and the value creation stages emphasize the business with the new tools and technology in the business market.
Staging
Graphical documents, detect grammar effort in the test documents, comprising images, etc. are sequences of steps for the growth of the business. At first, the company needs to take the speed of the internet and match it with this to give the best outcomes to the customers. The steps attract all the students of the world and through this; the risk of the business market is reduced by this technology. According to Correani et al. (2020), the adoption of digital technology is the major part of managing the strategies in the business market. Through the CASE analysis, Microsoft firstly finds the problems of the company the find a way to mitigate them.
Vehicles
The joint venture of Microsoft is the Accenture Microsoft Business Group, which is able to manage the business market. The recent strategy of Microsoft for peak resources evaluates the effectiveness and potential capacity (Sen et al. 2020). As a consultant, this can be evaluated that the advance is the engine of the innovation and solution of Microsoft with the growth of the customer’s experiences with the AI technology.
Differentiators
Microsoft needs to manage the customer’s services with the demand of the customers for reducing the problem of the company. Eitzman (2019), stated that Microsoft is still a successful company with the new innovation in the software and hardware services to meet the customer’s demand.
Economic Logic
The high cost of transportation is a great strategy for the company for changing the business market. The higher prices of the gadgets are wanted to pay more to the unique design of the company for managing the business in the marketplace. Iansiti and Lakhani, (2020), AI becomes the force to the growth of the technology in the marketplace. As a consultant, it can be said that the cost of Microsoft competes because of the great design or unique features of the products.
Discussion of competitive position in the various industries
The primary determining factor of the profits and competitive positioning is the professional ability of the business to keep the competition in the marketplace. Competitive positioning is the market strategy that refers to the marketing team of Microsoft to manage its reputation. According to Feng et al. (2020), innovation is a vital part of the way of development of the technology in the computer. The largest acquisition of Microsoft is to the date in the year 2022 at the time of acquired Activision. In addition, the company Acquired 26 various US states and 20 countries with the best quality of services to the people. Microsoft gains the access to the activity and M&A summary of the software sector in the year 2022 for solving the problem.
The software giant’s history is the largest acquisition for the workplace of Microsoft that makes the gaming platform to the realization period of the people. The vision of Microsoft is the river of entertainment for the people and removing the barriers between the physical and digital worlds. Argyres et al. (2019), the strategy of the company gains the sustainable advantages for the growth of the business market by fulfilling the demand of the customers. Competitive positioning is the relative place in the space of the market for the growth of the business with the best technological elements.
As a consultant, this can be evaluated that the competitive position is the major part of the growth of the business in the marketplace. The design of the competitive market is a threat to the company in the way of business growth (Tirole, 2020). The target market of Microsoft is included in the market of the business that offers to mitigate the other competitors in the marketplace. The strong individual competitiveness of many companies is a major part of global economic growth (Just, 2018). The competitive positioning is important for the powerful business strategy tools that help to find the market segment with the brand reputation.
Analysis of Microsoft’s Performance
Based on the above analytical challenges, as a consultant, it has been identified that Microsoft has pursued AI technology through three different stages.
Firstly, Microsoft caters to the customers looking in order to add AI functionality to their applications by utilizing AI development services and tools.
Secondly, the software company has infused AI in every area and the integration of AI technology has boosted the financial performance of organizations in every aspect (Ilić et al. 2021). The implementation of AI technology has enhanced their software to laptop performance in order to get impressive consumer feedback and offer them a reliable and most comfortable use.
And third, Microsoft has leveraged AI for improving all aspects of its internal and external operations.
Apart from these, it has also been analyzed as a consultant that Microsoft has generated a set of the majority to increase their revenue from Business and Productivity, Intelligence and Process of cloud segments. The strategy of Microsoft has seemed to yield some sportive outcomes in their business performance and revenue growth (Kotas et al. 2018). In the last quarter, the software company has reported that their expected earnings have increased which is beyond their imagination. It has driven the company to a stronger performance-based orientation with outstanding business service and cloud products. In addition, Microsoft surpassed over $100 Billion in annual revenue in their financial year 2017.
As a business consultant, it has been analyzed from the above figure that positive customer feedback and satisfaction have pushed the performance level of Microsoft for which their revenue has reached on top as compared to its competitors (Pierleoni et al. 2019). While the company faced increasing competition from cloud providers like Google and Amazon, as well as from other enterprise software companies like Salesforce, SAP, Oracle and IBM, it tried to hold its title as the most profitable and valuable company in the world.
The above figure helps to analyze that, in the initial stage, Microsoft invested in the cloud for internal use. In a most obvious view, they had started to invest in cloud computing systems globally. “Azure Data Centers” are present in 44 regions internationally with an intuitive plan because the competitors of the company like Google and Amazon are also focusing on the cloud platforms, which can increase the competitiveness of the market. The revenue of this massive and most famous software company has increased by 14% reaching over $4.4 Billion according to the financial report of Microsoft, (2020). This has become possible with a sensational touch point of each consumer segment.
Assessment of Microsoft’s Portfolio of Businesses
Parent Organization: Microsoft
Organization Number: 152
(Hub) CB Rank: 35,968
Founders: 255
For-Profit Companies Number: 136
Non-profit Companies Number: 3
Investor Types: University Program, Venture Capital, Micro VC
Funding Types: Series A, Series B, Pre-seed, Grant, Seed
Microsoft provides their data on the funding history, acquisitions trends, and investment activities. Many companies depend on Microsoft cloud support with investment potential (Pukala et al. 2020). Along with that, the software company offers “Free Cloud Credits” to some portfolio companies and they also offer facilities with a dependency on Azure’s infrastructure, services, and platforms.
There are some leadership challenges for Microsoft that is present that are needed to identify the organizational team. The top management team of the company should address the Dealing issues with change, issues of work culture environment, and productivity issues. All of these issues are incorporated with Microsoft, which eventually need to be mitigated for achieving the sustainable goals (Richardson et al. 2020). The global revenue of Microsoft has rapidly grown from the fiscal year (2020 – to 2021). It has increased by 18% in just 1 year and reached over $168 Billion. The impressive market record of the software giant has set a new record of success in terms of increasing sales value.
It has been defined that this business portfolio is considered as a group of products, services, and business units. These conform to Microsoft and allow it to pursue its strategic goals from a business consultancy view. In addition, this portfolio can be defined as a set of available assets of the company that possesses to develop its vision and mission.
Use of Strategic Tools
As a business consultant, it has been analyzed that there are 4 strategic tools present to analyze the situation of Microsoft. The tools are mentioned below:
SWOT Analysis
STRENGTH
- Leading software organization
- Largest domain market share
- Wide market reach
- Azure’s Tools and Infrastructure
WEAKNESS
- Cybercrime theft
- Lacking innovation
- Unsuccessful acquisition (Benzaghta et al. 2021)
- Unfair business practices
OPPORTUNITIES
- Growth in cloud business
- AI and Innovation
- Acquisitions and Partnership
- Smartphone industry
THREATS
- Aggressive competition
- Piracy and cybercrime
- Politicized contracts
- Anti-encryption drive
As a consultant, it has been analyzed from the above table that Microsoft has focused on developing the AI strategic tools for business development and rapid growth. For example, few clients try to develop, train, and utilize AI technology by using Azures’ Tools and Infrastructure. Microsoft has also followed the same for growth and development. Increasing cybercrime has also leftover Microsoft and many hackers have reported attacks on the cyber security system of this software giant (Vlados, 2019). Lacking innovation is the main reason for this and this increased aggressive competition in the market with other cloud service providers like Google and Amazon.
Porter’s Five Forces
Competitive Rivalry [Strong]
- Switching cost in moderate
- High aggressiveness of other software companies
- High diversity of competitors
Bargaining Power of Buyers [Moderate]
- Availability of substitutes is low
- Switching cost is moderate
- High-quality information
Bargaining power of Suppliers [Moderate]
- The supplier’s size is moderate
- Suppliers population is moderate
- The overall supply rate is moderate
Threats of Substitute [Weak]
- Substitute performance is lower
- Availability of substitutes is low
- Switching cost is moderate
Threats of New Market Entrants [Moderate]
- Brand development cost is high
- Doing business cost is moderate
- Moderate switching costs
These above-mentioned areas have helped to define that the moderate force of Microsoft is high so they are required to develop its business strategy and change its vision and mission in order to reach the sustainable goal (Bruijl, 2018). The high aggressiveness of other software forms has created marketing competitiveness where the company should focus to maintain its fame in the software industry.
Stakeholder Analysis
As a consultant, this tool has been used to identify and complete the business analysis of Microsoft. According to the citizenship report, Microsoft has categorized their stakeholders into two different groups. Suppliers, employees, and customers are members of one group who are directly affected by the outcome of business operations (Balane et al. 2020). On the other hand, regulatory agencies, government agencies, and civil groups are members of another group that guides the company to carry out the business.
Positioning Map
As a consultant, a positioning map has also been used to understand the marketing position of Microsoft as compared with its competitors. It has been analyzed that the company focused on providing high-quality products at low prices. On the other hand, other companies also provide their service with high prices and here Microsoft has beaten them by increasing consumer attention. Microsoft has been using private cloud services such as Cloudsimple as well as hybrid storage, security and management tools (Jang and Kim, 2018). However, they showed an estimate of about $513B by 2022 increase in revenues for cloud infrastructure.
Conclusion and Recommendation
Conclusion
This study helped to understand the business aesthetics and performance report of Microsoft with critical analysis. Functionality issues, difficulty in operating windows 10, rebooting warming issues are the main issues that have been idealized from this critical analysis. Apart from that, some competitive advantage of the company has also been helped to understand that Microsoft has focused on the business performance by implementing AI technology. The implementation of Azure’s tool has helped the company to improve its performance through a few areas that are available that are still lacking. The number of competitors has increased, which has been analyzed in this study. Apart from that, as a consultant, 4 strategic tools have been used to identify the business areas’ organizational process with different activities. With the help of this analysis, some drawbacks popped up that need to be mitigated. In this aspect, the recommendation has been included which can help to boost and enhance the organizational performance.
Recommendation
After this situational analysis as a consultant, some recommendations have been provided to the software giant.
- Microsoft is required a major software upgrade to bring innovation with radicals steps that can successfully embrace their future of innovation
- The company should focus on enhancing its brand reputation through marketing tools for sustainable growth (Candra et al. 2022)
- They should improve their internet browser and should add new features which can help users to find necessary data with moderate research facilities
- Microsoft should focus on building a more competitive advantage which needs to be strong and preservative so that it can help the company to increase its organizational revenue with business profit (Cortés et al. 2022)
- The company should focus on the cybercrime issues that have increased in the present situation and in this aspect that are required to maintain a strict software protocol to restrict the illegal use of software systems.
References
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