Enterprise Management

Submission Stage 2 - Strategic Analysis

As part of the strategic management process, a company must take into consideration a strategic analysis as well. Anthony E. Henry believes a strategic analysis involves an analysis of the general environment and the competitive environment. Strategic analysis also deals with the organisations internal environment. It allows the organization to evaluate how well it is positioned to exploit the opportunities in its external environment.

(Anthony E. Henry 2011)

Strategic Analysis is:

‘... The process of conducting research on the business environment within which an organisation operates and on the organisation itself, in order to formulate strategy.’

BNET Business Dictionary

‘... A theoretically informed understanding of the environment in which an organisation is operating, together with an understanding of the organisation’s interaction with its environment in order to improve organisational efficiency and effectiveness by increasing the organisation’s capacity to deploy and redeploy its resources intelligently.’

Professor Les Worrall, Wolverhampton Business School

In application to Ac-Capri, certain stages are required as part of the strategic management process.

In the context of a strategic analysis there are 5 main strategic analysis tools, which theorists including John L. Thompson believe, are the most important in analyzing a business as part of the strategic management process, these are:

1. SWOT analysis

2. Pestle analysis

3. Value Net

4. Porter’s five forces

5. Hyper competition

Each of these outlines a different context analysing a company. In appendix 2.1 is a chart is drawn up showing, which apply to a company internally and externally.

SWOT analysis

The application of a SWOT (Andrew 1971) refers to strength, weaknesses, opportunities