Assignment of the Week - Strategic Management

Critically reflect on the strategy simulation. What did you learn from the Harvard Strategy Simulation: The Balanced Scorecard? Make sure that, at a minimum, you explicitly address the following issues (in about 650-1000 words):1. How did you identify the challenges facing Delta/Signal Corp. and choose the strategy map/initiatives for implementation? How did you use the Balanced Scorecard to overcome the challenges? 2. How did you analyse the results (during and after the simulation)? 3. If you made any changes to the initiatives over the eight rounds, reflect on the rationale behind the changes. How did you generate feasible, adaptive, meaningful, and creative solutions to the problems faced by the company featured in the strategy simulation? 4. Conclude with a statement on what you learned from this simulation (the takeaway) and how this learning relates to the business world.

1) Balanced Scorecard bridges the gap between organizational mission, vision and strategies with employees on a regular basis. Each and every day the organization is subjected to updations because of competitor’s activities, market variations & other legislative regulations. That’s why the metrics in Balance scorecard will be subjected to changes accordingly. Recent studies of organization using balanced scorecards like AT&T, DU PONT, Siemens, and many more are changing their strategies at executive level more rapidly than ever. Armed with Balance scorecard Delta/Signal Corporation should continuously update the innovative strategy (Niven, 2014). Delta/Signal Corp has been facing certain troubles like declining production quality yielding in lower business revenues. So the company is not able to cope up with the competitive market. The market is too challenging and flexible, so it brings a serious issue for the management (Narayanan, Brem, & Packard, 2013). In these circumstances, Delta/Signal Corp needs to get a perfect business strategy by which it can improve on its profitability. As the market is too competitive, it is required for the management to implement a perfect strategy to overcome the worst situation. It is better for Delta/Signal Corp to implement the balanced scorecard by hiring a professional and experienced strategist. The skilled people can help Delta/Signal Corp to make progress in the right way for generation of revenues. To overcome the situation, it is very important to use the balance scorecard strategy. It will help the company to develop the process of works to overcome the internal troubles. Ultimately, Delta/Signal Corp will get a perfect outcome which will help to regain better revenues. Balance scorecard’s main function is to build a proper strategy and planning for the business development of the organization (Coe & Letza, 2014). It involves elements such as projects, products, communication and business targets for Delta/Signal Corp. 2) Delta/Signal Corp has witnessed short comings of revenues for a few years. So, the management has started giving a thought on the downfall of the business proceeds. So during the simulation, it is noted that the management is too much involved to regain the company’s earnings (Narayanan, Brem, & Packard, 2013). They have been discussing the matter during simulation, as a result, they have found some brilliant ideas such as developing new strategies. They had cut several costs like shutting down manufacturing units at UK and US to remain in the competition. But still the outcome has not been achieved and so they decided to implement the balance scorecard strategy. And this lead the organization to launch small cars in the Asian market, especially in China and India. Lots of changes have been affected after the simulation. Delta/Signal Corp has witnessed several changes by following the strategy of the balance scorecard. Delta/Signal Corp has brought several changes in their corporate training, customer relationship, sales target, marketing, manufacturing process and others. They have applied the perfect strategy to bring in the highest customer satisfaction which stands to be the most turning point of the company. Customer analysis is an excellent idea which has been conceived by them. They are trying to bring new and advance technology as well as new products like small cars in the Asian market (Hoque, 2014). Delta/Signal Corp is trying to improve on their customers’ feedback, product guarantee and product replacement. They are taking care about the upcoming budget. Delta/Signal Corp is also trying to improve its internal and external circumstances through the balanced scorecard strategy. 3) Delta/Signal Corp should execute a strategy on Monday to focus more on learning from customers. The very next day the team should design strategies on the experiences from the past. On Wednesday, the team should focus on educating customers and request them for feedbacks. This will increase the engagement of existing customers. By the weekend, there are not only the chances of revenue generation, but also increase in the number customers through word of mouth. In the process, the team should exhibited their customers that their feedbacks are of immense value for the organization Product design. This is also an efficient process to promote the benefits of products in a customized way (Hunt, Taylor, Winter, Mackie, & Fisher, 2016). For coping up this situation Delta/Signal Corp should prefer to design and execute the strategies through their regular learnings, rather than executing a prefabricated strategy designed by a person having knowledge of consumer behavior, years ago. For campaigning, organizations should also keep in touch with the accounts department to keep a track deviations from the budget. 4) Balanced Scorecard is a structured report based on the current strategies that are being implemented. This report card is based on the strengths of the organization unlike all other performance management tools, which focuses on the weaknesses of the organization (Hunt, Taylor, Winter, Mackie, & Fisher, 2016). The weaknesses are developed by an ongoing learning and development process instead of immediate attention for rectification. Balance scorecard has been designed in such a way that individuals can maintain their own scorecard. It emphasizes on the main strategic agenda of any organization and grades them accordingly. The strategic agenda of organizations differs from organization to organization and is not the same always. This scorecard uses a small number of data to be monitored, unlike other performance management tools, which are known for the complex data management system (Giannopoulos, Holt, & Cleanthous, 2013). It also mixes with financial and non-financial data to make it more interesting. Balance scorecard also derives choices of data to be measured, instead of stringent measurement of performances. It also has enough space to take corrective measures within the ongoing process of strategy implementation (Dudin & Frolova, 2015). Many businesses are now designing the report by games conducted in various stores while communicating with customers’ real time. This helps in performance management and monitoring on an individual basis by exploiting their own strengths rather than requiring specialized supervisors for upgrading weakness. Youngsters are engaged in decision making and taking remedial measures right from an early age, which makes business an easy adventure rather than a suffocating one as perceived by youngsters. Bibliography Coe, N., & Letza, S. (2014). Two decades of the balanced scorecard: A review of developments. The Poznan University of Economics Review , 63. Dudin, M., & Frolova, E. (2015). The balanced scorecard as a basis for strategic company management in the context of the world economy transformation. London: Oxford. Giannopoulos, G., Holt, A. K., & Cleanthous, E. (2013). The use of the Balanced Scorecard in small companies. International Journal of Business and Management , 1. Hoque, Z. (2014). 20 years of studies on the balanced scorecard: Trends, accomplishments, gaps and opportunities for future research. The British accounting review , 33-59. Hunt, I., Taylor, R., Winter, A., Mackie, J., & Fisher, D. (2016). Using the balanced scorecard to enhance undergraduate education in a first year business course: A pilot study. Journal of Education for Business , 132-137. Keyes, J. (2016). Implementing the IT balanced scorecard: Aligning IT with corporate strategy. London: CRC Press. Narayanan, V., Brem, L., & Packard, M. (2013). Delta/Signal Corp. Boston: Harvard Business School. Niven, P. (2014). Balanced scorecard evolution: a dynamic approach to strategy execution. John Wiley & Sons.