[First Name Last Name]
The given case expounds over the situation when Roger Cahill – Vice President of BoldFlash Mobile Division came across the situation where BoldFlash is struggling to adjust to a progressing and challenging marketplace. In the case study, four working groups within a division refused to work collaboratively and as a result, the division has failed to make the most of some exceedingly significant new product opportunities. In order to address these issues, Roger Cahill undertake a number of personnel and organizational changes since he takes his designation in control. While facing eroding profit margins and low employee morale, Cahill has to work towards reforming the new product development process in order to save the Mobile Division.
Major issues in the given case are the deteriorating profit margins and declining market share, as well as, growth rate of the business, which is due to a number of economic and organizational issues. As Roger Cahill became the Vice President of the company’s mobile division, he was encountered with the key issue of strategically managing BoldFlash Mobile Division while producing increased productivity, profitability, and market growth. Apart from this major issue, BoldFlash was also encountering cross-functional, interdepartmental and sub-divisional conflicts, which were detrimentally contributing towards organization’s goal attainment of timely market delivery, quality issues, market performance, and abating profitability (Beer et.al 124).
Analysis & Evaluation
It has been analyzed that there lies a communication and productivity gaps among the functional departments and sub-divisions, and they were only concerned with their departmental goals at the expense of other departments. BoldFlash product development units were also unable to get the new product quickly to the market and couldn’t commercialize their developed technology as their product development was not adequately aligned with customer needs. Additionally, the sales department made a proposal at any price and sold products only to meet their targeted revenues without considering the production capacity and without communication it to other functional departments.
They were also facing the issues of price competition as the growth was low and the price was high and as a result, high operational cost led business to a terrible situation. Lastly, they developed personalized chips for mobile market while totally missing the critical market in storage devices that could be used for tablets. This was taken as an advantage by its competitors as a critical growth factor (David et.al, n.d.). It was also analyzed that the BoldFlash’s corporate strategy is to increase its market share and growth rate by precisely focusing on their customers’ needs, product development, cost reduction, and price control. Apparently, their business strategy is to follow intensive strategy for product development and market development while considering the missed opportunity of the tablet. However, their functional level strategies are misaligned with the corporate and business level strategies. In a nutshell, the organizational culture lacks cohesiveness and there lies a serious communication gap and moral issues with employees. The sales department is making its individual proposal. Similarly, product development department also failed to produce products that are in need. Moreover, marketing department was also unable to commercialize products adequately.
Recommendation
BoldFlash should undertake outsourcing and diversification strategy. First of all, BoldFlash should outsource its manufacturing of memory chips to the countries that offer low production costs so that they can precisely focus on their competitive advantage i.e. research & development (Barney 42). By doing so, they would be able to avail the low labor costs and specialized skills of the labors. Additionally, by diversifying their production to other types of storage devices, they can diversify their profitability risks (Rothaermel n.d.).
Works Cited
Barney, Jay B., and William Hesterly. Strategic management and competitive advantage concepts and cases. Pearson, 2015. Web. July 13, 2016
Beer, Michael, and Rachel Shelton. "BoldFlash: Cross-Functional Challenges in the Mobile Division." Harvard Business School Brief Case 124-438, 2012. Web. July 13, 2016
David, Fred, and Forest R. David. "Strategic Management: A Competitive Advantage Approach, Concepts and Cases.". 2016. Web. July 13, 2016
Rothaermel, Frank T. Strategic management. McGraw-Hill, 2015. Web. July 13, 2016
