Page 93 - DMGT521_PROJECT_MANAGEMENT

Project Management

Notes to ‘audit’ the facts, drawing conclusions from a detailed analysis of the organisation; the critical
success factor approach; and the core competency approach. For each method, the unit deals both
with the concept and ways of operationalising it in a real situation.
So far we have examined the broader aspects of strategic management and has looked at the
process of planning in relation to a changing environment. It is now time to concentrate on a
very specific step in the process the assessment of corporate strengths and weaknesses. Planning
literature refers to this important stage under various headings: the corporate appraisal, the
position audit, and assessing the present position. The particular terminology used is not
important: the action itself is vital.

The corporate appraisal should be one of the first steps in the process of preparing strategic
plans, and should provide both the platform from which the corporate objectives are established
and the baseline of the strategic plan.
One important reason for formulating marketing strategy is to prepare the company to interact
with the changing environment in which it operates. Implicit here is the significance of predicting
the shape the environment is likely to take in the future. Then, with a perspective of the company’s
present position, the task ahead can be determined. Study of the environment is reserved for a
later article. This is devoted to corporate appraisal. An analogy to corporate appraisal is provided
by a career counselor’s job. Just as it is relatively easy to make a list of the jobs available to a
young person, it is simple to produce a superficial list of investment opportunities open to a
company. With the career counselor, the real skill comes in taking stock of each applicant;
examining the applicant’s qualifications, personality, and temperament; defining the areas in
which some sort of further development or training may be required; and matching these
characteristics and the applicant’s aspirations against various options. Well-established
techniques can be used to find out most of the necessary information about an individual.
Digging deep into the psyche of a company is more complex but no less important. Failure by
the company in the area of appraisal can be as stunting to future development in the corporate
sense as the misplacement of a young graduate in the personal sense.

Did u know? In the process of preparing strategic plans, corporate appraisal should be one
of the first steps.

Corporate appraisal refers to an examination of the entire organization from different angles. It
is a measurement of the readiness of the internal culture of the corporation to interact with the
external environment. Marketing strategists are concerned with those aspects of the corporation
that have a direct bearing on corporate-wide strategy because that must be referred in defining
the business unit mission, the level at which marketing strategy is formulated.
Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
1. The ability to generate new ideas is an ………………… work skill today.
2. ………………… refers to an examination of the entire organization from different angles.
3. One important reason for formulating ………………… is to prepare the company to interact
with the changing environment in which it operates.
4. Strategic ………………… must not only recognize the present state of the environment
and their industry but also be able to predict its future positions.
5. ………………… deep into the psyche of a company is more complex but no less important.

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