Strategy Assignment – Briefing Paper
Choose one topic to write.
Senior business executives’ time is precious. In line with this you are to produce a short (500 word) briefing paper addressing one of the following strategic issues.
The briefing paper should take the form of a memo to the board of the relevant organisation, and should draw upon your understanding of Strategy course material and any other relevant topics from your degree.
Start out with (1) a short introduction of the company’s current situation (approx. 100w), then provide the executives with (2) an analysis of the industry and relevant competition (approx. 200w), and (3) present your conclusions about the strategic positioning and the potential of the company (approx. 200w).
Your work should be up-to-date, reflect your research skills and include appropriate citations and references to strategic tools and frameworks you are using.
a) The supermarket Wm Morrison has recently committed itself to an ambitious cost-advantage strategy in an effort to defeat more recent entrants to the market such as Lidl and Aldi. Evaluate this approach and discuss whether an established supermarket such as Morrison can be successful by following this approach.
b) In Western Europe the car industry is stagnating due to market saturation and overproduction. Like many other car manufacturers Volkswagen Group (Volkswagen AG) owns a portfolio of car brands. Many of them are produced in the same plants and are targeting similar customer groups (e.g. Seat and Skoda). Discuss whether this strategy makes sense and how Volkswagen Group should position itself in the future.
c) Euro Disney, despite being Europe’s most visited tourist attraction, has faced significant financial problems since its opening in 1992, and it has recently been announced that the company is facing a bailout by Walt Disney, its biggest shareholder. Discuss the company’s position in the market and propose recommendations about how it may position itself to improve its competitiveness and financial position.
d) The privatisation of Royal Mail was argued to be crucial to maintaining the financial viability of the service, given high levels of competition in its industry. The challenge facing the company now is the need to develop and exploit new revenue streams from its value chain whilst maintaining required levels of service. Discuss how the privatised Royal Mail may maintain its competitiveness.
Briefing paper FAQs
Q: How much background on a company should be included in the briefing paper?
A: As you are writing a memo to the executives it’s safe to assume the reader is knowledgeable about the company. If there’s a relevant fact or something more obscure that links up to what you’re saying, feel free to introduce it, but the idea here is that you have a limited amount of time and space to make your point to someone in an organisation. You should use ca. 100w to introduce the current situation of the company. This already includes your assessment of the situation, based upon your research into the topic and understanding of the firm’s strategic position.
Q: What type of formatting should be used?
A: Don’t worry too much about the ‘memo’ format. If you want to use a particular memo format you may, but this exercise is not about following any strict format. It is more important that your presentation is well structured, readable so that we can follow your arguments.
What we are interested in here is that the paper is directed to the company in question and that you dive into your discussion without needing to describe the company!
The memo should consist of three parts:
(1) the situation (see above)
(2) results of your analysis (of the industry, the competition etc). Don’t present too much of the analysis itself (figures graphs, lists), but you need to demonstrate that you have applied frameworks/concepts/tools using the correct terminology in a way that we can follow your arguments.
(3) conclusions on the strategic positioning and the potential of the company. This is basically the recommendation you give to the executives. Make sure it is clearly derived from your analysis and based on facts!
Q: What does it mean to use course material?
A: The idea here is that we are interested in you demonstrating your understanding of material we have covered in the course. We are looking for you to make clear how the topics covered in the course have informed your analysis. For instance, had you done this assignment over the summer, what would be in it now that wouldn’t have been included before? While you do not need to be blatant in indicating what has come from course material, feel free to include a ‘signpost’ if you think a particular reference might be missed.
Q: If I’m using charts, do the words in the chart count against the total word count?
A: No. You are allowed to use charts but these may not contain more than 100 words combined across all charts/tables.
Marking Criteria for Strategy Briefing Paper Assignment
The brief for the assignment mentions the paper as a ‘memo’ but we did not give specific formatting guidelines (other than the structure outlined above) Students have been told to assume that the marker is familiar with the company (i.e. an executive)!
Use the order calculator below and get started! Contact our live support team for any assistance or inquiry.
[order_calculator]