Business Exit Strategies

Description

This analysis consists of a broad and systematic review of the performance of your business and to a lesser extent that of your three major rivals. To ensure comprehensiveness and systematisation in the review process, two instruments are developed, comprising a strategy delineator and a business diagnostic instrument. These instruments allow various key factors relating to the external and internal environment of the business to be qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated and rated. Metrics created during the evaluation and rating process are automatically converted into various scorecards by the instruments to inform the formulation of a forward strategy for your business.

More specifically, the Strategy Delineator is an instrument devised specifically for this work to assist in the systematic development of objectives, strategies, actions, KPIs and measures from your stated priorities; and to identify high-value; high-complexity corporate, business, functional and operating strategies for evaluation in the Business Diagnostic Instrument.

The business diagnostic instrument allows a systematic analysis of your macro and micro environment. At its highest level, it rates 8 macro (external) and 7 micro (internal) measures of your environment. To drill down further in the environment, these measures are expanded into 60 macro and 41 micro business drivers respectively, which are then decomposed in 392 macro and 227 micro attributes. Each attribute is then subjected to either a quantitative or a qualitative rating scale leading to the computation of various scorecards and indices.

The instrument requires the population of measures, drivers, and attributes for evaluation according to various rating scales. A database of rates and metrics is electronically created and organised for contextual analysis by way of scorecards, indices, and graphs. These scorecards reflect both lagging and leading indicators, with the former signalling whether your strategic objectives across divergent perspectives have been met and the latter revealing any of its competitive advantages …the strategic outcomes. Finally, the business drivers with the greatest positive influence on core strategic objectives as measured by the lagging indicators are identified. The diagnostic instrument is used to support the strategy delineator in crafting competitive and profit driven strategies. This ensures that you can maximise your efforts at gaining sustained competitive advantage by crafting and executing your strategy in a carefully designed system of activities, not a collection of parts; and to cause its activities to fit and reinforce one another.

Macro-Environment Testing

In the diagnostic instrument, measures are chosen for analysis based on how strategically relevant they are to the decisions that you must make about direction, objectives, strategy, and business model. Many factors operating in your organisation’s external environment are prescriptive (forces action) and passive (generates information). They can affect the way the business behaves internally and converge at differing functional and strategic levels of your organisation. In the main, the analysis of your macro-environment is intended to flush out business drivers that presently have the most impact and likely to impact its business and those of industry players differently.

Whilst the broader macro-environment comprises demographics, general economic conditions, global forces, the natural environment, political, regulatory; and legal, technological, and social/cultural, the analysis focuses on immediate industry and competitive environment that feeds on and off the broader macro-environmental factors. In so doing, the following eight distinct but related external forces are evaluated in terms of their extended business drivers and dominant attributes (see appendix 1 for a comprehensive list of macro-environment measures, drivers, and attributes).

• Industry appeal conveys the growth opportunities of the industry.
• Competitive forces convey the type and intensity of industry competitiveness.
• Driving forces convey the catalysts for industry change and their consequential impact on members.
• Market positions convey the positioning strength and identity of industry rivals.
• Strategic moves convey the strategies and tactics of rivals in their quest to gain competitive advantage.
• Key success factors convey the business factors that have the greatest impact on competitive success in the marketplace.
• Industry profitability conveys the potential for sustained and high profitability.
• Opportunities and threats convey the industry factors that warrant defensive or offensive action.
• Diagnostic Instrument- testing protocol

Micro-Environment Testing

This analysis focuses on your internal situation. It draws attention to its ability to call upon the right resources and capabilities, at the right time, for the right purpose, to craft and execute strategy to match its external environment. this process must not begin by emulating best practice, but by delving constantly within the organisation to discover and build on unique, hard-to-copy intellectual property assets, knowledge, relationships, and experiences. These emergent, potential, or hidden resources called ‘asymmetries’, given the right environment should evolve into capabilities, that can be leveraged across the appropriate market opportunities.

To assist with the assessment of your competitiveness and ability to develop strategy that fits, tools such as resource and capability analysis, swot analysis, value chain activities, benchmarking and competitive strength assessment are called upon. The importance of fitting strategies to circumstances is fundamental not only to competitive advantage but also to the sustainability of that advantage. It is harder for a rival to match an array of interlocked activities than it is merely to imitate a sales-force approach, match a process technology, or replicate a set of product features. From this we can conclude that competitive advantage grows out of the entire system of activities. The fit among activities substantially reduces cost or increases differentiation. Beyond that, the competitive value of individual activities-or the associated skills, competencies, or resources – cannot be decoupled from the system or the strategy.

To begin the probing process into your internal environment the following Measures are evaluated in terms of their extended business drivers and dominant attributes.

• Effectiveness of strategy conveys the level of success achieved by the organisation in crafting and executing its strategy.
• Resources and capabilities convey an understanding of the critical enablers of success or failure in executing strategy.
• Strengths and weaknesses convey the competencies and deficiencies of the business that affect its ability to successfully compete in the marketplace.
• Value chain activities convey the cost structures of the organisation relative to its key rivals and the flow on effect on its customer value proposition.
• Competitive strength conveys the overall competitive constitution of the organisation and its ability to outperform its rivals in dealing with the industry’s key success factors.
• Opportunities and threats convey the market factors that warrant defensive or offensive action to exploit opportunities and nullify external threats.