Using the reading below provide the following:
Give clear examples of how strategy can be implemented.?
Add a section on how strategy changes and evolves.?
Support key points throughout the paper with in-text citations.?
Introduction
Strategy can be defined as a long-term set of actions and business approaches for doing a business and sustaining in the market. In short, it is a set of action plans for rejuvenating and transforming the organizations. Strategy or strategic planning demands incorporating various functions of an organization such as marketing, hr., quality, finance etc. It is all about achieving the goals of the organization by allocating individual goals. These goals are achieved by identifying and removing the barriers of an organization in the successful implementation of strategy. For example: Consider a newly formed organization which aims to acquire a growth and market share of 50 percent in five years.
The company formulates strategies with in relation to marketing, HR, financial goals etc. In the case of marketing strategy, the companies identify its most performing products and less performing ones. Poor performers may be stopped their production, the company may add more features or increase the promotional activities to achieve more sales. Individual targets will be given to the marketing departments to achieve the big goal of fifty percent market share in five years. At the same time, various other functional areas in Operations, finance, HR will also be integrated in achieving the organization’s objectives.
Importance of strategy
As a result of strategic planning, an organization could predict and anticipate changes, with regard to economic, social or planning, or environmental aspects, so that it could be better prepared for these projections. The organization could respond to these anticipated challenges by modifying their goals or individual targets. Also, they could review for any changes in their targeted spending and other expenses, making changes in their day-to-day operational activities etc.
Google is one of the world’s leading company which has their presence across various Information technology related product and services. Search engine, mail services, advertisement services, analytics (marketing, financial), chat and video call software’s, google earth, maps mobile software’s etc. They generally focus on customer focused techniques which enables them to use their product much faster and accurate which in turn will give full satisfaction. Most of the google products are technology enabled and is always on innovative oriented side. They always believe in first mover strategy. They also invest huge amount of money on research and product development and also in acquisition of technology and technology based companies. Their intensive growth strategies include:
· Market penetration
· Market development
· Product development
Strategy play important role in designing of product, understand the market and customer requirement. Their advanced AI (Artificial Intelligent platform), NLP (Natural Language Processing) VR technologies enable them to do more analytics on customer base services which enhance their advertisement capability.
Google’s strategy can be broken down into four E’s. They are Earn, Entice and defend Expand and Experiment. Google earns a large share of its revenue from advertising, approximately 90-95 percent. The second part involves enticing and convincing people to use the services through the advertising. Those who are not enticed fall into Expand category where Google seeks people to increase the internet usage. Here, Google provides opportunity for people to experiment. They may turn into full-fledged products or promising investments in some future start-ups.
Case of Google
In the case of Google, its main source of revenue is from advertising. Therefore, the company focuses on acquiring platforms where the maximum ads are displaced. These strategies pushed Google to acquire avenues such as YouTube, Double click and Blogger. Secondly, the company was privileged to win the trust of customers and capture their attention. Advertisers use Google as a platform to display their ads, and they could capture the attention of people searching for something. Thus Google could command for premium prices from its advertisers. Thus through their acquisition strategy, Google has an edge on its competitors by increasing its revenue through advertisements.
They invest money on their resource development (hiring, training & development, best in class salary and perks, additional benefit, extremely good working environment). Thus strategy on people focus made them a good company to stay with and employees are more relaxed and committed towards their work. They take ownership of their work as the hierarchy is mixed of flat and functional based. More innovative ideas are always welcome in Google and they do support to develop, test the platforms based on it.
Google focus more on futuristic approach where they predict the customer requirement, market needs, economical fluctuations etc. and plan their goals and objectives based on that. They have better vision to target customers, drive customer behavior to select their products, capture market etc. because of proper data analytics and decision-making skills through collaborative efforts.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths; the brand has a high market share with high market value. It has a strong financial position and yearly growth in revenues. It is effective in attracting investors and stakeholders. Weakness; the revenue of Google comes from advertisement which accounts to approximately 97 percent according to the past report of 2012. There is lack of income diversification and it also faces several lawsuits. This has also resulted in the reduction of its firm value.
Opportunities; there is an opportunity for the company to invest in effective research and development programs for innovative campaigns. It has the opportunity to use mobile penetration effectively with advertisement market. Threat; it has threats of high competition faced by companies like yahoo. There is competition faced from traditional sources like radio newspaper. There are also threats faced by countries where it faces restrictions.
Conclusion
The success of Google can be attributed to the strategy it has adopted for short-term and long-term. The strategy commensurate with proper and continuous innovation which made Google as the disrupter in the market. An organization can sustain and grow in domestic and international market with proper strategy. Strategy cannot be formulated in isolation and by top management themselves. It needs an integrated approach and the ideas for growth of an organization should be mooted by bottom level executives first. They should suggest ideas to their seniors through well established platform so that through brainstorming these ideas can be shaped properly and converted into ideas. It should also be kept in mind the policy makers of any organization that the strategy should be relevant to the organization also to business environment.