Question

Based on Metabical Forecasting Demand Harvard Case:

1) An Introduction describing the market the firm is competing in.
2) Identifying the Challenge(s) facing the firm
3) Strategic Alternative(s) available to the firm
4) Decision: Recommended Action(s)
5) Lessons learned from the case

Answer 1

a)  Signs that a real change has been taking place in business’s planning focus have been visible for some time in the performance of some large, complex multinational corporations—General Electric, Northern Telecom, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Siemens A.G., to name four.

Instead of behaving like large unwieldy bureaucracies, they have been nimbly leap-frogging smaller competitors with technical or market innovations, in true entrepreneurial style. They have been executing what appear to be well thought-out business strategies coherently, consistently, and often with surprising speed. Repeatedly, they have been winning market shares away from more traditionally managed competitors.

b) The evidence keeps growing that pay for performance is ineffective. It also may induce executives to take company-killing risks. There are other ways to motivate employees that yield better results at lower cost.

mainly to provisions linked to performance, CEO compensation has skyrocketed in recent decades, while its correlation with actual corporate performance has remained as weak as ever.

Below the top level, mismatches between pay and performance aren’t so acute. But all variable-pay-for-performance schemes still suffer from four inescapable flaws

c)Its Success is tied to the way it manages and transfers knowledge. Its growth strategy is an example of granulation--growing select business units. It started with a basic enterprise-resource-planning system, then moved to multiple products for e-commerce and Internet activities. Using one product as a platform, it began allowing customers to fine-tune virtually any resource-planning system. The authors emphasize the importance of combining strategies for growth with explicit strategies for learning. Companies must decide what kind of growth strategy they want to pursue, given their capabilities and market opportunities. They must then make the strategy work by changing their structure and processes in a way that lets them acquire or create specific knowledge about new technologies, customers, and industries.

d) In virtually every decision they make, executives today consider some kind of forecast. Sound predictions of demands and trends are no longer luxury items, but a necessity, if managers are to cope with seasonality, sudden changes in demand levels, price-cutting maneuvers of the competition, strikes, and large swings of the economy. Forecasting can help them.