Business Report on Clarks Plc

This business report focuses on Clarks Plc, a shoe retailer and manufacturer. It includes a SWOT analysis, corporate social responsibilities, and the role of creativity and innovation in the business.

BUSINESS REPORT
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
Analysis............................................................................................................................................3
SWOT analysation of business....................................................................................................3
Corporate Social Responsibilities of business:............................................................................4
Creativity and innovation in business. ........................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7
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INTRODUCTION
Business report help company to plan and execute a particular situation or issue and later
make recommendations and suggestions. This report is focus on Clarks company which is a
shoe retailer and manufacture company. It is founded in 1825 and has its headquarters in United
Kingdom. Clarks Plc has expanded its operations in various other countries and almost has 1400
shoe stores globally. Its main mission to cater all need of its clients by providing them quality
services and main goal is to enlarge its business over next few years. Company made huge profit
in year 2013 which is around 150 million euro on its overall sales (Coulson-Thomas,2017). It
also has many other big competitor in market that includes Puma, Adidas, Mark & Spencer and
Skechers. This report further analysis of company's external environment with the help of SWOT
analysis along with its main corporate social responsibilities within society. Later, report discuss
creativity and innovation in business that used to survive in marketplace. Lastly, report discuss
recommendations to business so that it able to expand more in market and bring necessary
improvement if required.
Analysis
SWOT analysation of business.
SWOT analysis is very useful tool in which company able to examine its strengths,
weaknesses, threats and opportunities. It is framework from which an organization minimize its
risk, help to make growth and grab opportunities that come in the future. Let's examine SWOT
of Clarks Plc for better understanding:
Strength
Clarks Plc is one of the major organization of UK and has many strength that help company
to sustain in the market for long time. Company has powerful base of authentic supplier of
finished products and raw materials thus enables Clarks Plc to defeat from any supply chain
obstructs and also have successful track of recording of fresh products and innovation in goods
and services (Gürel and Tat,2017). Company provides less expensive products as compare to its
competitors along with good quality.
Weaknesses
Weaknesses are considered those areas where Clarks Plc can bring major transformation in
their operations. Company finds that its online presence is not that effective because majority of
people try shoes in physical stores before they buy them. Moreover, even when Clarks Plc is
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spending on research or development, they are not been able to challenge the biggest players in
competitive market in terms of innovation. It would be difficult for company to expand its
product and bring shoes for young and adults as competition is very high.
Threats
Unavailability of expert or well-qualified manpower in the global marketplace indicates a
threat to steady growth of income of Clarks Plc. As strength of regional distributors is increasing
day by day, as a result that also represent a threat in some market as the competition is paying
larger amount to the local distributors (Vlados, 2019). Clarks Plc can face lawsuits in different
markets as there are various laws and regulations and continuous fluctuations in relation with
goods standard in countries it operates. Expand of raw materials in other regions can probably
become a cause of threat to profitability of Clarks Plc.
Opportunities
Market development will conduct to dilution of competitors advantage, hence Clarks Plc
able to expand over it competitiveness and diversify its products into new footwear and clothing
market for example, handbags and accessories. Over the years, company also try to made
investment into online platforms and gain customer from various digital platforms like Facebook
and Twitter (Teoli and An, 2019). As a result, this investment has open the gates of the new
sales channel for Clarks Plc and then in the future it may gain this opportunity by able be
understand its customer base.
Corporate Social Responsibilities of business:
Corporate social responsibilities, commonly known as CSR, is an important for company as
it basically a management related concept. Organization coordinate and take initiative with
concern that is related with social and environment in their business operations. Clarks Plc helps
to create major impact to the world and people around and that impact can be considerable when
a thousand of people work as together as a team. If talking about Clarks company, it represents
its business operations that make huge impact related with social, economic and environmental.
It takes initiative to eliminate all negative and adopting positive work culture so that it make big
difference (Freeman and Dmytriyev, 2017).
Clarks Plc always try to take CSR and its related responsibilities very seriously and
responsibly adopt in all its operations. For example, to provide housing and education facilities
for all its employees who just started their career and also support initiatives that is related with
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international to improve people's lives. Company also acknowledge value to give protection to
its employees, stakeholders and suppliers across the world. They are also working towards create
a better future by adopting sustainable operation for its business. Additionally, company is also a
big supporter of British Retail Consortium that create and take step for better world. This brings
modification to company in many ways and change the way it integrates or implement its
business activities. Company identifies many key points that it pay more attention and that
mostly includes, to lower down inequality, take protective action for climate and weather.
Moreover, company also focuses towards development related to economic and work and
sustainable cities and show responsibilities towards its production and consumption process.
Company also focuses on moral thinking and that is most important thing that they actually built
on. They are also serious about dynamic sustainability and executing major impact on the
environment on its end-to-end overall production life cycle (Agudelo, Jóhannsdóttir and
Davídsdóttir, 2019). Now, company work towards development of new strategy that will help to
raise awareness even at higher level and open up some exciting opportunities for growth over
next few years. There employees also focus more on getting engaged in working with people and
community and tie up with various organization that work for donation and charities.
Creativity and innovation in business.
In any business, innovation and creativity goes step by step. Creativity is a process in which
an individual develop new idea in business while, innovation is making that idea into reality. In
Clarks Plc that almost operates in number of countries, is essential for them to bring changes so
that it strong its sustainability in that country (Cramer, 2017). Company always keep changes
and modify its products as per taste and preferences of its clients. Later, company only deal with
normal footwear, but now it brings different categories of shoes that mostly includes, casual
wear, sports shoes and sandals. As a result, majority of people attracted towards company as it
has various choices to choose from. Clarks Plc develop new design time to time and become
most reputable and famous across the UK. According to company, the best asset for them is
knowledge as they keep on learning about various crafts , design that are adaptable in business
and also stay true to its innovation and creativity. Moreover, company also make huge
investment in its research and development team to able to implement new and different ideas.
As a result, company retain its loyal customers and attract new one (Maqbool, and Zameer,
2018).
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CONCLUSION & RECOMMENDATION
To conclude, the above report summarized that business focuses on various other areas apart
from its routine activities and also examine its activities time to time. Therefore, SWOT analysis
is a great way to understand about its real strength and weaknesses, so that it bring necessary
changes in its business (Tang and Werner, 2017). Further, report elaborated that business must
follow its corporate social responsibilities as it is vital for environment. Company follow many
other techniques to be in market like to bring new and innovative products and services so that it
help in business growth. Company must examine and evaluate competition in market before start
up for new company. If any company wants to secure its position in this competitive market than
it must adopt various strategies for example, to create loyalty program for customers. As this
program is the best method to upgrade sales because company has to spend extra fund to grab
new customers while it is easy to sell to existing ones (Sutapa, Mulyana and Wasitowati, 2017).
Another method that company may use is to explore global platforms as there are hundreds of
applications available that company can utilize so that make wider reach with very least amount
of time and cost. Lastly, company must use customer management system so that it quickly
manage its transactions. There are plenty of software available in market and CMS systems,
company just need to find what is the best suitable to them and utilize it in business.
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REFERENCES
Books and journals
Agudelo, M.A.L., Jóhannsdóttir, L. and Davídsdóttir, B., 2019. A literature review of the history
and evolution of corporate social responsibility. International Journal of Corporate
Social Responsibility, 4(1), pp.1-23.
Coulson-Thomas, C., 2017. Stimulating creativity, enabling innovation and supporting
entrepreneurship. Management Services, 2017(Summer), pp.26-29.
Cramer, J., 2017. Corporate Social Responsibility and Globalisation: an action plan for
business. Routledge.
Freeman, R.E. and Dmytriyev, S., 2017. Corporate social responsibility and stakeholder theory:
Learning from each other. Symphonya. Emerging Issues in Management, (1), pp.7-15.
Gürel, E. and Tat, M., 2017. SWOT analysis: a theoretical review. Journal of International
Social Research, 10(51).
Maqbool, S. and Zameer, M.N., 2018. Corporate social responsibility and financial performance:
An empirical analysis of Indian banks. Future Business Journal, 4(1), pp.84-93.
Munizu, M. and Hamid, N., 2018. Mediation Effect of Innovation on the Relationship between
Creativity with Business Performance at Furniture Industry in Indonesia. Quality-Access
to Success, 19(165).
Sutapa, S., Mulyana, M. and Wasitowati, W., 2017. The role of market orientation, creativity and
innovation in creating competitive advantages and creative industry performance. JDM
(Jurnal Dinamika Manajemen), 8(2), pp.152-166.
Tang, L.M. and Werner, C. eds., 2017. Handbook of the management of creativity and
innovation: theory and practice. World Scientific Publishing Company.
Teoli, D. and An, J., 2019. SWOT analysis.
Vlados, C., 2019. On a correlative and evolutionary SWOT analysis. Journal of Strategy and
Management.
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