Business Finance Homework Help

Hi Prof Sturtevant

• Share the game-winning move you selected for your company.

Most companies take advantage of several competitive moves to shake up or otherwise get ahead in an ever-changing business and technology environment. These competitive moves are chosen within executive suites, but they are implemented by frontline employees in the background. It became a reality that organizational success thus depends just as much on workers such as salespeople, etc., excelling in their roles as it does on executives’ ability to master strategy. Our Disruptive innovation game-winning move was no exception. It has taken the research development and innovation industry by storm. The inception of New Generation Sequencing (NGS) has replaced the old, laborious, time-consuming and less effective sequencing platform. It was not a sheer replacement, but an efficient technology advancement that has taken the medical research and innovation to the next level.

• Identify the most significant challenges you will face in successfully implementing your proposed move. These could be cultural, financial, operational, or any other factors that could undermine your new strategy.

Innovation is a nightmare to most organizations. It is essentially a turnaround strategy. It dictates the organization to employ highly capable people armed with skill and energy. If the organization does not have enough expertise to carry out the process, then it has no alternative except to insource or hire skilled personnel for process implementation. That is where cultural differences emanated. Our cultural basement was not nicely accepting new employees so easily as they were fearing for their job losses. It takes around four to five months for new employees to acclimatize completely in that arena. Furthermore, the project needed a resourced feasible implementation that needed additional funding to complete. This was due to purchasing the infrastructure that needed dozens of dollars to install. The project operability was feasible and major success rates were registered.

• Identify specific steps you will take to successfully overcome these challenges. Include references to this week’s materials to support your response.

There are various reasons stopping companies or organization from creating an environment that encourages innovation. These attitudes need strong leadership with constructive mind-sets to re-invent the positive attitude. Some of the attributes that need to be rectified are: –

• The wrong culture

Corporate culture can point to anything that makes your company feel like more than just a place where you work 40 or more hours a week. So, corporate leadership need to communicate, intervene and overturn the culture to inclusive, constructive and collective positivity.

• Mobilizing funding and resources allocations

Innovation doesn’t just happen because people want it. The company needs to apply funding and resources. The activities identified as important to your strategy must be translated into budget items, whether for a specific project or as part of the annual budget of a division or department. And because resources are limited, they must be allocated among various activities.

• Communication

To carry out the innovation strategy managers throughout the organization must of translate the important activities into specific actions that they and their teams will execute. Therefore, it become crucial that all employees have a clear understanding of what you are collectively trying to achieve.

• Encourage high adoption rate

When employees come up with new ideas, managers should quickly figure out how to enact them, but find out quickly include employees and integrate the changes into their day-to-day processes, so that they feel as part of planning.

• How will you “sell” the plan to generate buy-in?
• Through communicating a plan, will obviously generate enthusiasm and support throughout the organization. I will have plenty of people eager to move forward. But one must be borne in mind that, it is not realistic to think that everything will be done in the quickly. The top priorities can be set in for strategic implementation. Those are: –
• Help stakeholders see the bigger picture
• Eliminate power dynamics. I
• Tap into stakeholder values
• Create conditions for learning.

Regards

Peter

References

1. 1. JWI 540, Strategy, Week 9, Lecture Notes
   2. Sherman, L, Chapter 12: Hitting the Bull’s Eye
   3. Mankins, 2017, 5 Ways the Best Companies Close the Strategy-Execution Gap, HBR
   4. Chima & Gutman, 2020. What It Takes to Lead Through an Era of Exponential Change, HBR
   5. https://hbr.org/2000/03/meeting-the-challenge-of-disruptive-change
   6. https://deansforimpact.org/5-strategies-to-increas…

Share the game-winning move you selected for your company.

My top-ranked move to create a competitive advantage is a combination of mergers & acquisition and vertical integration (JWI 540, 1). I would acquire the majority stake in a critical oilfield tool component manufacturer. We need to acquire part of Harald Phil Special Alloys and Titanium company, a global supplier of oil and gas industry tool and equipment components (Harald, 2). The family-owned company is over 100 years old, with Europe’s most extensive stock of special alloys and titanium (2).

Tool scarcity is one of the common reasons we are constrained to accept more work from our customers. There are one or two manufacturers worldwide who make some of the critical components for our tools. Therefore, acquiring a majority stake in these companies, subject to antitrust scrutiny and approval, will give the company better control over the supply chain process, improve tool availability, increase revenue growth and market share. It will ensure those tool components we require to assemble and deploy tools and equipment are readily available when needed. The elimination of scarcity means we can provide services to all our customers who require it without turning away any business. We will also be at liberty to pursue new business with the confidence that the company has the resources to execute (Adegboyega, 3). Research shows that 79 percent of companies with high-performing supply chains achieve more than average revenue growth for their industries (Gigante, 4). Therefore, supply chain optimization through vertical integration is a vital tool to achieving an increase in financial gain. Companies that optimize their supply chain have about 15 percent lower supply chain-related costs than organizations that do not do this (4).

Identify the most significant challenges you will face in successfully implementing your proposed move. These could be cultural, financial, operational, or any other factors that could undermine your new strategy.

The most significant risk I see to my top-ranked move is antitrust regulations. Harald Pihl presumably provides supplies products to some of Baker Hughes’s significant competitors. As a result, there may be some concern about whether this move by Baker Hughes may sabotage competitors who currently patronize this manufacturer for some of their tool components. Therefore, getting the required government approvals proves the most significant risk to this move.

Identify specific steps you will take to successfully overcome these challenges. Include references to this week’s materials to support your response.

My risk mitigation plan involves doing the required due diligence on which parts of the acquiree’s current operations relate with Baker Hughes competitors. We need to find out what percentage of competitor’s products they source from Harald Pihl and develop a strategy to ensure equity in dealing with competitors’ post-acquisition while ensuring that Baker Hughes retains the competitive advantage. We must communicate this strategy effectively to the government and our competitors to secure their buy-in and get all the required approvals for the acquisition (JWI 540, 5). We need to do our due diligence again to defend our position as an unbiased acquired to get the necessary regulatory approvals. Our competitors will be thrown off balance by this move and will be threatened by this acquisition. This M&A is not a move they would expect Baker Hughes to make, typically being the R&D-focused company that we are. It would take a while for our competitors to rally their troops for a comeback. They would fight back, most likely through the regulatory and antitrust bodies. Attempting to brand the acquisition as illegitimate is a move I predict the competition would make, as they have taken similar actions for past mergers involving Baker Hughes.

How will you “sell” the plan to generate buy-in?

Turning down work from customers during this period when the oil and gas industry is battling to survive the effects of the pandemic is not a good look revenue or margin-wise for any organization. Baker Hughes needs to position properly from a tool capability standpoint, ready to support all customer operations with the resources to snatch work from the competition and win in the marketplace. Therefore, we must have a significant amount of control over our tool component manufacturing process to achieve this aim. While I understand the importance of the organization’s considerable investment in R&D, I believe that we can better channel these resources to business ventures that would impact our top and bottom line faster in these challenging times. Since we would be buying a ready-made company, investments outside of the actual purchase of assets and liabilities will be minimal. I recognize the fact that there may be regulatory issues with this proposed acquisition. I also understand that we may be in for a vicious legal battle with competition regarding the deal’s validity. However, with proper due diligence, these are not insurmountable hurdles once we continue to focus on what we stand to achieve, which is a significant competitive advantage and fast revenue growth.

References

1. JWI 540 Lecture Notes. Week 6
2. Alloys for the Oil and Gas industry | HARALD PIHL | Harald Pihl
3. JWI 540 Assignment 2. How to Win: Strategic Options Assessment and Recommendation. Adegboyega Nkechinyere Barbara
4. 30+ Impressive Supply Chain Statistics for 2019. Michael Gigante. 2019. 30+ Impressive Supply Chain Statistics for 2019 (g2.com)
5. JWI 540 Lecture Notes. Week 9