Strategic Plan Presentation - Essay Example

1.0 Introduction

Strategic planning is one of the most pivotal aspect of business, because efficient approaches act as a catalyst to organizational success. Hence, planning new strategies helps enterprises to gain competitive advantage in the intense market rivalry (Chandler & Hikino, 2009). In this context, the agenda of this paper is to provide a strategic plan to a leading financial service firm, Credit Suisse. The paper will provide certain strategic recommendations and analyze the current approaches of the company. Certain strategic tools and supporting theoretical framework will be elaborated and the connection between diversification and competitive advantage will be highlighted. Furthermore, the importance of knowledge management and organizational learning in enhancing the formulation, incorporation and communication of the strategies will also be discussed.

2.0 Strategic recommendations

The foreign exchange market is growing rapidly in the recent times, thus the company can contemplate on grabbing the opportunities the market is offering. Credits Suisse has been quite competent in offering services in wealth management and investment banking. However, at present, the financial services is opening up so much that Credits Suisse is open to several avenue of growth. Therefore, the organization need to focus on product diversification (Chandler & Hikino, 2009). In the present times, the buoyant assess management market is rapidly growing. Therefore, in order to capture a good market share in this segment, it is highly recommended that the enterprise needs to utilize its strong capital base, which will aid in capturing growing forex market and buoyant assessment management sector.

At present, companies take a very good care of their financial assets, such as deposits, bonds, stocks and others, so that it can be used for investing in a key performing area. Therefore, it is a very good opportunity for Credit Suisse as it can offer assess management services to the corporate houses. The economic activities in the developed nations has increased a lot in recent times that indicates that business houses have huge financial resources. The company should definitely focus on introducing buoyant assets management in its services because this market is characterized of high corporate profits, low investment of capital and high return on investment (Chandler & Hikino, 2009). The product diversification strategy that is suggested to the company implies to the theoretical framework of economies of scope. This is because, with the help of the recommended approach, Credits Suisse will actually emphasize on increasing its products variety. With the help of this strategy, the organization will be able to reduce the average cost by offering different kinds of financial services (Chandler & Hikino, 2009).

3.0 Practical approaches that support current strategy

Credit Suisse is quite a competent financial service and its potentialities lies in its wealth management approaches and investment banking capabilities. The company has good market presence in the home country, Switzerland. However, the company has scope to further improveits business strategies; thus, it needs to contemplate on its market penetration (Credit Suisse, 2017). The company follows a synchronized approach to wealth management so that it can capitalize the large pool of wealth of the developed nation as well as the other emerging markets such as Asia Pacific (Credit Suisse, 2017). The high net worth individuals (HNWIs) grew to 9.7%, which accounts to be 3.3 million in the year 2010 (FM-MM, 2017). The Asian countries, such as Japan, China, Hong Kong and many others are wealth-creating nations, thus the company concentrated on doubling the pretax profits in Asia.

The current strategy of the company is to focus only on scaling wealth management by recruiting proficient relationship members, enhancing the scope of lending services. The members of the upper echelon does not prefer return-on-equity targets rather they focused on overall group pretax gain target (Credit Suisse, 2017). Credit Suisse adopted the market penetration strategy for yielding more profit, which indicates that the current strategy of the company implies that the enterprise is aiming at leveraging economies of scale by expanding its business in emerging markets (David Myers CEcD, 2015). The strategies of the brand helps in in understanding that the theory of economies of scale defines the strategy of Credit Suisse. This is because; the company is looking into cost advantage approaches by improving its scale of operations. The senior management of the company aimed at decreasing the cost per unit by augmenting the operational scale. The organization mainly aimed at reducing the fixed cost associated with the units of output (David Myers CEcD, 2015).

4.0 Evaluation of strategic analysis tools and supporting theories

Credits Suisse is quite a reputed and proficient financial service company thus the recommendations that are provided is solely related to enhancement of business scope. As discussed earlier, the approach of product diversification can be of great benefit for the enterprise. Porter’s generic strategies have been used while preparing the recommendations for Credits Suisse. This is because this strategic approach helps in devising business approaches that safeguards the competitive position of the companies by helping them gain competitive parity in the competition. Furthermore, this tool helps in targeting customers in an industry based on the lowest price as it follows a cost leadership approach (Coleman, 2016).

Financial services is highly volatile and the dynamics of this segment is always changing, thus the companies operating in this sector need to develop their business strategies continuously to deliver good performance. Therefore, the strategical tool of generic strategies is apt for mitigating the risk of volatility and uncertainty of this industry. This is because, with the help of this tool, companies can contemplate on identifying new markets for the existing products. In addition, the organizations can also focus on introducing a new product range for its existing market or new markets. Based on this, the recommendation of product diversification strategy is suggested to Credits Suisse so that the company can apply economies of scope through which the organization will be able to lower its costs, and maximize return on investment (Coleman, 2016).

5.0 Evaluation of the impact of creativity and diversification in creating competitive advantage for an organization

The business leaders are considering the importance of creating an enterprise with a competitive advantage. The major factor that will help it to be differentiated in the global world, when there is a constant flow of creative ideas. A company, looking forward to diversify needs sufficient amount of strategic resources to diversify and a lack of it will not allow the company to stay in the competition (Coleman, 2016).The success of the future depends on the diversification strategies implemented by the organization. There has been increasing pressure on the business practices resulting due to lack of diversification. The reason behind firms to diversify is to grow and use the existing capabilities and resources.

The company Credit Suisse can use a number of diversification strategies through which it can gain competitive advantage. It can offer new services, which has technological synergies with the current products to appeal newer group of customers. This strategy will entail the firm to provide improved services (Ennew, Waite & Waite, 2013). The newer type of service will increase the retention of the customers, as they are similar to the services that existing customers enjoy. Credit Suisse can also consider in using the diversification strategy in which newer service are technologically unrelated to the current product. In such a strategy, the company will be using innovativeness as a means of augmenting competitive advantage. New products are developed so that quality is improved and it is affordable to the customers. Credit Suisse to improve financial performance can also market the newer services that has technological interaction with the current product (Jordan, 2014). Advanced communication and information technology if adopted by Credit Suisse will help in increasing the efficiency and quality of the service delivery and aid in reaching in all the market segments.

6.0 Impact of knowledge management in improvement in strategy implementation and communication

Managing knowledge in an organization involves motivating, organizing, controlling systems, processes and people so that it helps in ensuring that knowledge based assets are efficiently improved and deployed. Knowledge based assets consists of published documents like manuals, patents and information in the form of electronic repositories. Knowledge management will help in ensuring better decision making. Relevant resources and information can easily be found through knowledge management. Organizational learning is part of knowledge management and will allow flexibility of a company and help adaptation. Learning can be improved in an organization when managers utilizes information communication technologies.

Credit Suisse while undertaking strategy formulation and implementation must integrate the organizational learning and knowledge management. Sharing of knowledge by the employees will help in creating competitive advantage and more real client value are going to be added. Credit Suisse should focus on protecting intellectual capital and on important asset i.e. human capital. The culture of the company should be focusing on ideal knowledge sharing strategy. For management of assets and flourishing in the foreign market, Credit Suisse requires more sharing and collaboration (Deloitte, 2017). Nowadays, turnover of the employees and mergers of organizations has led people to work differently hence Credit Suisse must ensure that it collaborates with the peers in the overseas and exchange ideas. Knowledge management can be practiced by Credit Suisse through the utilization of the social media, as this will help the employees to connect and help in accessing information from the experts. The benefits are going to enlarge for Credit Suisse through organizational learning. The greater access to the leading practice and expertise will help the company in taking improved business decisions. Valued insight through knowledge management will ensure increasing number of satisfied customers for Credit Suisse.

7.0 Conclusion

Every organization strives to improve its product and services so that it continues to operate efficiently. Credit Suisse also considers in improvising its financial services so that it continues to excel. The company holds great opportunity in the growing forex market and while it expands in the developing economies. Economies of scale enjoyed by the company Credit Suisse is one of the important aspect that has helped it in flourishing. The company however should enter the Asian markets as it is still yet to be explored. A number of new improved financial services provided in the market will help in enlarging the customer base. There is a need for implementation of a diversification strategy and enhanced creativity within the organization for developing competitive advantage for Credit Suisse.