Reflective Report

Executive Summary

The main purpose of this study is to prepare a reflective report on the Board of Director's decisions (Years 11-16) made during the Business Strategy Game. The reflective report aims to critically review and critique business strategies designed and implemented for Foxxy, sports fashion footwear product manufacturer, which has numbers of operating locations across different parts in the globe. In order to critically determine the types and effectiveness of each business strategy, reflective assessment further includes examining pertinent strategic and management concepts, models, frameworks, typologies and ideas that assisted in the decision-making processes for the organisation, mainly leadership, organisational culture, teamwork and negotiation skills in Foxxy. At the same time, the discussion made in this reflective assessment also sheds light on evaluating personal experience and skills in strategic decision-making abilities along with different management capabilities, especially empowering employee engagement and enhancing workforce performance in the workplace. Therefore, the current reflective report provides a detail analysis of the knowledge that have been acquired though planning, designing and implementing of different strategic measures techniques.

1. Identify, outline and defend your company’s strategic approach in playing the Business Strategy Game. Support your strategic decisions with a selection of relevant strategy and management models.

1.1 Mission, Vision and Values Mission

The mission statement of Foxxy is “we are different here at Foxxy because we have a passion for cutting quality edge designs in lightweight trainers that are swift, agile, and eye-catching, yet still affordable.” We have designed the mission statement for Foxxy with respect to the key purpose of the company. Moreover, the mission statement we devised critically explore the key factors of the business and their roles towards meeting the existing market needs and demands.

Vision

Our vision is to produce quality affordable trainers that are stylish and eye-catching. We have developed the vision of Foxxy with putting adequate emphasis upon long-term purpose of the organisation along with its strategies and execution process for achieving growth. Moreover, our vision aims to inform and inspire different groups of stakeholders through communicating about long-term purpose, objectives and business striges of the company.

Values

We believe that organisational value provides a clear explanation about the underpinning ethics and principles that our company will comply with when designing and executing range of business operations. The core values of Foxxy includes, fairness, integrity, equality as well as accountability towards meeting stakeholders’ expectations.

1.2 Corporate Strategy and Objectives

The corporate objectives developed for Foxxy includes range of operational decisions that have been undertaken during the game. In this context, we believe that the use of strategic models has played a significant role for developing strategic objectives for the company. Strategic models for instance, M E Porter’s Generic Strategies and the Ansoff Matrix played a significant role in the game to construct corporate objectives for the company. With reference to the understanding of both these models, we have defined the strategic objectives for Foxxy for next six years as follows:

Growth

Based on our experience and believe, the strategic objective concerning growth for Foxxy is to increase productivity of the company through optimising the use of resources. In addition, we will also keep adequate focus on retaining low overheads of the company. The strategic objective concerning growth of the company for next 6 years has been developed with respect to the projected financial figure of the company.

Suppliers

We believe that maintaining good relationship with suppliers is a key process which provides major opportunities in business to enhance quality of products. Therefore, the strategic corporate objective concerning supplier of Foxxy is to maintain good ethical conduct with all suppliers of the company.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

We believe that CSR plays a paramount role for organisations to attain long-term sustainability. Our organisation is highly committed to comply with a fundamental set of principles and philosophies that can successfully meet the expectation of eh stakeholders, communities and the natural environment as well. Hence, the corporate objectives of Foxxy further includes a decision to compliance with international law. This can help our business to improve its range of CSR decisions and to become more responsible towards minimising potential impact of business activities on the natural environment.

Stakeholder

Our corporate strategy for stakeholders is mainly focused upon meeting stakeholders’ expectations. In this context, our business operations for Foxxy are designed and improved in accordance with the underpinning needs and expectations of the stakeholders.

Employee

As we believe, employees are the most important group of stakeholders for Foxxy as they play critical role for the organisation to accomplish the long-term business goals and objectives. Therefore, in context of employees, our corporate objective is to perpetuate strong relationship with the employees.

Innovation

The corporate objective for Foxxy regarding innovation is to make continuous focus on new product development process and integrating latest technology across all aspects of activities such as operation, sales and marketing among others.

1.3 Business Environment analysis

Macro-Environment Analysis PESTEL Analysis

According to my own understanding, PESTEL is one of the most significant frameworks though which we can easily identify the possible impacts that a business can face from external environment.

Political Factors: Our business is expected to reach across every nook and corner of the regions including both developed and under developing markets globally. In this context, Foxxy is strongly committed to comply with the underpinning political factors such as governmental policies, laws and orders when entering into any target markets.

Economic Factors: We believe that economic factor is more crucial as it is directly linked with the company’s expected return from the market. In this context, the main economic factors that our business considers are annual household income and customer expenditure along with the per-capita income parity of the population of a defined market. Additionally, the business is also aimed to strongly comply with economic policies, tax rates, annual interest rate and different other relevant factors of the overseas markets.

Social Factors: In context of social factors, our business considers emphasising culture as well as societal trend of the target customers in a particular overseas market. Additionally, Foxxy will also focus on emphasising shared beliefs and attitude of the customers.

Technological Factors: To deal with factors relating to technology, Foxxy is much anticipated to embrace advanced technological tools and equipment in production along with marketing and different other operations.

Environmental Factors: As we mentioned earlier, Foxxy will strongly focus on complying with the existing environmental laws, policies and directives associated with natural environment. Furthermore, the company will certainly progress its performance on protecting ad conserving natural environment in overseas markets.

Legal Factors: We will ensure that the company’s operations are performed under adequate compliance with the legal policies of the overseas market. In this context, the major legal factors that our business will include in legal policies associated with employee health and safety acts, equal opportunity law, advertising standards and policies along with different aspects of consumer rights and law.

Competitive-environment

In order to determine the competition in the global footwear business industry, we planned to implement the Porter’s Five Forces Analysis Model.

Porter’s Five Forces Analysis

Power of Buyer (High): Power of buyer I footwear business industry is significantly high due to the existence of a large number of competitors in the sector. Additionally, low switching cost due to the multiple options for customers significantly intensifies competition in the global footwear business sector.

Power of Supplier (High): The bargaining power of supplier is also high as the sector comprises numbers of leading footwear manufacturers.

Competitive Rivalry (High): The competitive rivalry in the global footwear sector is significantly high. Increasing dominance of leading players mainly Adidas group, Nike and Puma among others as well as heir aggressive marketing strategy significantly fuel the competitive rivalry in the footwear business industry.

Threats of New Entrant (Moderate): The potential threat from new entrants is moderate as the business requires higher volume of investment. Nevertheless, lower performance of domestic footwear brands also deteriorates the possibility of new entrants in this sector. Threats of Substitute (Low): As we know that shoes have no other substitute for customers. However, the existence of similar type of local brands as well as other substitutes such as flop-flops and floaters may have minimum or less impacts on Foxxy in its overseas operations.

Micro-environment

In relation to the business operations of Foxxy, the micro-environmental analysis has been conducted using McKinsey’s 7S theoretical framework.

Strategy

The main strategy of Foxxy is to manufacture range of fashionable trainers comprising quality, design and styles on the basis of market demand. Additionally, the strategy also include producing large number of models for trainers with unique features and low cost.

Structure

Foxxy maintains a centralized organizational structure, wherein the decisions are taken by the senior hierarchical members mainly board of directors. Employees and supervisors are managed and are provided with quality-based T&D programs along with rewards and incentives.

Systems

The production units of Foxxy are located in North America, Latin America and Asia-Pacific markets. The production process is systematically supervised in order to ensure that the trainers are manufactured with underpinning quality guidelines.

Style

Foxxy nurtures a democratic culture, in which the decision-making processes are shared across the teams. Moreover, the leadership style also helps team to collaboratively perform and share own ideas and opinion on the organizational process.

Staff

Foxxy’s production process is outsourced. Hence, the company organizes scheduled T&D programs for employees to excel their skills and performance.

Skills

The company is highly concerned with the quality as well as cost of each pair of trainers. Hence, it maintains adequate focus on maintaining appropriate supplier network to source quality-based materials.

Shared Values

The core values of the company include, maintaining good quality, fashiuon awareness as well as fairness in operations. These values are manifested across all types of decision-making process in Foxxy.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

Brand name is one of the major strengths of Foxxy, which has been growing across different target markets. In addition, increasing size of potential customer segments as well as strong relationship with suppliers and other stakeholder groups are also key drivers of the company.

Weaknesses

Strong reliance upon suppliers due to the increasing price and quality concerns of raw materials for production can be a major weakness for Foxxy. Nevertheless, increasing risks of replica of products due to higher competitive rivalry can also increase possible threats for the company.

Opportunities

Increasing global market, especially escalating demands of trainers brands in emerging markets such as India, China and Brazil can provide major opportunities for Foxxy. In addition, continuous advancement of information and communication technology (ICT) is another key driver that can lead Foxxy to increase its pace of innovation in both manufacturing and marketing or promotional activities of its key brands.

Threats

Large number of leading trainer brands as well as their aggressive strategies relating to sales and marketing processes can impose major threat for Foxxy in competitive market. Nevertheless, unabated changes in macro-environmental factors such as political and social factors can also undermine competitive position of MFoxxy in the global trainers business market.

1.4 Marketing

The following concept of Marketing 7Ps critically explores the marketing activities of Foxxy:

Product The key features that Foxxy has ensured with its products are fashion driven stylish design, quality of materials as well as exclusiveness of each pair of trainers. Additionally, the product also delivers strong brand image and position of the company. Price

The pricing strategy has been focused on maintaining cheaper than that of offered by the existing competitors. Moreover, the Foxxy also focuses upon maintaining strategic pricing decision in order to successfully compete the current market of fashion trainers.

Promotion

The fashion trainers of the company are promoted using advanced social media campaigns. Moreover, the company also focuses upon using traditional media networks such as Public Relations, magazines and television networks when promoting its wide range of fashion trainers.

The distribution process of products includes wide range of channels such as distributor, retailer and the company’s own exclusive stores. Foxxy also market its range of fashion trainers across different fashionable cities. Additionally, the use of online retailing also plays a critical role for Foxxy to widely distribute its products.

People

Foxxy maintains a coordinated working culture through respecting integrity of each individual and group of employees. Moreover, the company promotes continuous development of employees through rendering personal development opportunities by maintaining a standard workplace culture.

In context of process, Foxxy critically nurtures its own R&D initiatives with minimizing cost-effective operations. Moreover, the business process of the company also avoids using of dangerous substances in both production and distribution processes.

Physical Evidence

The products offered by Foxxy are distributed using well-structured representation in stores. Moreover, the company also focuses upon each aspects of visual presentation of its fashion trainers when promoting the brands in different e-commerce websites.

1.5 Operations

The operations strategy of Foxxy includes its cutting-edge production processes along with its widespread distribution networks. In this overall process, the company involves measuring of demand for its fashion trainers brands through obtaining feedbacks of the customers. The production capacity of the organization is managed using appropriate utilization of resources and materials with adequate concern over minimizing waste. At the same time, the production process of our business strive to optimize both quality of products and costs associated with the production and distribution process. In order to maintain appropriate quality, we have also integrated TQM approach which helps the production process to maximize output and minimize waste or lead time of operation.

1.6 Supply Chain and Logistics

Currently, our manufacturing process has been operated across different regions across both North and Latin America and Asia-Pacific regions. The strategy provides a major support to our business to minimize cost of transportation. Nevertheless, our logistics operations also focus upon prioritizing favorable exchange rates and tariffs through exporting of products to other potential global markets.

1.7 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

The CSR strategy of Foxxy has been critically explained using the following Carroll’s CSR Pyramid Framework:

1.8 Finance

At the initial start-up stage, Foxxy was funded through loan from financial institution. However, in present scenario, the organizational functions are funded through equity by issuing shares from a large number of domestic and overseas shareholders. Since the past few years our company has paid millions of dividends with the expected return amount to each individual or group of shareholders. Our profitability target for each region as well as cost-effective production process and maintaining strategic and competitive pricing of products play significant role for Foxxy to obtain expected financial rertun from the global markets. The process eventually hep the organization to gain attention of potential investors as well.

1.9 Overall Performance Review Against Investor Expectations

Out business of offering a wide range of fashion and luxury trainers to the global customers has been obtaining major recognition due to the companies relentless focus on product design, quality as well as its exceptional sales and marketing strategies. In context of Foxxy’s financial performance, we have successfully paid dividends in respond to both individual and institutional shareholders from different parts of the globe. Moreover, we are strongly committed to maintain adequate fairness in reporting along with providing detail information about each aspect of financial information to the stakeholders. Our strategy of maintaining adequate integrity as well as fairness towards shareholders has been significantly enabling Foxxy to obtain major attention of the potential shareholders and investors. Therefore, we believe that this process will also work for our company to ascertain faith and interest of the potential shareholder groups.

2. Outline and critically analyse the team’s identification, evaluation and execution of corrective measures to manage the decisions better

2.1 Year 11

Empowering Productivity through offering T&D: We have planned to provide quality-based training a and development (T&D) programs for employees associated with different operational processes ranging from manufacturing, management, Human Resource, Finance and sales and marketing activities. Our T&D strategy for employees is welcomed by each member associated with the management team in Foxxy.

Enabling employees to share ideas and opinions: The strategy has been formulated with the aim of pursuing relevant ideas and opinions concerning different operational and management activities. In this process, the employees will be engaged through building collaborative culture in the workplace. The most possible outcome that we can pursue using this strategy that the engagement of employees can flourish the pace of innovation across all aspect of business activities of the company.

Integrating Quality Management System: The process will be integrated I production lines. The strategy would play a significant role to increase efficiency in product design as well as quality of each pair of footwear for the customers.

2.2 Year 12

Strengthening Supply Chain Management functions: We would focus on making continuous improvement of the SCM functions using advanced technological services. The use of technology can help our business to enhance inventory control process along with increasing production performance of the manufacturing units.

Managing Quality: We will focus on not to compromise with the quality of the finished product. Hence, we have also decided to form a distinct team or body for inspecting quality of shoes. Additionally, we are also looking forward to embrace appropriate frameworks for enhancing quality of the finished products with eliminating waste.

New Product Development (NPD): NPD will always be a critical strategic measure in our business. We all know that the sports footwear product market is highly competitive due to the changing preferences of the customers. Therefore, we would focus on obtaining continuous information about trend as well as changing needs and expectations of the customers, especially in context of design and quality of the products.

2.3 Year 13

Reducing Impacts on Environment: We will be continuously working on meeting the sustainable CSR objectives of Foxxy. In this context, reducing potential impacts of organisational activities on natural environment will be a common strategic practice of the organisation.

Minimising Waste: We planned for ‘Zero Waste’ manufacturing process through effectively utilising potential waste from the production units. In addition, we will also be working on recycle and reuse of materials in production, this will help Foxxy to completely eliminate possible waste and will also play a crucial role for protecting and conservating the natural environment.

Increasing Community Awareness: Our business will always environmental conservation and protection. Therefore, to obtain potential result, Foxxy will increase its focus on increasing awareness of the community towards protecting and conserving natural environment.

2.4 Year 14

Building Strong Employee Relation: Foxxy has strong focus on forming and maintaining strong relationship with its employees through upholding its equal and transparent business policies. The organisation is looking forward to build and maintain relationship through nurturing cooperative organisational culture. Moreover, we will also focus on engaging employees in decision-making process through emphasising ideas and opinions of each individual employee in the organisation.

Minimising employee turnover rate: Foxxy will certainly focus on retaining exiting employees in accordance with their skills, competency levels as well as their performance or contribution towards the business. The focus on retaining employees will certainly help the organisation to minimise budding costs associated with the business operations.

Implementing Strategic HRM: The implementation of strategic HRM process can further help our business to efficiently increase employees’ performance long with their engagement with the organisation in the long run. In this context, the company will focus on integrating globally accepted HRM policies, which would further enable employees to improve their abilities along with to pursue personal and professional growth opportunities in Foxxy.

2.5 Year 15

Integrating Innovation: Our business of manufacturing wide range of sports and casual shoes includes integrating of advanced technological aspects across each segment of operations. In this context, the use of advanced technology in designing and production processes can empower business capabilities of Foxxy.

Using Digital Media in Marketing and Promotion: Foxxy is determined to make its strong presence in the digital media using contemporary promotional tools and techniques. To obtain attention from customers and other groups of stakeholders, the company markets and promotes its shoe brands across number of social-media networking channels. The strategy is expected to enhance business insight for Foxxy not only to obtain new customer segments but also to boost its market share in the global footwear business industry. Increasing business efficiency using innovative marketing tactics: Our business of manufacturing footwears is expected to make effective sponsorship plan with renowned sport celebrity. The strategy can help Foxxy to obtain major attention from the target customers from different regions.

2.6 Recommendations for future strategy

With reference to an overall learning obtained from the game, it has been an exceptional experience to demonstrate our ideas and perceptions about strategic management processes for an organization. We also learned about the significance of different theoretical concepts and frameworks that can enable an organization to successfully accomplish the underpinning business goals and objectives. Based on my personal viewpoint regarding the opportunity to run virtual business, I would have highly focus on integrating most effective strategic measures relating to functional strategies for an organist ion. According to my personal believe, a celebrity endorsement process can play a significant role for companies, especially in sports footwear business. The process can lead the business to ascertain major interest of a large segment of target audience. Furthermore, in promotional process, I believe that the integration of social media networks along with developing own organizational app can also provide major opportunities to the company in terms of obtaining major interest of the target audience in domestic and overseas markets.

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