Business Planing

CASE STUDY: ALIBABA ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS

OVERVIEW

Strategic planning is an important exercise to formulate appropriate, meaningful recommendations for action within an organization. In order to develop relevant execution strategies, students must have a thorough understanding of how to identify internal and external factors, the ability to utilize analytical tools (e.g. SWOT, Porters 5 factor analysis) to organize findings into an actionable template, and how to translate these tools into a foundation for formulating recommendations. It is also important to understand how to measure the results of implemented strategies to verify they are working as planned, or if corrections/adjustments are required.
The ability to formulate effective, sound strategies is a critical skill for real-world business operations- whether to launch a new business or generate/ maintain growth and/or competitive advantage in an existing one. This is the first of three assignments that provide the student hands-on practice in completing the strategic planning sequence.
INSTRUCTIONS

Each student should review the case information as provided in the course text.

• Internal & External Analysis: Complete a SWOT analysis for the company. Your SWOT should contain at least 3 points under each header (e.g. 3 strengths, 3 weaknesses, 3 threats, 3 opportunities) and include supporting citations to substantiate your points. Analysis should be conducted to formulate recommendation(s) for the questions posed; included in that analysis should be a SWOT and competitive advantage analysis. Based on the results of those exercises, develop recommendations that address the questions posed, utilizing your analysis to substantiate recommendations chosen.
• Competitive advantage: Articulate what the company’s current competitive advantages are based on your case study reading and external research.
• Evaluation and Recommendations: Strategies, policies, and/or solutions for implementation that will address the questions posed: “What realistic solutions can Alibaba implement to keep up its growth trajectory? Which solutions would best fit with the current actions of the company?” A TOWS is recommended here as a way to formulate strategy, but a formal TOWS is not required.
• Incorporate Biblical integration discussion into your paper; Biblical discussion should tie to the themes presented in the paper and include at least 2 scripture references.
The length of the paper should be 3 pages minimum; content can exceed 3 pages at discretion of the student. Title page and references page do not count towards the 3-page minimum. APA format and at least 2 scholarly references should be used, with ample citations throughout your paper to support your work.
Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.