QUESTION

ANSWER

Introduction

A collective term that sums up all guidelines that businesses or companies implement to attain their goals and objectives and achieve their vision and mission is known as Business strategy. It can also mean a set of coordinated actions that managers take to achieve superior profitability and outperform their competitors. This means that it involves considering the requirements that need to be met; what the business needs to have; and what the business does for the set goals and objectives to be achieved. It helps decision-makers recognize opportunities and trends for future growth and encourages businesses to introspect. Notably, businesses need to reevaluate and adjust their tactics frequently for them to remain competitive (Wang et al., 2021). Therefore, a business strategy safeguards a business from complacency as it is a dynamic resource that can be developed and modified to address technological and social changes in the market. In this regard, this compendium aims to evaluate the strategic position of a Baldrige award-winning company. Predominantly, this paper will determine how its business strategy positions the company to achieve a competitive advantage.

IPM’s Background information

The Baldrige award-winning company chosen is Integrated Project Management Company, Inc (IPM). Richard Panico founded the company after his realization that there was a pressing need that required to be met of the excellence of project execution across industries. IPM was primarily focused on Leadership to change strategy and solutions to sustainable results and skilled project management. IPM offered its services to companies in industrial products, healthcare, consumer products, and life sciences. Some of the services these companies were provided with include business process management, product development, acquisitions and mergers, project portfolio management, and the like.

Competitive advantage established by IPM’s

From the report, the competitive advantage that IPM has is its value-based sustainable culture that aids the organization in functioning within its values and mission. Also, another significant advantage that IPM has is the consistency in their provision of high-quality services and their prioritization on quality delivery which clearly defines their complacency.

How IPM’s strategy will evolve over time

IPM has successfully competed with large consulting firms due to its problem-solving dexterity, subject matter expertise, conduct, and execution competency aligned with its fundamental values. This has enabled the company to distance its services from boutique firms, independent consultants, and staffing firms. Moreover, the focus of IPM is on the creation of a reliable execution plan that best suits critical initiatives that their clients undergo. Their sustainability relies on their capability to provide solutions that iterate their business model and maintain a high market position. The factor of Leadership, discipline, and process gives the company the capability to provide reliable solutions, which makes their services high-quality, enabling the company to maintain the top position of the chain. In addition, the company has managed to be debt-free over time which has aided it to underwrite its antagonistic strategy for gradual growth through the use of the company’s resources to expand the business and increased sales.

Company’s business model

Unlike other mid-size and smaller consulting firms, the employees in IPM are direct and full-time employees. This helps the firm’s reputation and quality standards to be preserved. Most firms augment their staff with independent consultants in this sector, especially when high demand is due to their focus on a flexible staffing model. Therefore, unlike other firms, IPM has contributed to their competitive advantage by maintaining quality services due to their consistency in employees.

What makes the company’s strategy a winner?

The winning of the company’s strategic plan resulted from the culmination of the business planning process that was effective through four key steps. Observation is the first step in which the inputs collected by the firm are used as the guidelines of the initial planning internally (Gleeson, 2018). The identification of the firm’s strategic imperatives is realized in the second step, the orientation step. The third step is the decision stage in which initiatives and created goals are approved through resource gap analysis. Tiered initiatives are the goals as they best suit budget management. And finally, the fourth stage is the action stage. This stage focuses on the deployment of the strategic plan through executed action plans. This business plan has room for continuous improvement from what went wrong and what worked well in the action plans.

IPM’s vision, mission, and values

Regarding the firm’s vision, it envisions itself as a prestigious consulting firm with strategies that change solutions and sustainable results due to its outstanding Leadership. The belief of this firm is driven by its mission through community involvement, Ethical Leadership, and exemplified excellence in its daily firm operations. Given that the firm’s primary purpose is the capability to provide top-notch Leadership, their obsession with integrity, ethical conduct, honesty, and excellence will aid the company to have an impeccable reputation. Organizations like IPM can only maintain a high profile by honoring fundamental values such as integrity, honesty, humility, respect, caring for clients and the company family, spirituality, excellence, and responsibility (IPM, 2018). These values and character elements such as work ethics, enthusiasm, resilience, and diligence bring impeccable results to the firm enabling it to keep winning.

Strategic Objectives at IPM and reasons for coordinating strategic initiatives taken at various levels

The main strategic objectives adopted by IPM are talent engagement, growth, and diversification. The selected objectives are the advantages of the company’s capabilities by addressing the various aspects identified in their SWOT analysis to help address strategic objectives through key competencies. Attracting talents is a high priority, as it is aimed at increasing the company’s performance, and diversification is mainly aimed at customers. The company puts effort into accumulating more clients and organizations from different industries. The ultimate goal of IPM is growth, and the firm utilizes the first two set goals to ensure that aspects of day-to-day operations are integrated with time, and therefore the opportunity to remain as one of the leading companies in the consulting industry. In order to achieve the overall target and performance, there must be close coordination at the strategic initiative adopted at different organizational levels. Creating a strategy in IPM is a collaborative effort involving managers in different positions and at different organizational levels. This helps to strengthen the management process and helps to make timely adjustments in strategy (IPM, 2018).

What IPM did to achieve operating excellence and to execute its strategy proficiently

The company uses proactive strategies because they give the organization the flexibility to make decisions (Brege & Kindström, 2020). IPM has also implemented a strategy-supporting structure that ensures that procedures and policies facilitate effective and efficient strategy execution. The company uses the IPPM (Internal Project Portfolio Management) process throughout the year to improve and track the company’s strategy. These generic techniques aid IPM realize the proactivity job in making high-performing market strategies that signify various success routes. Notably, unified, strong, and flexible cultures positively impact strategy implementation by aligning it with set goals and objectives. Goals alignment can only be achieved by having the primary focus of organizational culture on accomplishing the organization’s primary mission and on productivity.

Role and responsibility of the governance body in overseeing the strategic management process

The governing body of any company has numerous roles and responsibilities, including overseeing the quality, finances, and management as a whole. The set strategic direction establishes ethical values, standards, and compliance, builds community relationships, selects the company’s CEO, and monitors them. Governance body in IPM is responsible in developing the policies and plan which drives the strategic management process and is intended to help the company attain its objective. They also allocate resources that help to apply these policies and plans. This plan and policies lay the structural process of evaluating the performance of the laid strategies. It is done to balance the organization’s scorecard that evaluates the company’s overall performance. IPM’s set of conditions shows the dynamic compliance of all firm conditions with internal and external aspects and are implemented by actions that pass the fit-test. The test l also allow the company to gain a sustainable and significant competitive advantage, which will make the company a winner.

References

Brege, H., & Kindström, D. (2020). Exploring proactive market strategies. Industrial Marketing Management, 84, 75-88.

Gleeson, K. (2018, November 15). IPM Earns 2018 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award | IPM (S. Duensing, Ed.). IPM – Integrated Project Management. https://www.ipmcinc.com/insights/ipm-earns-2018-malcolm-baldrige-award/

IPM. (2018). 2018 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Application INTEGRATED PROJECT MANAGEMENT COMPANY, INC. https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2019/04/05/2018_ipm_baldrige_award_application_summary.pdf

Wang, C., Brabenec, T., Gao, P., & Tang, Z. (2021). The Business Strategy, Competitive Advantage and Financial Strategy: A Perspective from Corporate Maturity Mismatched Investment. JOURNAL OF COMPETITIVENESS, 13(1), 164-181.