Strategic Analysis of Microsoft's Management Strategies

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Microsoft's strategic management, focusing on key decision-making issues, the selection and application of appropriate strategic frameworks, and critical evaluations of strategic choices. The report examines how practicing managers at Microsoft address challenges such as lack of innovation, slow search engine development, and increasing costs. It explores the use of frameworks like Porter's generic strategies (cost leadership, differentiation) and their relevance to Microsoft's marketing strategies, including investing in marketing messages, focusing on product elements, and targeting customers who value effectiveness and efficiency. The report also evaluates the challenges faced by Microsoft in the context of the IT industry, offering insights into how the company can overcome these challenges through ethical decision-making and strategic planning. The report concludes with recommendations for Microsoft to enhance its business operation.

Strategic management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
1) Analyse and evaluate ways in which practising managers address key strategic and/or
decision making issues................................................................................................................3
2 Select and use the appropriate framework in the strategic decisions.......................................5
3) Provide critical evaluation applications of theory to strategic management practice process
stages...........................................................................................................................................7
4. Demonstrate skills of analysis and synthesis and justification of proposals in the
preparation of a business related strategy report.......................................................................10
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Strategic management has been defined as an area of management deals with taking
strategic decision with purpose to accomplish defined goals and objectives of the business entity.
In the area, corporate entity generally takes decision on basis of past performance and current
status of their business operation (Meyer and et. al., 2017). This involves making strategic
planning, structure of complete organising and enables the measure to control issues &
challenges faced by the company in their working tenure. This report will be highlight on
Microsoft corporation is an American IT firm and technology giant which are majorly
specialised in providing computer system and other valuable IT products. This corporate entity
is headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Mainly, this organisation is highly expertise in
designing, making and planning the computer software, hardware and other electronics products.
Along with this, report will cover analysis and evaluation of practising manager address
the key strategic and pure decision making process, selection of suitable and relevant framework
for decision making and critical evaluation of strategic choice, planning and implementation.
Lastly, report will also put light over the challenges faced by manager to solve any problem
faced by business organisation. Analysis and evaluation will be major part of this report.
MAIN BODY
1) Analyse and evaluate ways in which practising managers address key strategic and/or
decision making issues
Strategic management is an area of management, which in reality deals with strategic
issue or problems faced by corporate entity while in process of business strategy and structuring
common goals or objectives for accomplishing the defined targets and objectives for business
process. This area of study is helpful to make strategies & action plan to develop business at the
higher and longer stage. Manager are responsible for any strategic implementation or making
plan to led organisation in an effective and positive operation stage. In context with Microsoft
which is a leading IT company in all over the world and ruling in an area of developing business
at the prospective stage (Hair and et. al., 2012). In this leading sector, power and role of strategic
manager is relatively higher along with taking long term decision making as well as changing
scenario of leading for business growth and building profit for enhancing the scenario of
corporate at the larger and higher stage. In India, which has now become major hub for IT

company role, in that process where business suitability has increased over the period of time. In
this region, managers of this IT firm has brought positive regulation of vision, mission and
strategic objectives to take long term decision making at a given point of time. It was noticed that
still, decision capabilities of Microsoft was not so unique, because of increasing business
competition from Apple and IBM incorporation. Strategic decision making is helpful to make
valuable regulation of Microsoft operation on a higher and utilised basis.
In India, where IT hub is under process of becoming an era, this can be suitable option
for Microsoft to raise their business operation along with becoming market leader. Also, role of
computer and related other IT infrastructure is high, hence this can be major opportunity for
Microsoft to grab the market by selling their window system and other IT structuring in order to
make business operation more wide and suitable for Microsoft (Grunig, 2013). In this leading IT
sector, there are various challenges such as rise in cost of planting the system, maintenance of
support system, hiring manpower for regular keeping and know how and evaluating system in
order to raise higher profitability and productivity.
Specially in context of technical sector, it is necessary for managers to address issues and
challenges, which would be major reason for bringing down of corporate operation along with
business profitability at the larger context. The explanation over an issues and challenges such as
operational issues, problems related to ethical consideration and regulation of an ineffective
manner in context of Microsoft are as follows:
lack of innovation: Microsoft has already utilised all their innovation in early stage of
business processing and apple is very well countering this thing by launching their own system
called Mackintosh. They has comes up with Mac book pro, which grab market of Microsoft with
high innovation engagement for business operation. In context with Microsoft, over-utilisation of
innovation is the major problem for future research and development for this leading IT sector.
Search engine: Microsoft is very slow in sector of internet empowerment to their public
reach. This leading IT infrastructure has made their search engine named as bing, which is still
lot to do to counter Google, which is market leader on that context (Hoskisson, 2012).
Regulation of Microsoft is low in case of optimising their own search engine. An emergence
solution is required in case of building search engine at the higher and optimised level of
searching compatibility.

Increasing cost and expenses: In a current era, where technology is working in
upgrading stage, cost has increased over period to period. Moreover, this has impact an increased
profit generation or capability for longer and higher stage or level of matter. Microsoft expenses
and cost over adding software and market proficiencies has been increased from last few years, a
they are now focused over building their operation or opening new research and development
centre in different location to reach to customer at a productive stage of empowerment.
These challenges are recognised as decision making issues for Microsoft which needs a
strategic decision making and rapid solution to accomplish their strategic objectives and action
planning to accomplish business sustainability or performance. For overcoming these challenges,
it is necessary for Microsoft to ethically design action planning and decision making to enhance
their business operation at the longer proportionate (Ireland, 2017).
In response to this, Microsoft in India has decided various strategies such as bringing
down of the cost, control excess flow of innovation & funds & plan business planning in order to
know what suitable action Microsoft could take to rise their business functioning and enhance
expectancy of the business performance to earn profit from the business operation.
2 Select and use the appropriate framework in the strategic decisions
Strategic decision has been recognised as an action planning which is majorly required to
make business corporate to solve their issues and problems in the given point of time. Strategic
decision making is a structured framework for overcoming issues which are linked to issues or
challenges specified in the previous assessment. For providing the solution of an issues such as
lack of innovation, slow search engine and continuous increase into the expenses of developing
more system in an IT environment. These strategic issues needs a rapid and instant solution, so
as to make services of Microsoft more reliable and transparent to build the business operation at
the higher and optimised stage of functioning (Hitt, 2018). Corporate governance is the major
solution of these issue, by bringing role of collaboration working in an organisation as per given
situation of the Microsoft. In an IT sector, cost and price are major factors, which needs to be
explained through strategic framework of porter generic, of which influence needs to be
discussed. Along with this, strategic managers of Microsoft needs to link porter generic with
marketing strategy of this leading tech giant to bring cost and price effectiveness to their product
which are some of major issue discussed in previous assessment to take corrective action plan to

enhance business competency of Microsoft. Before getting suitable suggestion from porter
generic theory, it would be beneficial to have discussion over the marketing strategies of
Microsoft to know their ability and consistency to enhances their business operation at the higher
and longer stage. Marketing strategies of this tech giant are as follows:
Investing in generating marketing message to customer: This tech giant uses range of
communication platform informed from their customer on issues regarding system and software.
This generally comes under part of maintenance or logistics, Microsoft uses this as their most
appropriate and reliable marketing strategy to tell about their rapid and instant problem solving
to enables the business proficiencies and growth for the Microsoft. Moreover, this is high cost
marketing strategy, which has severe impact over profit generation for this leading It sector firm.
Focus on product elements of the mix: This tech giant focuses on their product
elements of the marketing mix to the greater extent to increase customer reach at the greater
proportionate. They are busy in generating high user experience of customer by spending huge
on business growth and more customer penetration to build profitability at the greater and higher
stage. This strategy basically incurs huge cost and time to operate in specific market location.
Targeting the customer that in reality value effectiveness and efficiency: Microsoft is
bust in targeting those customer, who want to experience high quality service, product advantage
with expectancy to save both money and time. They are doing this from last few year, with
higher focus is on enhancing the customer suitability and sustainability at growth based scenario.
To retain their market, they are focusing on investing money on their creating an ecosystem for
customer to engage at on common platform to make customer's at one place and also at one point
of time.
From above marketing strategy, it was found that increasing cost is the major issue for
this leading tech giant which needs to be overcome in order to make Microsoft strategic planning
, organising and controlling with focus on enhancing the strategic decision making for this
leading tech giant. The major discussion over the porter generic strategies are as follows:
Cost leadership strategy: In this strategy, the major objective is to become lowest-cost
producer with an accurate experience to the customer. In the technology sector, which is getting
higher, this idea of cost saving will not be anywhere beneficial for this tech Microsoft. It was
observed that in industry, where is technology is becoming huge, cannot go with saving cost to

enhance productivity. Strategic manager needs to give importance to higher productivity and cost
utilisation to technical resources to gain effective functioning.
Differentiation strategy: Microsoft uses broad differentiation as its major generic
strategy for getting competitive advantage into the business operation. Differentiation involves
selling an unique products to different variety of customers. In current situation, Microsoft’s
products are unique and specialised in terms of their features as software products specifically
designed for business organizations (Duane Ireland, 2017). This generic competitive strategy is
broad for sense that , company sells its IT products to various market segments. In example says
like, an individuals, any households and organisation can buy Microsoft’s software and hardware
products to use for benefits and convenience with increased support of IT generation to the
human being. Through, this strategy company can build platform from which, Microsoft can sell
their products or service to wider range of customer along with increasing their potential to buy
more and more.
Cost focus: In this generic strategy, focus is majorly on targeting the niche market which
is little competition, but focused market. Also, it offers the lowest price. In this strategy, niche
market generally targets and led an initiative to understand their dynamics and understands
customer potential at the higher level. For context of Microsoft, this strategy will not be suitable,
as it focuses on limited customer, but this tech giant is captured huge market, if say in true nature
, entire world is using window and their hardware. Niche market strategy is not appropriate and
relevant for Microsoft corporation.
Differentiation focus: As, similar of cost focus, in this generic, focus is also on targeting
the niche market, which involves little competition and focused market. This strategy involves
strong brand loyalty among the customer's. Microsoft can utilise this strategy, but it only focuses
on minimum market and Microsoft’s is biggest emperor of this IT sector.
Brief summary: From the above analysis, it is concluded that. Differentiation strategy is
an appropriate and necessary for Microsoft to uphold and retain customer at the higher rate to
maintain flow of quality of goods & services at the higher proportionate. As, competition has
been raised such as existence of Apple iOS and Mac book, which can be major threat for product
of Microsoft to be got replaced (Hitt, 2017). As, it is difficult to beat Microsoft, but focus must
be on strategic practice or implementation.

3) Provide critical evaluation applications of theory to strategic management practice process
stages
Strategic management process is more than just a set of rules which needs to be follow. It
is a philosophical approach to the upper business. It has been defined as the process by which
manager makes a choices of different set of strategies for any business organisation that is
majorly responsible for better performance. This has been recognised as a continuous process
that in reality appraises the business and its related industries in which business entity is involved
and engaged (Greco and et. al., 2013). In this assessment, critical reflection will be done in
context of this process. This strategic planning process is majorly consists of three different
stages: strategic analysis, choice and implementation. In context with Microsoft, this step by step
process is necessary to make suitable and perfect strategic choice for this leading tech giant to
take strategic decision making in operation to grow customer expectancy at the larger and higher
context. The complete analysis of the strategic management process is as follows:
Strategic analysis: In this stage, it is necessary to gather valuable information and data
which is as important to have complete strategic analysis for the Microsoft corporation. In this
kind of information, data related to sales of the business, annual revenue, market share and clear
gathering of the profit will be ascertained and also led to enhancing decision making power. This
process is simply termed as executing an environmental analysis process, management should
need to evaluate this stage on continuous basis to generate choice of strategic choice for this
leading IT company. Evaluation of an information needs to be pro-active and must be centric.
Also, this stage is known as environmental scanning stage (Killen and et. al., 2012).
Strategic choice: It is a process of deciding best course of action in order to accomplish
defined goals and objectives of the Microsoft corporation. Microsoft uses innovative structure of
organisational form, in which lots of freedom are being to employee's and other people to share
their separate idea, opinion and views. Usage of leadership technique is major influence here to
have collaborative support of the employees of Microsoft to take various valuable and relevant
decision making for enhancing profitability for this leading tech business.

Sources: Strategic management practice process, 2018
Strategic implementation: This stage implies that making the strategy work as like or
putting an organisation into picture to make them performing their business operation into the
reality or clear strategic picture (Burns, 2012). In context with Microsoft’s, this stage involves
developing an organisational structure, distribution of the resources, developing decision making
process and also managing the human resources (Doz, 2017). In this leading IT business, proper
planning and controlling is necessary to undertaken an advantage of increased competition with
apple Macbook and also other software such as Linux which is known using in professional
working or goals based target.
Strategic evaluation: It is the final step of strategy management process, in which key
strategic formulation activities are: appraising internal and external factors that are majorly root
to present strategies of the Microsoft’s. This involves measuring performance, taking remedial
action and then follow this cycle repeatedly. In context with Microsoft, evaluation in reality
makes sure that an organisation strategy is well implemented meeting an organisational targets
and goals (Nixon, 2016). In Microsoft, this stage is important to make this leading tech giant
accomplish their desired goals and targets accomplished within the given period of time. This
will put force on measuring what are Microsoft’s strategy's and also what are its relevancy for
their business.
Removal of challenges: Microsoft was suffering with an issue of lack of innovation,
increased cost and expenses and ineffective search engine, in order to solve these issues, it can be
possible to take examples from real business life person who have transformed business at the
greater and higher context stage. Amazon is one of the suitable example of taking the strategic
decision making along with enhancing the business operation at the higher level. Amazon has
Illustration 1: Strategic management practice process

completely transformed their supply chain with commitment of 24 hours services period. This
happens with support of strategic alliances with Fedx to deliver goods and services in given point
of time. This has been taken as strategic implementation by the Amazon to save cost and time for
delivering customer at the best and provide best of the value to the customer along with source of
higher revenue to the customer at the given point of time.
Also, Microsoft can take it as major opportunity to gain business competitive advantage
to overcome apple Mac book to get the higher and optimised business strength and avoid the
weaknesses to generate profitability and utilisation of the resource at the higher and optimised
stage.
Microsoft’s which is the leading tech industry is well-deserved in their manpower
regulation. Their working culture comprises of effective leadership, motivation or kind of formal
behaviour or culture. CEO and founder Bill gates has revealed that Microsoft’s is running,
because of its leadership and management style, which comprises of democratic leadership style.
Through this leadership style, they believes in empowering each and every employee to get
efforts, idea, opinion and views in an effective manner (Boyd and et. al., 2012). In this
democratic leadership style, clear and cut priority is use to each and every individual to share
their own set of idea and opinion, so that team members would perform their task or part of work
in an effective and related manner to accomplish desired goals and targets. The major reason
behind leadership discussion is that, without an efforts of other people, it won't be possible to
accomplish strategic goals and targets of Microsoft. Microsoft’s have higher belief into culture
empowerment to enhance an employee confidence at the higher and optimised stage. Because of
this, Microsoft has taken several other steps such as training and development of an employee's,
enhancing their point of view and enhancing practical learning and development in order to
enhance team working more response toward accomplishment of Microsoft's strategic objectives
and targets. This leading tech giant has brought role of business ethics and corporate governance
to bring effectiveness into vision, mission & strategic objectives of the Microsoft's corporation.
Firm is currently working on establishing set of standards which are useful to manage
employee's in an tech firm to generate higher profits and business effectiveness for the longer
duration.
During the stage of strategic planning, it is necessary and important to have human being
equal and collaborative efforts, if in case company wants to upgrade their business or use any

kind of emerging IT addition such as use of innovation, creativity in case of research and
development for the products or services such as software and hardware for making the products
more vital and focused on matter of transformation of the IT products and services.
Brief summary: It has to be brief that strategic planning process is necessary to analyse
and understand for tech firm Microsoft's in order to realise the market potential and demand and
supply of an actual products or services to accomplish desired strategic goals and objectives of
the Microsoft's.
(4) Business Ethics and Corporate Governance in Microsoft:
Business Ethics refers to analysis of business policies and their practices in respect to
Corporate Governance, Social Responsibility, Discrimination, or Bribery. Business Ethics are
not necessary to be followed like law, but following them makes the organisation's roots stronger
(Molina-Azorin, 2012). And, Corporate Governance is stated as rules and regulations through
which a firm's actions are regulated for the interest of stakeholders. Business Ethics and
Corporate Governance are not necessary for an organisation to follow but with business ethics,
corporate governance can be more beneficial for the organisation.
Microsoft is a technology company set up in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
Microsoft is known for its ethical code of conduct and its Corporate Governance. Microsoft
believes that the Business Ethics are not only followed by employees but by all the people
related to the organisation. These people include Employees, Stakeholders, Customers and
Partners. And the ethics followed by them are quality management, ethical compliance, equal
opportunity, fair information practices and many more. Similarly, Microsoft believes that the
Corporate Governance should have an effective channel of communication. The communication
flows here includes transparency, engagement of shareholders in the business, healthy
relationship with investors and independent Board of Chairman.
Microsoft also suggests that the ethical business practices are the key step of effective
Corporate Governance. With the right Corporate Governance an organisation can protect the
rights of shareholders and as well as the stakeholders. These practices are the leading factors
responsible for the success of Microsoft. It was noticed that, Microsoft has effective level of
business ethics and corporate governance to gain the business suitability and also generate good
behavioural results and outcomes of the business entity. In past, Microsoft has suffered with an
issue of ineffective working regulation and business ethics such as lack of co-operative roles and

means of ethics along with increase in authenticating working and undecided working regulation.
It was understood that strategic planning is necessary in context of how ethics & working
regulation can be brought in Microsoft in order to enables working regulation in an effective and
regulative manner. Also, it has become necessary to initiative to enhance effective working in an
effective working in an organisation. Microsoft needs to put its major emphasises on increasing
business ethics and effective bring code of conduct in order to led Microsoft to accomplish their
defined goals and targets to accomplish it in given period of time. It is necessary to attain
business ethics in terms of business performance and also led development of people and
employee's of Microsoft to work in an effective manner.