CORPORATE SELF-ANALYSIS

Group 7

Varisara Phonphaisan 5080259

Srisongruk Prohmvitak 5180170

Tanaroek Thanaaphiwong 4980205

Saloua Kettani 5380422

The task of examining your own company

- Cultural characteristics and practices

- Financial and managerial strengths and weaknesses

- Strategic direction

Focuses on the elements of your company’s profile

- The Culture Cluster

- The Financial Picture

- The Business Definition and SWOT Analysis

- The Possible Strategic Direction

- The Senior Executive Input

- Selection of Alliance Strategy

THE CULTURE CLUSTER A set of coping mechanisms, or adaptation skills, that members of the

culture use both within and outside their corporate environment.

Divided into ten separate areas 1. Styles of decision making and problem solving 2. Authority, delegation and control; reporting methods 3. Work behavior 4. Compensation and incentives 5. Leadership and mentoring styles 6. Communication, oral; written; nonverbal 7. Levels of secrecy 8. Attitude toward time and milestones 9. Ethics and values 10. Personal versus corporate goals

1. Decisions Making and Problem Solving This covers all the ways decisions are made in

an organization, including those that reflect management and board receptivity to new ideas, especially the alliance concept.

2. Authority---Delegation and control ; Reporting Methods

You must ask, “How is authority delegated and what management controls are in place, including reporting responsibilities?”

3. Work Behavior The topic of work behavior comprises dress,

management of work space, arrival and departure norms, and whether a company is task or process-oriented.

4. Compensation and Incentives Most organizations have standard policies

and procedures regarding compensation and incentives. The details of the reward, compensation, and incentive systems had the power to destroy a strategically important relationship.

5. Leadership and Mentoring Styles Leadership styles are often related to stages

in the corporate life cycle, and so become a natural part of a cultural analysis.

6. Communication – Oral; Written; Nonverbal

Miscommunication can occur in many levels when you combine country’s culture, beliefs, systems, values, protocol, and traditions.

7. Levels of Secrecy Levels of secrecy is related to the life-cycle

stages, with start-up companies generally being most open and family or private companies are very secretive, no matter in what cycle stage they are in.

8. Attitude Toward Time and Milestones Time is a cultural norm. Individuals,

companies, and countries have different conception of time.

9. Ethics and Values Ethical attitudes shapes up the entire culture

like people with similar belief or interest are attracted to each other.

10. Personal Versus Corporate Goals In a family owned company, family goals

may be well understood by family members, because of historical issue and relationship matters. But to general business community, they could appear illogical.

II. The Financial Picture In a corporate self-analysis, companies

should have a clear financial picture of the organization.

III. DEFINITION AND SWOT ANALYSIS

It is time to refresh SWOT definition, updating it with your knowledge of the present status of the business in order to achieve two goals. 1. To define the existing business in the light of

today’s reality. 2. To access your future potential in the same

light. The approach of doing SWOT analysis is to

list the major characteristics of a company in a corporate profile on one page.

III. DEFINITION AND SWOT ANAYSIS

Product, Service, and Market Evaluation All the information above should be included in the

company SWOT analysis. Ask and answer questions such as “Has the product

been tested and proved in the home market?”. The Impetuous Texans

A privately held company in Germany emerged as the potential partner for a mid-sized Texas in the laser instrumentation business.

Looking for a partner, they discovered a German company with Europe wide sales and distribution.

The problem for the Texas company was that they wanted to sell their invention in a market which they were not familiar.

III. DEFINITION AND SWOT ANAYSIS What the U.S company did was they went immediately

into the analysis of important markets and focused their attention on obtaining the broadest distribution network rather than on the appropriate alliance goals, strategies, and structure to achieve the desired results.

They let the company representatives traveled from Texas to Germany with a prototype of the product. The product was left there for the German company to examine, and the U.S team returned home. They did not hear from the German company for many weeks.

Finally, they faxed the company and received a reply, indicating that the product was not acceptable and that German company declined the distribution company.

III. DEFINITION AND SWOT ANAYSIS

The major failure factors in this alliance opportunity: 1. The product launch was premature. Poor

quality control and inadequate testing had made the product “an orphan” in the parent company.

2. Cultural understanding was lacking on both the corporate and country levels. The U.S company was in the Hockeystick stage, which is next to becoming the professional company.

3. Overconfidence – The Hockeystick company ignored the possibility of a hostile technical evaluation.

4. Too few resources, both human and capital, had been allocated to the project.

III. DEFINITION AND SWOT ANAYSIS

Some damage control was subsequently instituted. The CEO of the U.S company visited Germany and recommended discussions, promising a number of actions. 1. The U.S technicians would accompany the

product to Germany after it had been subjected to further R&D in the United States.

2. The U.S management would rework their long term goals.

In the end, the U.S company sold the technology for far less than they had invested in developing it, and the German company, after further development, integrated it into one of their smaller product lines.

III. DEFINITION AND SWOT ANALYSIS

Organization Responsibility SWOT analysis should include a process of

pinpointing sources of strength for membership on the alliance team.

Human resources issues should also be discussed in the planning stage when the issue is addressed of who in the organization has responsibility for the alliance.

A final point must be made concerning the human side of the capital investment associated with these relationships.

IV. THE POSSIBLE STRATEGIC DIRECTION

After the company put together all the relevant information, participants in this process will need discuss the strategic direction.

The company then has to direct its alliance activity in order to reach the strategic direction.

In many large companies, the strategic information gathering and the SWOT analysis is done repeatedly by each division.

For example, in the departments of business development, corporate alliances, or strategic planning.

V. THE SENIOR EXECUTIVE INPUT

“Golf Course alliance” arises when two chief executives meet on the golf course and agree that they should do something together.

“The Designer alliance” is similar to the previous one in which the alliance between big companies is announced, and such alliance is expected to affect the entire industry.

“A Glass of wine alliance” is an alliance that had begun with a series of conversation, the result of a strategic vision and teamwork at lower company levels that led to the decision to enter into a relationship between the two companies.

VI. SELECTION OF ALLIANCE STRATEGY

You now should be in a position to develop a mission statement for your alliance activity.

The mission statement should have both qualitative and quantitative elements.

There are four good reasons to develop a formal, explicit, written statement of your objectives and your success criteria for the alliances. 1. Developing a mission statement helps your

company to evaluate the success in the alliance. 2. Success is a moving target, because as the

industry changes and the partners’ goals, personality characteristics, and life-cycle stages change, the goals and success criteria for the partnership will be affected.

IV. SELECTION OF ALLIANCE STRATEGY

3. if you do not clearly state your success criteria in the planning stages, it will be difficult to make strategically correct decisions during the criteria development and partner-selection stages.

4. Memory is short. New team members in both planning and implementation may not remember the starting position in relationship development and may undervalue some of the concession and compromises that have already been made, as well as the achievements already enjoyed.

SUMMARY

The Corporate-Self Analysis process consists of six steps: I. The Culture Cluster II. The Financial Picture III. The Business Definition an SWOT analysis IV. The Possible Strategic Direction V. The Senior Executive Input VI. Selection of Alliance Strategy

If all the steps above have been taken, you are now in the right way to avoid common pitfalls in poorly planned and executed alliances.

SUMMARY

The Corporate Self-Analysis process can be covered in not less than three months in large companies, usually longer, and smaller companies can generally accelerate the process to a couple of weeks.

After the Corporate Self-Analysis, the next major task is to develop alliances concerning the partner criteria, which can take from a few weeks to several months, depending on the corporate personality.