17. Strategic Planning General Framework .
Individual Components
1. The use of BCG Analysis in formulating the strategies for the management of a portfolio of products or services offered to the market
2. Product life cycle as a guide to the management of a portfolio of products or services offered to the market (Take two examples: CISCO’s FLIP camera and the typical electric jug)
3. SWOT Analysis and the concepts of ‘fit’ and ‘stretch’
4. Porters Competitive Strategies (Illustrate with examples)Organisation of the research report A key ingredient to writing a successful report involves the planning or organising stage. Organising can help you to sort out your ideas and to present your report in the order that communicates best to your readers. Organisation is the procedure of constructing an outline that acts as a plan for your writing task. An outline forces you to think before you write. Your essay is to be structured and written as a business report. It, therefore, must begin with a Management (or Executive) Summary within which you state in stark form (i.e. unsupported by argument) what you are asserting in this report and you must do that in less than two pages. As already stated above, you begin the main body of the report with some general background on the broad research topic. This introduction should end with a brief paragraph outlining the plan of the rest of the essay. What follows is the specific issues of each individual component which were considered. As for any good business report these components should be structured into sections and sub-sections and the heading for these should be in the Table of Contents. In these individual components the in-depth discussion of the relevant issues is elaborated based on the existing literature and/or data. You must provide in-text references to your sources. The last section of the report contains a brief summary followed by a complete list of references that are cited in the text of the essay. Follow a standard referencing method consistently. Suggested limits are as follows: ? Management Summary: ideally one page but no more than two. ?
Sections 1: Introduction 400-600 words, ?
Section 2: Main body of the essay consisting of each of the individual components limit each component to approximately 500 words each, ?
Sections 3: Conclusions 100-300 words, ?
Summary and Complete List of References (5-15 references- that depends on your topic).
