Strategic Analysis for M&S Operational Enhancement

This assignment focuses on the operational requirements of Marks & Spencer (M&S). Students are required to analyze internal and external factors affecting M&S's operations, collect data to understand customer needs, develop strategies based on analysis results, and propose measures for enhancing products/services. The aim is to improve overall operations, gain competitive advantage, increase productivity, and boost profitability.

STRATEGIC
MANAGEMENT

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Main Body..............................................................................................................................1
Part 2................................................................................................................................................5
Part 3................................................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Strategic management in an organisation plays a vital and
crucial role that affect the overall operations in an organisation. This will help
in effective planning of various business operations and carrying out them
with efficiency (Hill, Jones and Schilling, 2014). For the report, Marks and
Spencer's (M & S) as the organisation of context. It is the UK based retail
firm. The essay will cover strengths and weaknesses on the internal and
external level of company and its position and area of improvement. The
strategy for the company will be developed with different measures and
tools that will help in organisation's growth and development along with the
better management of business operations. Also, a reflection on strategy
process model will be taken into consideration with holistic strategy views of
organisation (Barney, 2014).
Main Body
PART A
Marks and Spencer is a British multinational retail firm that is located
in London. It is specialised in clothing, home products and luxury products.
In 2008, company started selling other branded products to cater the
wider customer’s needs. The company is one of the largest retail firm in UK
as well as on global level. This acts as the major competitive advantage and
strength for firm (Moutinho and Vargas-Sanchez, 2018). The major
advantages of organisation are its quality, value for money product, strong
market presence and high customer base. For better strategic management
of cited firm, the assessment of internal and external factors is taken into
effective consideration which will help in better handling of different
operations of M&S. The Internal and external factors that affect strategic
development of company.
The internal and external factors that impact the strategic
development of fir is as follows:
Internal Factors: Internal factors will involve the following elements:
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Internal assessment
Strengths Weaknesses
 High brand recognition is the
major strength for M & S. The
brand is pretty much popular
among people.
 It provides a wide variety of
products and services to its
customers. It ranges from food
items, groceries and clothing to
luxurious items and products of
other brands (Ginter, Duncan
and Swayne, 2018).
 Large number of stores and
outlets make it able to reach
the maximum number of
customers and clients to gain a
better profitability and
productivity.
 M & S also uses products of
other luxurious brands to cater
needs and demands of high
class customers.
 The major weakness for the M
& S is that is usually known as
the Non trendy store and has
an outdated fashion products
that repel the young and
teenage customers to purchase
products and services from M &
S.
 The major backdrop of M & S is
that still is uses the manual
system of keeping the records
and for other workings. The
focus of the cited firm for the
new technologies is
comparatively low, which
impacts the business
operations of the cited firm to a
greater extent.
Threats Opportunities
 The increase in competitions
and entry of many competitors
like Morrison, Sainsbury's etc.
in the market has impacted the
operations of the cited firm to a
 The internalisation and better
use of technologies to carry out
its functionalities will help the
firm to come up with better
ideas to develop a good
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greater extent.
 Also, the outdated fashion
trends which the M & S follows
has led to lose of major
customer base in the Metro
areas impacting its business.
product or services for its
customers.
 The adoption of the latest
fashion trends with the
changing environment and
demands of the customers will
help it to develop a good
product and services to meet
the needs and demands of
young and teenage audience
(Wheelen and et.al., 2017).
External factors: External factors that affect the operations of M&S are:
 Political factors: As M&S operates in many countries, the
political factors that take place there will lay a significant impact
on the firm's business. Besides this, 'Brexit' factor will play a
crucial role in the effective handling of the different operations of
company on UK level. The business enterprise has to effectively
look after the better management of various political factors
impacting the organisation's operations.
 Economic factors: The Brexit had laid a major impact on the
better handling of the different operations that will lay a deep
impact on the operations of M & S. The good economic planning
will help in the effective management of the various functions
which will help in making strategies to sustain in market and
meet the customers’ needs and demands (Slack, 2015).
 Social factors: Looking at economic conditions and the
decrease in trade practices, M & S will also accommodate the
products and services for the general people along with the high
class's people or customers. They will see through the effective
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handling of the various operations which will lay a significant
impact on different business operations of cited firm. The
providing of the products and services depending on the social
conditions of the nation will act as the major advantage for the
company.
 Technological factor: M & S will look after effective
technological measures such as implementation of MIS system to
manage its business operations to meet needs and demands of
customers as well as stakeholders of company. The better
adoption of the latest technologies will help in rising the
efficiency to carry out effective management of business
operations and meet needs and demands of customers
(Rothaermel, 2015).
 Legal Factors: Various legal obligations and trade principles
that are been developed by the government and trade unions of
various countries, in bide M & S to carry out the business
operations in a better way. Also, the legal factors will help the
cited firm to increase the ethicalness of business practices that
are been followed by the firms.
 Environmental factors: The climatic or environmental
condition of a locality or a nation where M & S operate will lay an
impact on the development of business strategies to tackle them
in a very effective manner. Besides this, the M & S will look after
the environmental friendly measure to meet its CSR criteria.
All this factors contribute effectively in the development and growth of
cited business enterprise that helps the firm to meet the needs and demands
of the users or customers. This factors help M & S to have a good and
sustainable market position. Apart from this, it will help in the better
handling of the various measures which will help in gaining a better market
stability and having a better customer satisfaction. This will provide a better
competitive advantage for M & S over its competitors (Lasserre, 2017).
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Looking at its analysis, it can be said that there are many scopes
where M & S has to take effective considerations and maker very vital
improvements. For instance, the adoption of technology to manage various
business operation will help the cited business enterprise to take into
consideration various measures which will help in the effective growth and
development of the company. Apart from this, manufacturing and offering
the products and services in accordance of the trends ongoing in present
time and the changing taste of customers will help M & S to attain a better
productivity and profitability.
Part 2
Based on the above evaluation discussed above, various strategic
planning and tools can be determined and utilized which will help the cited
business organisation to gain a better productivity and profitability. This will
help the firm to have a good control over its business operations. Other than
this, it will help the firm to have a better productivity by improving the
operational capacity and increasing the effectiveness of the company in a
better way. Various strategies can be taken into consideration. The effective
planning and setting up ODF targeted goals will help M & S to have a better
share in retail market and get a competitive advantage over its rivals. This
will improve the efficiency of the company and lead to the development of
better products and services. Some strategies that will help in the better
growth and development of M & S are as follows:
 Cost leadership: The cost leadership will help the firm to gain a
better profitability by increasing the effectiveness of the company in
the market and improving its valuation which will help in the significant
rise in the satisfaction level of customers or clients. This approach
involves the effective and better valuation of various products and
services that are been developed by cited business organisation. It
involves the offering of the same quality of product or service than that
of the competitor but on a lower and reasonable cost that will help in
gaining a better satisfaction level of the customers and provide them
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with effective value for money. It will be viable for M & S only when the
firm will be able to effectively utilize the available resources in a very
significant manner for the production process of goods and services.
This can be used or performed by the firm by using effective
proprietary technologies and maintaining the business operations in a
better and effective way to gain a better productivity and profitability.
It may be classified as the offensive strategy but its effective
implementation will lead to formation of high quality products by M & S
to provide the customer's with better satisfaction level and have a
good competitive advantage over the rival firm (Ethiraj, Gambardella
and Helfat, 2016).
 Differentiation: It is a type of defensive and protective strategy the
will be taken into effective consideration by a business organisation to
have a better handling of the different operation's. This involve the
better practices that will help the firm to gain one or more a better
business promoting attribute that will involve the many factors such as
low cost of production that will help the firm which will help in getting a
good competitive advantage over the rivals. M & S will have to find out
the effective handling of the different factors or sections where they
can use the process of differentiation which will help in sustaining
different business functions which will help in better management of
manufacturing and distribution process to get a good competitive
advantage over its rivals. M & S will look after this strategy to handle
various business operations which will help in the effective handling of
the different operations which helps in gaining a sustainability buy
producing the products and services that are exclusively available to
customers or users by the company (Morschett, Schramm-Klein and
Zentes, 2015).
 Alliances: The M & S will also look after the better alliance or
collaboration with other smaller firms to meet the needs and demands
of the customers in an effective and significant manner. It may involve
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the methods like partnership or acquisition that will help in the better
handling of the different operations and meet the business
requirements of cited business organisation. This will also lead to
fulfilling the expectations of stakeholders by generating a good amount
of revenue. This may lead to collision when both the firm try to control
the prices. But strategic alliances will help in the better planning of the
various resources that will be shared among the partners and will look
after the effective execution of different business operations to gain a
competitive advantage over its competitors or rivals (Bryce, 2017).
 Innovation: M & S can also look after the better handling of different
business function which will help in better analysis of the needs and
demands of customers and come up with the suitable product or
service to cater it in most effective way. It can work with differentiation
strategy and will help business firm to gain a better customer loyalty
level. This will help in effective management of different operations to
have a competitive advantage over the rival firms. The innovation will
also help in gaining effective profitability by developing a new or
effective product that will help M & S to meet the needs and demands
of its clients and customers in more efficient way (Bettis, R.,
Gambardella Helfat and Mitchell, 2014). This will help to attract more
and more buyer towards the company and will lead to a good
profitability and business advantage over the competitors of M & S.
The cited Business organisation has used various measures like
adopting the latest and faster technologies to monitor its business
operations and other functions in a very effective way. Besides this, M & S
will look after the better operational measures or strategic actions like
adopting innovative production measures, having cost leadership and
offering a differentiated product or service to lure in the customer.
Part 3
The M & S will implement the effective Strategy process model that will
help in the significant handling of the different business operations that will
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be executed to get the better outcomes and meet the needs and demands of
its customer's. I find that this model will help M & S to have a better
productivity and profitability. The measures like having a clear vision,
information collection and formulation of appropriate strategy and better
evaluation of the process to control them will help the cited business
enterprise to meet the appropriate targeted goals. The proper
implementation and following of the business strategies will help in the
better management of different business operations which will help in the
better handling of different business operations which will support the
effective growth and development of the company.
The clear vision of the different operation will help in better planning of
different business operations which will help in effective carrying out of
various business operation. Besides this, the clear vision and focus will help
to keep in mind different measures or standards while working to gain a
better sustainability for M & S. The precise vision will also help to adopt
different measures to collect and analyse various measures which help in
suitable management of different business operations (Bettis, R.,
Gambardella, Helfat and Mitchell, 2014). The data which is collected will help
undertake suitable measures to meet the needs and demands of the
customers and develop a better and innovate product and services to gain
an effective customer satisfaction level. Other than this, the formulation and
effective implementation of the strategy on the basis of the analysis will help
in the effective planning and meeting the requirements of the clients. This
will help in the better controlling of different business operation to get a
sustainable development and fulfil their duties in a better way.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded that the proper strategy is required to meet the
operational requirements of the organisation. The strategies will improve the
overall operations of M & S and will help the firm to gain a better competitive
advantage over its competitors and rivals in a market. Besides this, the
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impact of internal and external operations and environmental factors, which
will have a significant rise in productivity and profitability of the cited firm.
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