Starbucks in 2018: Striving for Operational Excellence and Innovation Agility

Starbucks in 2018: Striving for Operational Excellence and Innovation Agility

Paper details substantial investigation into case company’s strategies, competitive positions and actions, problems being faced, the company financials, ratios and trends. The case studies are about a real company’s current position in the industry, the external competitive environment, the current strategies being used, and recommendations for strategies the company should use going forward. The cases should identify a problem faced by the company, using the strategic management tools highlighted in the text and a quantitative analysis. You then generate realistic solutions, evaluate and select one, and then provide recommendations and the timeline to implement your recommendations. Remember that you are working to understand the company’s current strategy and future direction that offers a solution to the problem of meeting the company’s shareholder requirements. Again, remember that you are fulfilling the requirements of the rubric for each of these cases. The perspective for your report analysis should be directed to the company’s Board of Directors (BoD). Remember that the BoD is familiar with the company’s history, its management structure and the strategies deployed in the past. Recycling old history about the formation of the company, its previous management, etc. will not be looked upon favorably by the BOD (or your instructor). Remember that your case study must be brought up to date with the most current 10K report or financial information. Get at the critical issues and report on them. Remember that in business, situations do not come with a set of questions. The questions sometimes have to be generated and then researched to find solutions to those questions. Success in the cases is important to your final grade in that the three cases constitute 35% of your course grade. Case Preparation: Remember, the cases are graded per the rubric. The BoD would want your recommendations with the proper support. Any analysis details should be covered in an appendix. Do not go to the Internet to find, for example, a SWOT analysis and use it for your case. Do your own research and develop your own strategic analysis. In doing your cases you will need a minimum of three references outside the case I give you. One of the references must be the company’s latest 10K report or Annual Report – Wikipedia and QuickMBA type sources do not count. Use current business websites to find out about recent developments. Certainly do not use websites that develop term papers or do strategy analysis on these cases and publish them. This could lead to charges of plagiarism and the associated consequences. The case study analysis allows you to apply your knowledge to the real world. Your goal is to identify the major problem confronting the subject company and provide a strategic solution for the problem. You will need to collect data and interpret it. You must also isolate the critical issues that the company faces. Remember that in the words of Lord Kelvin, “anything that cannot be expressed in numbers represents knowledge that is of a poor and uncertain kind.” After identifying the critical issues you can generate alternatives to address the company’s competitive situation. Evaluating these alternatives allows an organization to select one course of action. With a course of action defined the strategic manager can then provide a plan for implementation this is what you are to do on the case studies. Always refer to the rubric for the critical points to cover. The format for the case studies should be as follows. 1. One page, single spaced Executive Summary for the case as noted below. This is a summary of your report and, therefore, must be done after you finish the report. This one-page report must use headings and subheadingss indicated in the following format to identify the critical issues. Begin with your understanding of the situation in a problem statement. Follow this with a concise presentation of your analysis and the alternatives you see. Recommend one course of action and support that recommendation with facts and other information, such as competitor’s moves. The last item is presents a plan for implementation –a sentence or two is sufficient. A sample of the Executive Summary is available with all this material. 2. Body of your report (5 Pages). The summary page should encapsulate your understanding to the problems facing the company, a brief summary of the strategic analysis, financial analysis, the alternatives considered and a single recommendation with an implementation plan. After the executive summary page, you are to use standard APA formatting for a 5 page report. Tables, charts, graphs, etc. are to be put in the appendix and referenced from the body of your paper. Deductions may be taken for papers where the body is longer than five pages. Remember, in management you must get your thoughts across quickly if you expect your work to be read. Long reports generally wind up in a stack awaiting reading at some future date (which never comes). Case Study Report Format: Your report must include:. II. Executive Summary (1 page in length). The Executive Summary is a concise overview of the report. The Case Study Report should be written from the perspective of an outside consultant, writing to the Board of Directors of the firm. It notes the essential points of the report and must have the following sections: A. Problem Statement: State the main problem facing the firm (or industry) in one, succinct sentence. B. Analysis: Summarize the main findings of your analysis. You may use bullet points, bold, italics – any means to convey and highlight the key factors you have determined based on your analysis. Don’t repeat items from the body of your report like the SWOT. Summarize the major issues. C. Alternatives: State briefly (one sentence or a bullet point each) 2 or 3 alternative courses of action that could be implemented D. Recommendation: Choose one course of action and support your choice. E. Implementation: Briefly (1or 2 sentences are sufficient) present how the plan would be implemented. This tests the viability of the choice. For example, your plan would demonstrate that the company has the people, financial resources and time to implement your recommendation. III. Body of Report (5 Pages)