Sample MBA Capstone Strategy Assessment

MBA600 Capstone Strategy Assessment Sample

Question

Assessment Instructions

Again, assuming the role of an organisational consultant, you are to write a report that clearly articulates the organisation’s strategy and business model and outlines a detailed approach to Competition Strategy (Week 3), how the chosen organisation’s performance is/can be measured against their strategies (Week 4). You will also be required to prepare a Balanced Scorecard for their chosen organisation (Week 7). Attention should be paid to the use of secondary research and insights (Week 8).

Areas covered should include:

• An executive summary.
• An introduction that summarises the purpose of the report.
• A summary of the organisation’s strategy.
• A specific outline of the organisation’s approach to competition strategy, performance measurement and the balanced scorecard.
• A summary of recommendations that identify areas of focus and opportunity to enhance the organisation’s performance in the future.
• A conclusion.
• Reference list.

You are encouraged to use a wide variety of information sources that include, where possible, primary research such as interviews with staff or executive members within their chosen organisation as well as the use of an appropriate mix of strategic and business analysis tools and references. These references should be presented as in-text citations and a reference list at the end of your business report.

Answer

Executive Summary:

Changing business scenario has been forcing the brands to analyse their internal and external business performance. These analyses aid the firm to have better performance to achieve sustainability. Through the analysis, organisational strategy has been analysed considering the business model canvas and their organisational approach towards competition strategy, performance measurement and balance scorecard for the firm has been made. Underpinning the finding of the analysis, recommendations are also provided to enable the brand enhance its performance. For the purpose of the analysis, here case of the Transurban group has been considered. As per the above analysis, it can be seen that the brand as the method of business strategy focus on the key partners, society and innovation. Through the development of tools and apps dedicated to provide road safety information and toll information, the brand aids their consumer to have a safe travel. As the key partners of the business as per the business model, consumers, investors, community and government has been found and these are the main value creators as well for the brand too. Underpinning the competition scenario, it can be seen that the brand has limited competition and as per the porter five force model, the brand has high bargaining power. To enhance the business performance of the brand following recommendations has been made:

• Enhancing communication with consumers
• Enhancing road safety
• Having board approved CEO
• Increasing financial reserves

Introduction:

During 21st century there has been lot of change in the business scenario ranging from change in business process to consumer behaviour. In order to keep up pace with the fast-changing business world, firms are now not only focusing on the innovation and sustainability factors, rather considering the internal retrospective analysis as well. These analyses aiding the firms to determine their organisational strategy backed by company values (Delerv & Roumpi 2017, p4). Moreover, through these analyses, firms are been able to check their organisational approach to competition strategy, performance measurement to internal controls, based on which future recommendations is also made for performance improvement. For the present study, here analysis has been made considering one of the largest toll road operators, known as Transurban Group. Through the analysis, organisational strategy has been analysed considering the business model canvas and their organisational approach towards competition strategy, performance measurement and balance scorecard for the firm has been made. Underpinning the finding of the analysis, recommendations are also provided to enable the brand enhance its performance.

Organisational strategy:

Strategic approach of organisation:

Transurban group is an Australia based toll road operation who has their existence in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney in Australia. Apart from these location, Transurban group operates in Washington of US and Montreal of Canada. In total it operates with 17 motorways in Australia, four in North America and one in Canada (Transurban.com 2021). The brand focused on the app and tool development to make travel easier. Besides, with special focus on climate change, Transurban is aimed to produce new solution as well as management road operation. With intuitive focus on the partnership and grant providing for the social cause and engaging with the local communities, Transurban group operate in a socialist approach(Transurban.com 2021). The brand creates its values through providing safe and accessible transportation system the to the people, engaging with the local communities through employment generation, providing education and training to the people for making them skilled employee. As the strategy for growth, the brand focus on enabling the consumer to have easy toll payment option, providing focused choice based on preference of paid and non-paid motorway. Thus, the brand presently considers as lenient socialist approach, where it not only focuses on making consumer lives better, rather focus on environment and community that aids the brand to create their success path smooth(Transurban.com 2021).

Figure 1: Business strategy of Transurban group
Source: (Transurban.com 2021)

Business model of organisation:

Organisational approach:

Competition strategy:

To determine the competition strategy of the Transurban group, porter five force model analysis along with SWOT has been done here. It demonstrates the market rivalry situation underpinning the bargaining powers of the supplier and consumer and threats from substitute and new entrant. On the other hand, SWOT demonstrates the specific business internal strengths and weaknesses (Block et al. 2015, p38).

Porter five force analysis of organisation: 

SWOT Analysis of organisation:

Performance measurement:

Transurban group considers financial and sustainability approach to analyse the performance of the firm. When it comes to the financial performance measurement, the firm depends on the asset performance analysis, long term value creation, average daily traffic value, proportional EBITDA and free cash. As per the Transurban.com (2021), proportional results of the business are considered as the best business performance indicator. Through the proportional results, ownership of individual assets, contribution to the group performance by them and core business development scope is determined.

Financial performance measurement – As per the Transurban.com (2021)proportional EBITDA is the best available performance measure tool as it is the collection of the outcomes from every resource induced by Transurban's rate proprietorship just as the commitment from focal Group capacities. Besides, proportional EBITDA reflects the commitment from individual resources for the group's working exhibition and spotlights on components of the outcome that administration can influence to drive enhancements in momentary profit. Apart from this, using the free cash, the firm can determine their cash performance and demonstrates the scope of cash distribution to the security holders (Delery & Roumpi 2017, p4). Hence, it is actually return on investment portfolio for the firm that aids it to check its performance. With the help of the daily traffic value, asset performance analysis the firm determines its cash flow and ability to produce return on asset. Hence, these measures, also help the firm to analyse its performance.

Social performance measurement – When it comes to the social value analysis, then the firm depends on its Social Development Goal (SDGs) achievement analysis. As per the SDGs, of the firm it is aimed to provide good health and wellbeing, gender equality, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry innovation and infrastructure, sustainable cities and responsible consumption of sustainable value creation for the investors(Transurban.com 2021). With the continuous stakeholder engagement and community engagement, the firm has achieved most of their SDGs and is aimed to achieve further in coming years ((Transurban.com 2021). The difference between the expectation and achievement in case of the SDGs, aids the firm to determine its performance.

Balance scorecard:

Balance scorecard approach is a crucial tool for the firms that enable them to understand its objectives, measure the same, determine future target and establish initiatives to achieve the target (Yacobet al. 2016l, p785). For the Transurban group, balance scorecard can be formed as below:

Recommendation:

Underpinning the above analysis, following recommendations can be made for the Transurban group:

Enhancing communication with consumers: Transurban has dedicated channel for the consumer communication. However, it has been alleged that the support team of the Transurban is not very responsive(Transurban.com 2021). This hampers the interest of the consumer and to enhance the business performance, firm should focus on this. To enhance consumer engagement, firms should consider social media, conventional media and digital media channel; as well as considering direct interaction with the riders through dedicated on road team to assess the consumer need and feedback.

Enhancing road safety: Transurban group provides good quality road safety to its consumers, however, in recent time there has been much amount of fall in road maintenance due to plummeted transportation owing to Covid19. This has made negative image for the road construction giant in Australia. The firm need to focus on providing better roads and good safety to its riders so that the users can feel encouraged to use the same.
Having board approved CEO: Present CEO of Scott Charlton has been with the Transurban since 2012 and he has generated significant growth to company. However, in recent time, he has faced fall in the CEO credibility due to poor performance of the firm during Covid19. Board members are not fully backing the CEO and it is hampering the brand image. As per the SWOT analysis, it has been found that brand image is a crucial factor for the Transurban company; thus, having poor reputation on CEO is not good for the brand.

Increasing financial reserves: As per the annual report of the Transurban, it was found that the firm has faced high loss during 2021 due to the Covid19. To, absorb future shock like this and to maintain a healthy dividend policy for the employees, Transurban need to maintain a high financial reserve. This will not only aid to achieve better performance and trust on the brand, additionally it will fetch higher investment to the firm as well.

Conclusion:

As per the above analysis, it can be seen that Transurban is one of the largest toll road service providers in Australia with its presence in US and Canada. The brand as the method of business strategy focus on the key partners, society and innovation. Through the development of tools and apps dedicated to provide road safety information and toll information, the brand aids their consumer to have a safe travel. As the key partners of the business as per the business model, consumers, investors, community and government has been found and these are the main value creators as well for the brand too. Underpinning the competition scenario, it can be seen that the brand has limited competition and as per the porter five force model, the brand has high bargaining power. Although the brand has strengths in its business due to brand value and name, yet it lacks in business due to missing communication with the consumer and falling CEO preference. To overcome the situation of the business post Covid19 and enhance the business performance, recommendations has been made that asks the Transurban to focus on consumer engagement, road safety enhancement and community engagement.

Reference:

Block, JH, Kohn, K, Miller, D & Ullrich, K, 2015, Necessity entrepreneurship and competitive strategy, Small Business Economics, 44(1), pp.37-54.

Delery, JE & Roumpi, D, 2017, Strategic human resource management, human capital and competitive advantage: is the field going in circles? Human Resource Management Journal, 27(1), pp.1-21.

Evans, S., Vladimirova, D, Holgado, M, Van Fossen, K, Yang, M, Silva, EA & Barlow, CY, 2017, Business model innovation for sustainability: Towards a unified perspective for creation of sustainable business models. Business Strategy and the Environment, 26(5), pp.597-608.

Geissdoerfer, M, Vladimirova, D & Evans, S, 2018, Sustainable business model innovation: A review, Journal of cleaner production, 198, pp.401-416.

Hornibrook, S, May, C & Fearne, A 2015, Sustainable development and the consumer: Exploring the role of carbon labelling in retail supply chains, Business Strategy and the Environment, 24(4), pp.266-276.

Jack, L, Florez-Lopez, R & Ramon-Jeronimo, JM, 2018, Accounting, performance measurement and fairness in UK fresh produce supply networks, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 64, pp.17-30.

Stott, RN, Stone, M & Fae, J 2016, Business models in the business-to-business and business-to-consumer worlds–what can each world learn from the other? Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 31(8), pp. 943-954.

Transurban.com 2021. Annual report.https://www.transurban.com/content/dam/investor-centre/04/2020-Corporate-Report.pdf

Transurban.com 2021. Community and sustainability | Transurban Group. https://www.transurban.com/community-and-sustainability

Yacob, S, Sucherly, DS & Mulyana, A 2016, Do really competitive strategy and strategic alliances effect on retail business performance? International Journal of Economics, Management and Commerce, 4(2), pp.783-796.