Strategy Implementation

Analysis Directions: Write your answers below each question. Please do not delete the questions.

1. What strategy were you implementing? What type of product (speed, accuracy, service life, and price) did you design in Round 1? Explain how your settings for speed, accuracy, service life, and price in Round 1 were driven by the chosen strategy.
2. How did you create a sales forecast in each round? Explain. For Round 1 only, how did you use the sales forecast for capacity planning?
3. What was the level of automation in your plant? Why? Discuss the role of contribution margins, if any, in your decisions regarding automation.
4. Are you running a second shift? Why or why not? Did you have inventory issues in any round? Explain.
5. Which country (or countries) and customer segment (or segments) were you targeting with your product and why? Describe any two marketing decisions that you implemented over the four rounds to enable your desired targeting. If you introduced a region kit, describe how that affected your sales.
6. Remembering what you have learned in MBA 620 and by referencing the financial accounting ratios (link to Learning topic from MBA 620), calculate the net profit margin ratio at the end of Round 4. What does this ratio tell you about the profit being generated?
7. Examining the balance sheet at the end of each round calculate the current ratio for each. Has the current ratio increased or decrease from round to round? Explain the major cause of the changes from round to round. Also, calculate the working capital for each round. Has your company had sufficient working capital in each round? If not, why not?”
8. Adequate cash flow is required for a company to support operations, invest in the future, pay down long-term debt and reward shareholders with dividends. Analyzing the Statement of Cash Flow for each round identify the change in cash flow from the previous round and identify the major cause of this change.
9. At the end of Round 4, how aware are consumers of your product in each country? How accessible is your product to the consumers in each country? How did your awareness and accessibility change from Round 3 to Round 4, and did that have any impact on your sales?
10. Did your team’s decisions in Rounds 1-4 always align with the chosen strategy? If you found yourself deviating from your strategy, explain why. In hindsight, what decisions would you have made differently? Explain.

Start Here
Scenario
Everyone in the office has been buzzing about your team’s leadership and efforts on the MediCorp project. As a result, the CEO, Jillian Best, brings the team together to discuss the next steps. The decisions you made through Capsim were constructive in understanding MediCorp’s approach to local markets, and Jillian would now like you to examine the client’s potential for business success on a global scale. “MediCorp has been very impressed with our work thus far,” she says. “Let’s keep up that momentum. China and Germany have emerged as excellent options for growing MediCorp’s business internationally. Your teamwork, projections, and analysis will be very useful as we help this client navigate these markets.”
Jillian requests that you continue working on the same team and using Capsim to evaluate MediCorp’s potential international markets. The meeting concludes, and you return to your office feeling rejuvenated with your sights set on global success.

Introduction
In Project 4, you will continue to work on the same team as in Project 3. Again, you will turn in your own analysis at the end of the project for an individual grade. Starting from scratch and choosing a new strategy—a global strategy—you will use the Capsim software to simulate a real-world environment in which you not only make strategic business decisions for MediCorp but see the results year after year. Your team’s simulation results for MediCorp are not graded or assessed. Rather, your project grade will be based on the quality of your individual analysis of the simulation results and your ability to interpret the results as a consequence of the team’s decisions.

As you prepare to choose a new strategy—a global strategy—to direct your client’s business decisions, it will be useful to think critically about international strategies, modes of entry, and globalizing the management model.
Before you and your teammates settle on a strategy, Jillian Best has asked you to meet and discuss the various factors that influence an entry strategy.
Based on your reading, research, and analysis, respond to the two discussion questions below:
Discussion Topic 1: What are the factors that influence an organization’s choice of entry mode in a country? Discuss how the chosen mode fits with an organization’s goals and objectives.
Discussion Topic 2: What are the country factors that influence an organization’s decision to enter that country? What is the impact of the culture and geography on the organization’s value-chain activities being relocated to the country?