E-Business Strategies Of Slices: Analysis And Review

About the Company

Discuss about the E-Business strategies of Slices.

About the Company

Slices is a restaurant offering affordable health food in UAE. It was established by four Emirati friends who sought to enter the food industry in a unique way by offering fresh, healthy and quick food to learners and corporate executives at competitive prices. The company deals with products ranging from sandwiches, soups, smoothies and organic salads.

Slices commenced its operations in January 2012 in Abu Dhabi in UAE. Currently, the company operates two catering contacts and four retail outlets spread across the country. The company has a total number of 35 employees who are generally young and energetic. The organisation is fully funded by Khalifa Fund, a government entity aiming at supporting young entrepreneurs and offer room for growth.

The core values and principles that guide Slices include: consistency in creating good customer relationships, environmental conservation, supporting the community, continuous performance improvement, offering unique healthy and cheap products, encouraging employee productivity and creating a long-lasting and improved supplier relationships.

PESTEL Analysis

Political factors: Looking at the political factors, UAE is enjoying a good political environment which allows growth of small companies like Slices. For instance, government policies like the introduction of Khalifa Fund has given young entrepreneurs owning Slices an opportunity to grow (Dobrivojevic 2013, pp. 365).

Economic factors: The country has a well-established and growing economy which offers the company an opportunity to grow and become one the most performing company in food and catering industry. Thus, the company can take advantage of the growing economy to diversify their services and grow tremendously.

Social factors: The Company has a well-established community initiative policy and CSR strategy that help the company to establish goodwill with the community around it. Such initiatives include “No Food Goes to Waste” and “The Slices Health Drive”. The company has also strived to be environmental friendly thus ensuring that it relates well with the community around it. The company also supports the employment for young, energetic and educated people from within the localities (Dobrivojevic 2013, pp. 365).

Technological factors: Despite the influence of global technological advancements, the company has not been able to use any technology-aided systems to run their activities. For a company striving to succeed in the contemporary business environment, the use of technology in its operations has become a necessity. Thus, failure to utilize technology in its operations remain one of the company’s weaknesses.

Analysis of Slices current situation

Ecological factors: The government has set some provisions that seek to compel the businesses to remain environmentally friendly within the area where it operates. Slices has strived to observe that by initiating rules that observe low energy consumption and environmental pollution.

Legal factors: There are legal requirements to guide and lead the organisational operations. Some of these include equal access to employment opportunities, environmental conservation and CSR. The organization has remained socially ethical by undertaking some community initiatives such as No Food Goes to Waste and The Slices Healthy Drive to support the community. The company has also maintained little ecological imprints which guarantees low environmental pollution.

SWOT Analysis

The section seeks to analyse the company’s current state in the business environment. It includes Slices’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (Williamson, Cooke, Jenkins and Moreton 2013, pp. 30).

Strengths

The company has a sustainable funding from the government. Slices has experienced and energetic founders with enough knowledge to help the firm in attaining the desired growth. The company also enjoys stable political and economic environment that supports growth. Product differentiation offers the company a competitive advantage in the market (Dälken 2014, pp. 25).

Weaknesses

Failure to integrate technology in its daily operations despite global technological advancements.

Opportunities

Consumer and community goodwill that offers the company an opportunity to grow. The company enjoys funding from the government thus giving it financial resources needed for a sustainable growth. The company has an opportunity to attract more customers due to its unique healthy and affordable products.

Threats

Competition from other companies that might come in the industry and take away the Slices’ idea due to lack of intellectual rights. Lack of specific goals might edge them out of the market. Lack of any marketing strategy is also a threat to the company since marketing is important in driving sales.

The Company’s Current Strategies

Slices has established a number of strategies that have helped the company to grow rapidly and extend their branches to other areas. Such strategies include:

Product differentiation

Slices has seen the need to offer customers with unique, affordable and healthy products that no other companies in the industry has been able to offer. The company has noticed that people have been attracted to fast food that lead to obesity, overweight and other health related issues. Therefore, the company is struggling to address that issue through creation of an alternative product that will replace fast foods and offer health benefits (West, Ford and Ibrahim 2015, pp. 106).

PESTEL Analysis

Pricing strategy

As a new company in the industry, Slices is trying to penetrate the market by utilising the pricing strategy to attract customers to buy their products (Sokhatska and Lahotska 2013, pp. 118). Customers are always attracted to cheap products that satisfy their needs and offer value for their money. The company is offering affordable products with a competitive price to lure consumers to buy their products (Tanwar 2013, pp. 14).

A company has initiated a CSR strategy to help in creating goodwill with the society and also fulfill the legal requirements. The company has remained ethical to the community through various initiatives as well as environmental conservation (Porter and Heppelmann 2014, pp. 74). Thus, the company has high chances of attracting consumers from the surrounding community and also avoid legal conflicts arising from disobeying government legislations.

In the contemporary business environment, the issue is not how you produce quality product at an affordable price. Hence, cost is not the main issue in the strategic management (Proctor, 2014, pp. 120). The main issue that dictates the company’s survival in the market is the marketing capabilities (Sheth and Sisodia 2015, pp. 52). Thus, from the current analysis of Slices, the company lacks a marketing strategy to market and promote their products.

It essential to understand that with the rapid technological advancements witnessed in the global market, many companies are appreciating the need to use technology-aided methods and techniques in their daily operations (Baker and Saren 2016, pp. 31). The core impact of internet is to support the key marketing activities of a company. Therefore, Slices has failed to make use of electronic technology to help in marketing its products. Marketing is fundamental element that supports the organisational growth (Baker 2014, pp. 134). Therefore, the main aim of the report is to emphasize on the need for Slices to adopt technology aided means to boost its marketing activities for products.

Marketing Strategies

From the analysis of Slices’ business environment and current strategies, it is important to note that technology is a big threats to the company’s growth. The recommendation here is to compel the company to adopt technology in trying to market its products (Aaker and Biel 2013, pp. 24). Therefore, the process of planning the strategies and their implementation will follow the Roadmap for e-Business strategy implementation as discussed below. 

The Company’s Vision

Before engaging in any strategic planning process, the company must refer to its mission statement. By doing so, the firm will be able to understand whether the planning and implementation of a certain strategy is in line with its mission and purpose (Foxall 2014, pp. 85). “To be the leading company offering healthy food with a corporate social responsibility viewpoint” The sole mission of the company is “to offer fresh, healthy and quick food to students and contemporary executives at competitive prices” Following the reports by BMC Public Health journal, UAE has been ranked the fifth country with the fattest people in the world. A high percentage of population aged 6-18 years are either overweight or obese. Some other 10 percent of the children below 5 years are suffering from anemia. Therefore, the mission and vision of the company is based on fighting health related issues through popularizing the notion of healthy eating. However, for Slices to succeed in that, it must engage in endless marketing activities to create awareness among its target audience about their product that will address all the health issues. The marketing strategy here will be highly inclined to online marketing or e-business (Heding, Knudtzen and Bjerre 2015, pp. 206).

SWOT Analysis

Objectives

During strategic planning process, a company must establish appropriate objectives and goals that should be achieved from the implementation of the new strategy (Payne and Frow 2013, pp. 78). By setting the objectives right, the company’s management will be able to establish the direction to be followed in implementing its strategy and the activities to be undertaken. Such objectives include:

Creating awareness among the target segment about the need for observing healthy eating to avoid many diseases related to unhealthy eating. Acquiring the relevant systems and sites that will serve the purpose of online marketing. To understand how to use technology aided systems and sites in creating and disseminating messages about their product. To help in marketing their products to a wider range of target audience through virtual consumer engagements and online selling. To create a good relationship between the company and the target audience through online interaction and communication. To sustain the nature of the competitive environment brought by globalisation and technological advancements (Heding, Knudtzen and Bjerre 2015, pp. 208).

Value Created by the e-business strategy

Any strategy must add value to the organization in form of tangible and intangible benefits (Porter and Magretta 2014, pp. 150). Such values include: Increased brand awareness, increased sales, creation of the consumer relationships through interaction

Target Segments

Strategic planning involves the establishment of who you want to target (Hill, Jones and Schilling 2014, pp. 123). The targeted segment here is: Young students and contemporary executives with value proposition of “get fresh, healthy and quick food at an affordable and competitive price”

Privacy, ethical and legal issues linked with strategy implementation

In the effort to plan on the strategy, we need to consider: The ability to ensure that consumers’ information remain confidential. To be able to observe the cyberbullying laws which does not allow access of the systems information by third parties. Security purposes of the systems to avoid hacking (Farjam and Hongyi 2015, pp. 21).

External partners

In this case, network service providers and system developers are needed to install systems and ensure that they keep maintaining them during testing to ensure that it fulfills the objectives of the proposed strategic plan.

The organizational model

The organizational model used to implement the plan is the functional model that will allow the establishment of a digital marketing unit to handle online businesses (Williamson, Cooke, Jenkins and Moreton 2013, pp. 35).

Revenue and cost model used

The Company’s Current Strategies

The model used here is resource-based view. It helps to gauge the organization’s financial capability and the resources that a company has against the activity to be carried, that is, it gauges the cost of implementing the strategies and processes against what the organization can afford to do.

Strategy Alignment

According to the company’s mission of providing affordable and healthy foods, the e-strategy is aimed at supporting the differentiation in reaching our clients and offering them unique services like online buying, queries, clarifications as well as reaching a wide range of clients across the whole country through technology-aided means (Porter and Magretta 2014, pp. 148).

Strategy implementation Plan

The plan is based on how the implementation of the strategy will be carried out within a period of one year. It includes objectives, activities carried out for every objective, benefits, people involved and the time it will take to complete a task as analysed in the table below.

E-Business strategic plan implementation by Slices Company Ltd from June 2018-June 2019

Objective	Activity	Stakeholders involved	Budget	Benefits	Time
Acquisition of online marketing tools	To help driving online markets through social media and company’s website	System developers IT experts	AED 40, 000	Run a success online business to help the company increase sales	June-Aug 2018
Learning on how to use marketing tools	Training od employees in the marketing department	IT experts	AED 10000	Increased sales	Aug-Oct 2018
Creating awareness on the importance of healthy eating	Helping marketers understand how develop and disseminate healthy eating messages	Digital marketing consultants	AED 15000	Attract more consumers	Oct-Dec 2018
Understanding the need to reach a wide range of customers using the online marketing tools	Teach the employees on how to engage and attract customers online	Digital marketing consultants	AED 13000	Increased sales	Dec 2018-Feb 2019
Creation of consumer relationship through online interaction and communication	Teach the employees on how to use online tools to interact with clients	Digital marketing consultants	AED 14000	Attract more consumers	Feb-April 2019
Countering the competition from the rival companies in the industry	Training in online product promotional skills	Digital marketing consultants	AED 9000	Gaining competitive advantage	April-June 2019

The company should:

Consider the budget by determining whether they have enough money to run the whole process of strategic planning and implementation of the newly proposed strategies. Establish a marketing department and have employees there trained on the relevant skills needed for a successful strategy implementation. The company should establish monitoring procedure with evaluation tools to ensure that the goals and objectives are being achieved as outlined in the plan. Slices should establish a human resource department to ensure that employees are managed and evaluated in order to achieve the set goals and objectives of the plan. The systems privacy should be taken care of to ensure that consumer’s private data does not get into the wrong hands.

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