External Factors Analysis
Discuss about the Supply Chain Management Practices And Dynamic.
E-business strategy has been considered as the plan and tactics that are required to be adopted mandatorily by the business firm for gaining sustaining position in the competitive business environment and accomplishing desired targets and goals (Ahearne, Lam and Kraus, 2014). These types of strategies are also considered as the part of the corporate strategies and an integral part of business plan. It has been observed that they interconnect the other plans such as marketing, organizational and IT strategic plans. In the past few decades, the concept of e-strategies has gained great heights of significance for any of the business corporations in the business environment and this is all because of the increasing use of the internet. The Internet has become one of the largest platforms that have facilitated the business organizations in each and every sector. There are number of advantages that will be reaped by the firms after making implementation of e-strategies such as, it aids in enhancing and widening the customer base and market share, assists in promoting the products and services in better and advanced manner, also offers various means and mechanisms for operating functions and thus increasing the level of efficiency and effectiveness (Stadler, Mayer, Hautz and Matzler, 2018).
The below-presented report is based on the e-strategies of slice one of the restaurant brand that is offering healthy food items in the regions of Abu Dhabi (Slices 2015). The business organization is offering healthy food items and products to the visitors and travelers and that too with quality. The prime objective of developing the report is the determination of the benefits that will be attained by new strategic changes within the organizational structure of Slice in Abu Dhabi (Slices 2018).
According to the given scenario, it has been noted down that Slices in Abu Dhabi is one of the restaurants that is serving healthy food items to the visitors and guests. The business organization is planning to make implementation of e-strategies so as to enhance and gain the associated benefits by adopting these e-strategies (Galliers and Leidner, 2014). The assignment 1 has been developed on some of the strategies that have been adopted by the business organization for advancing and developing the performance and productivity level. This will be facilitating the business firm in offering the better set of services to the customers. The report comprises of the various approaches that have been adopted by Slices in Abu Dhabi for advancing the business and attain desired targets and goals. The first approach that or the analysis that is determining the external factors affecting the business environment of the Slices. This analysis has presented a detailed description of all of the external environmental factors that are held liable in and are impacting the business operations of the corporation. For instance, the impacts of the political components have been presented. By taking a gander at the economic situations and their effect on the association, Slices has built up its center capabilities with the goal that it can convey its items and administrations viably. Center skills of Slices are, for example, physical resources like apparatus and hardware. The association has contracted the workers with compelling abilities and learning. The center capabilities of Slices give different advantages to the business (Untaru and Ispas, 2013). It gives the sustenance by investigating the taste and inclinations of clients. These center abilities can help the association to increase reasonable upper hand against its contending brands. It shows that organization has the openings and potential to build its client base by extending business in the universal market.
Marketing Strategies
Hence, the investigation from initial segment shows that right now Slices is occupied with the local market however it can have future chances to extend the business tasks in a global market. There are different issues which are right now looked by the association in UAE sustenance and refreshment industry. Considering them, there are a few changes which are prescribed in the initial segment like it needs to receive some powerful techniques to set up a solid brand picture on the market. Besides, it needs to participate in the corporate social obligation that can help the firm to increase viable future development in UAE (Yu, et al, 2016). Offering nourishment with the solid and natural fixings can help the association to achieve practical focused edge over significant players like McDonalds and Pizza Hut.
Business strategies allow companies to accomplish the demands made by the customers. This helps in growing the business in an appropriate manner (Beske, Land and Seuring, 2014). Most of the businesses have targeted their goals but does not recognize the path to reach out to them. Therefore, business strategies are used to make effective business decisions, to handle the clientele and to keep pace with the trending technologies. Identifying the effective business strategies for the company is an essential task for the managers. It is interesting to know how business strategies can be helpful in deciding the success and failure of the company. However, there are many advantages or benefits of using business strategies by an organization.
The business entity can make adoption of some of the new marketing strategies for bringing advancements and developments in the business operations and functionalities. Market expansion and establishments in new regions and product diversification can be counted as the two marketing strategies that will be aiding Slices in Abu Dhabi on various aspects.
Market expansion: The business entity should plan and start attempting establishments and expansions of the business operations to the new market regions. For instance, the entity can think making the reach to the international markets.
Product diversification: The business organization should also make diversification to the products range. This will enhance the customer base and market share of the firm and for doing this the firm is expected to make changes in the menu, they should add some more dishes to their menu. For instance, making introduction fast food by making use of healthy ingredients will be considered as a plus point for attracting the teenagers.
Benefits of Business Strategies
This helps in improving the quality of product/service that is provided to the customers. Buyer’s journey can be easily understood by the external stakeholders like the suppliers of a company. For trading a business, the most important role is played by the suppliers (Charlesworth, 2018). They initiate the generation of leads for a company. Companies ensure that their supplier rate is appropriate so that they can achieve annual targets.
Slices are one of the renowned companies of Abu Dhabi that sells food and beverages to its customers. The company focuses on making effective deals with the customer and also focuses on leading to ultimate customer satisfaction. Nutritious meals are provided to the customers to ensure their health. The company is supported by the Khalifa Fund to make any investments regarding their business (Slices 2018). In the year 2012, the company had launched its first website to promote online service to its customers. This provided financial gain to the company (Grönroos, 2007). The overall sales number was increased along with the rate of frequently generating customers per month. This local coffee shop has started their business venture with a very low price and now has become one of the best food and beverages store for the customers living in Abu Dhabi.
After achieving a constant success in their business, Slices decided to expand their business to different cities and overseas (Thompson and Amoroso, 2014). They adopted a business strategy to provide low prices on food for the frequent customers and special discount coupons to the rest of the customers arriving on a store or are the visitors of their website. It was quite complex for Slices to develop a business strategy like this but however, they tried to achieve the targeted goals.
The company started to create a long list of customers, their requirements, the internal and external stakeholders associated with the company and focused on other related factors like cost. Due to limited resource availability, a company managed to take the decision using the group meetings (Hill, Jones and Schilling, 2014). The employees of the company provided their personal views on marketing their products. The company managers knew that the business strategy should be appropriate as it can affect the overall business processes. On the contrary, it was also essential for the company to attain competitive advantage in the market due to increase in the number of new entrants. The company used various business management tools and techniques to understand the effectiveness of their proposed business strategy (Untaru and Ispas, 2013).
Slices in Abu Dhabi
Tangible Benefits- these type of benefits are counted in monetary terms for the company. Tangible benefits include cash flow, use of financial resources and the determination of an economic rate of a company (Hitt, Jackson, Carmona, Bierman, Shalley and Wright, 2017). These benefits are used to assess the productivity of the company, to analyze the cost and to improve their business processes. The lowered cost of products/services helps the customers in purchasing their desired products. The time to manage inventory is also reduced by the measuring the tangible benefits of the company.
Earlier the company used to perform business processes using manual data. The data was used to be saved as documents within different files or folders which had created a loss to sensitive information of the company (Jabeen, Zamber and Khan, 2015). There were many data which was used to be replicated due to the inconsistency and inaccuracy of the data entry. Later, when the company started using their website, the data was used to be saved to the back-end process that is the database system. Users of Slices were now able to access the information more conveniently. Due to the online business process, the financial records of the company were also used to be made appropriately. The company gained 10% market share within these years of website development (Sheth, Sinha and Shah, 2016). This proper management of financial resources provided various monetary benefits to Slices.
Non-Tangible Benefits- this involves the scheduling of the business processes for a company (Watson, Weaven, Perkins, Sardana and Palmatier, 2017). The intangible benefits are not calculated but have the influence on the company in either way possible. Intangible benefits allow employees to understand the true meaning of transparency and how to be responsible for proceeding with the other business processes (Kiss and Barr, 2015). These benefits determine the rate of positive and negative responses gathered from a customer (Vachaspati et al., 2015). It is useful in developing better strategies for a business and is also less time consuming to enter a large amount of information in the database system on a regular basis (Veit et al., 2014).
As discussed above, Slices started making tangible benefits from their newly developed website. So, it has also made intangible benefits like the growth in their business. The company generated twice the leads they had earlier. Since the data can be automatically saved, billing and payment processes also became easier for the company. The company is now able to make more than a hundred transactions a day (Lebovka, Chemat and Vorobiev, 2016). This helped the company to appropriately utilize all of their resources and developed various risk management plans. The company is able to provide benefits to their employees like free trips with their families. The company Slices was also able to manage the taxes they used to pay earlier. Now, they have a tracker to track the information about the change in economic policies of the Government and other related issues. The potential risks were easily identified by the company so as to make the greater competitive value in the market. To resolve the potential risks, the effective business strategy like to lower the price of products helped the company to receive the contract from different clients (McElheran, 2015).
Conclusion
It can be recommended to Slices that-
- They should create a vision and mission statement to clarify their goals and objectives beforehand. These statements also guide the customers about the environment of the company.
- Balanced Scorecard should be used by the company to monitor and control the business operations performed at Slices. This will also help in keeping track of the trending schemes of the market.
- Slices should develop an effective business strategy for their company and should keep on enhancing it according to the market needs. The same business strategy does not provide monetary benefits to the company as the economy of the market keeps on changing with time.
These recommendations will help Slices to continue to have their competitive edge in the market. These will also help Slices to resolve potential risks and to achieve long-term goals. Slices have to pre-plan their business strategies so that they can make necessary changes. This will also help the company to avoid any risk of strategy failure as they will already have a backup plan in case of any failure.
The above presented is the roadmap of Slices in Abu Dhabi and same has been described below:
- Vision- the company wants to focus on providing quality assured products to their customers
- Mission- the company wants to have a business growth which can be achieved by enhancing the current business processes
- Objectives- to increase the overall number of sales. To have better business growth. To attain customer satisfaction. To provide best quality products to the customers. To develop an effective risk management plan.
- Value Creation- the financial resources of Slices will be properly made available to the users of the company. This will help in achieving both tangible and intangible benefits.
- Target Segment(s)- the company is satisfying the requirements of customer like to purchase healthy food.
- Privacy, ethical and legal issues- the company wants to protect their information from any kind of malicious activity. This can be done by implementing any data encryption technique.
- External Partners- The company should involve the external partners like other companies and investors who can support the business processes and business strategies of Slices.
- Organisational Model- Since the company wants to grow its business they need to build a functional organizational model so that they could monitor their business activities properly.
- Revenue and Cost Model- this type of model will help Slices to arrange their financial resources effectively. It will be like a matrix in which internal and external business processes will be defined.
- Strategy Alignment- the strategic alignment of Slices needs to be improved as it is not able to manage the competitor’s strategic management plan properly.
Conclusion
In the limelight of the above-executed analysis, it has been concluded that the e-business strategies are considered as the greatest platform for the business entity for attaining the desired goals and targets. Slices are the business corporation that is offering healthy food items n the region of Abu Dhabi and that task has been developed on the adoption and implementation of e-business strategies for the firm. The above report focuses on the new strategies and the process of implementation of the same. These strategies will be proven beneficial for the business firm on various aspects such as the increase in productivity and profitability.
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