MDCM Company’s Corporate Strategy

Summary of MDCM Corporate Strategy

Without a corporate strategy, a firm cannot develop and maintain a successful organizational plan focusing on the company’s values, feasibility, and image. Corporate strategy constitutes a crucial part of any company’s organization (Hiriyappa, 2013). This element of management is particularly significant for organizations engaged in international relations (Rugman & Verbeke, 2018). Therefore, it is necessary to analyze MDCM’s corporate strategy in order to evaluate the strategy’s strengths and weaknesses and develop appropriate solutions for those constituents that need strengthening.

To this point, MDCM’s corporate decisions have been related to a transformation called Horizon 2000. According to this plan, the company initiated a reorganization that led to sharing a single brand across all subsidiaries: MDCM UK, MDCM France, and MDCM Canada. The strategy makes each subsidiary accountable for the clients in its region. In addition, the strategy implies that the functions of marketing and sales are concentrated in the new regional subsidiaries. Each client of MDCM is connected to a sales manager whose duty is to control and coordinate all of the client’s accounts.

A crucial aspect of MDCM’s corporate strategy is its dedication to values, clients, and employees. The company’s motto is “absolute commitment to delivering quality parts and assemblies on time,” which has always been the reason for the highest level of customer satisfaction on the part of the company’s clients. In terms of the company’s employees, MDCM has tried to create the best opportunities for them, even in the hardest times. When MDCM was forced to reduce the number of employees by over 30 percent, management did its best to eliminate the possibility of high turnover. While all of these elements of the company’s corporate strategy have seemed satisfactory, a lack of coordination between MDCM’s corporate strategy and IT initiatives has caused the company to suffer major losses.

Description and List of MDCM Key Business Objectives

The major business goals of MDCM are concerned with generating profits from creating and selling medical devices. The specifications for the company’s products, however, limit the possibility of diversification. MDCM’s goals focus on creating customer satisfaction, increasing profits, eliminating employee turnover, increasing productivity, and gaining efficiency. The key business objectives of MDCM are reflected in the following list:

1. Customer service: increasing customer satisfaction through meeting consumer expectations, eliminating the number of complaints, maintaining the status of a company able to produce highly customized versions of equipment for unique applications, performing surveys to find out clients’ opinions and suggestions;
2. Employee retention: minimizing the possibility of employee turnover by providing each worker with perks and bonuses for dedicated work, implementing training programs, arranging regular face-to-face or group meetings with employees to find out which aspects of work they feel most comfortable about and which ones they would like to have adjusted;
3. Growth: focusing on global market opportunities, opening new subsidiaries and arranging effective work there, increasing productivity through using technology and eliminating distractions;
4. Revenue: increasing income in all divisions gradually, increasing prices for some products while taking into consideration the customers’ possibilities and competitors’ prices;
5. Profitability: coming up with solutions for high internal costs; minimizing the opportunity of fiscal year losses, increasing profits with the help of analyzing manufacturing processes and requirements and arranging more comfortable conditions for international cooperation, negotiating with suppliers to reduce expenses on raw materials; and
6. Efficiency: increasing shipping time by way of signing contracts with new manufacturers, uniting the system of manufacturing and delivery services, enhancing production time.

When setting goals, it is crucial to include the stakeholders in the process of decision-making. MCDM’s previous problems have been closely associated with the fact that no coherence existed between goals and various levels of company management. It is necessary to change the approach to setting objectives so that implementing the company’s goals will be more successful. Finally, it is important to support goals with specific action plans.

Definition of MDCM’s IT Strategy

IT strategy is a crucial element for developing, supporting, and improving a company’s business strategy (Dubey, 2016). The role of IT strategy is significant since it helps to arrange the requisite efficiency and flexibility necessary for meeting set goals and objectives. Thus, an IT strategy not only strengthens the business strategy but also improves it and can even create new strategic opportunities (Peppard & Ward, 2016). In MDCM, the company’s IT strategy has long been underdeveloped. Thus, it is of utmost importance to define the elements of the company’s IT strategy and begin implementing it as soon as possible in order to avoid further losses and regain the company’s success.

MCDM’s IT strategy may be defined as a plan of actions aimed at detailing the exhaustive technology-enabled management processes employed by the company to regulate its operations. The main goal of IT strategy at this phase of the organization’s life is to align the corporate strategy and IT initiatives. It is necessary to introduce information technology changes to all levels of management in order to make the processes of manufacturing and delivering products more cost-efficient. With the help of a sound IT strategy, managers at all levels will receive important updates on different issues as quickly as possible, leading to savings in time and subsequent reduction in costs. As a result, a successfully developed and implemented IT strategy will help to save jobs and generate better profits.

High-Level Objectives with Measurable Guidelines

The following high-level objectives can be set to reach the best outcomes with the help of IT strategy:

1. Unifying custom and legacy systems used for logistics and transportation, duty and custom inspections, sales forecast, invoicing, and pricing;
2. Developing a standard infrastructure for e-mailing instead of using multiple platforms;
3. Creating a merged system for materials requirement planning;
4. Finding new opportunities for networking;
5. Unifying databases and operating systems;
6. Creating better conditions for human resource management and benefits administration;
7. Generating a single system for managing financials such as reporting and accounting;
8. Arranging one global IT infrastructure;
9. Matching IT strategy to the overall corporate strategy; and
10. Arranging regular educational opportunities for employees as well as performing a regular assessment of their IT knowledge and skills.

Success in reaching the objectives will be evaluated with the help of the following measurable guidelines:

• Steady engagement: The process of planning strategies should constantly be reviewed by the company’s board since it is not possible to achieve considerable changes without careful examination and adjustment.
• Regular control: To increase the strategy’s efficiency, it is necessary to evaluate the tendencies of the market and bolster the organization’s internal potential.
• Consolidating formulation and enforcement: The process of setting the company’s goals and accomplishing them should be coherent and consistent.
• Strategic digital development: To recognize the full potential of the company, it is crucial to move from predicting technology tendencies to taking advantage of digital opportunities at various levels of the enterprise.

References

Dubey, S. S. (2016). IT strategy and management (3rd ed.). Delhi, India: PHI Learning Private Limited.

Hiriyappa, B. (2013). Corporate strategy: Managing the business. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse.

Peppard, J., & Ward, J. (2016). The strategic management of information systems: Building a digital strategy (4th ed.). Hoboken, HJ: Wiley.

Rugman, A., & Verbeke, A. (2018). Global corporate strategy and trade policy. New York, NY: Routledge.