unit 2 assignments

UNIT 2 ASSIGNMENT MT/460

Assessing Strategy

Synthesizing the various business strategy theories, principles and concepts you have learned thus far, evaluate the strategy of an award winning organization by choosing an “Award Application Summary” from the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program website. You will evaluate the “Award Application Summary” as a business case.

Course Outcomes

MT460-1: Assess business strategy using a variety of seminal theories, principles, and concepts.

GEL-1.2: Demonstrate college-level communication through the composition of original

materials in Standard English.

Choose an award winning company from the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program website to study. You will evaluate the “Award Application Summary” as a business case. Use the following criteria to evaluate your chosen award winning organization to determine how its business strategy positions the company to achieve competitive advantage over its competitors:

• Provide background information about your chosen company to include the company name, industry sector in which the company operates, products, and target market.
• Critically evaluate the strategic decisions that led to the organization winning the Baldrige Performance Excellence award.
• What is your chosen company’s business model and why is it important?
• Explain the organization’s type of competitive advantage.
• Explain how your chosen company develops a sustainable competitive advantage?
• Critically evaluate the vision, mission, and values of your chosen company.
• Critically evaluate the award winning company’s strategic objectives.
• Explain how your chosen company’s strategy is proactive and/or reactive.
• Explain strategic management hierarchy and how it is used by your chosen company to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.
• What makes you chosen company’s strategy a winner?
• Explain the future strategic direction of the organization by analyzing key decisions in the business case.
• Use creative desktop publishing skills to create the title page and layout of your business report.
• Use a minimum of three peer-reviewed academic research resources (library resources, textbooks, books) to help substantiate your position.
• Apply proper APA style format. Be sure to use headings and subheadings to create a flow of ideas and topics within your writing.
• Write in third person to develop your business report.

MT499

Introduction: If an entrepreneur understands who their ideal customer is and who the main target market will be, this sets the foundation to build upon later, when it is time to forecast sales, estimate expenses, and decide the best method to communicate to those potential customers.

Access LivePlan by PaloAlto software^®

(Note: Some requirements for this assignment do not have specific areas in LivePlan to address them. Once you have completed the areas that appear in LivePlan, you can download LivePlan as a Word document and then insert the other checklist items required in the Word document before submission.)

In the “Execution” section of LivePlan, address only the marketing and sales section (you will complete the operations and other parts of execution in Units 3 and 4) by completing the checklist items.

Checklist: Marketing and Sales portions of the plan:

• Describe the kind of marketing activities will you use to attract customers.
• Explain the unique value proposition or selling point.
• Explain how your value proposition positions you relative to your competitors.
• Using Michael Porter’s concepts in Generic Strategies, what approach do you plan to use?
• Describe your distribution and pricing plans.
• How will your customers buy your products or services?
• How will you turn your potential customers who express interest into paying customers?
• Discuss the essential elements of the sales process (i.e., staffing, commissions, and quotas.)
• Describe any key sales activities that you will use to build and maintain your sales pipeline.