Last Entry From Me.. ;'D

So, maybe this is the last post from me for this semester. I feel bit sad actually. By the way, for this week I’m glad to see both my lecturer Miss Ummi and Madam Huda as there’s no class been cancelled for this week. 

First and foremost, I would like to share about what we have learned in tutorial class this week. As usual, we continue with next case study which is UMW Company. 

Honestly the PIPING HOTDOG is best case study that I have ever read. Before we start our class, fitri have read one news article related to our local business and until the end of the class madam Huda tell and teach us how many property that she have like what I remembered ; unit trust, some savings in three or four banks, land, livestock, insurance and many more. 

And actually madam have given us big picture on what we have to do now in order to have a better and prepared life in the future as we know nowadays everything that we do, we need money and we have to face the increasing of living standards. 

From that, I have the spirit of “reduce spending and saving more“. Last but not least, I really want to thank to both of my beloved lecturer Miss Ummi and Madam Huda for giving me the opportunity to create this blog which is my own blog! Seriously I didn’t thought that I have my own blog. :D  Thanks also to my fellow friends for all your support. Wassalam……

If You Are One Of The Top Manager...

Bismillah.

First question: If you are one of the TOP managers, what kind values would like to inculcate in your organization? Why does it so?

If i be top manager, the value that it was my priority to implement Islamic Value in the organization because for me Islam is the way of life. Whatever we do either in business or organization, we have to follow the rule that stated by Allah in the Al-Quran. InshaaAllah everything will be good. In addition, Islamic value makes the organization free from things that prohibited in Islam like bribe,fraud,corruption and others. Besides that Islamic value can make me and my workers be honest and trustworthy workers as we know we just as khalifah in this world that fulfill our responsibility and duty as possible as we can.

Second question: Could you find an example of any organizations that have a good corporate culture? Name one of them?

One organization that have a good corporate culture that I know is HPA industries as they apply the Islamic Value. For example they will perform Dhuha everyday and every morning there will be a staff giving the Tazkirah. :D

Oshima Restaurant Sharing Session

''It's not always bad to fail"

i'm very impressed with the words from the owner of Oshima Restaurant, one of HALAL japanese restaurant which is located in Shah Alam. From my sight, I can see a superwoman  who full of spirit trying to find income just to support the family. 

Madam Asnidar Hanim Yusuf

She tells some challenges to get halal certification from JAKIM and how she persuaded the supplier from Japan to get HALAL certification. And Alhamdulillah, the acceptance of the use of halal goods in the food industry is very well received since lately.

She also gave some tips in starting the business. For example start a business in moderation. Do a little research so that management of the business running smoothly. As in Malaysia, not many Japanese food restaurant opened and Madam Asnidar consider it as obligatory Kifayah that facilitate Malaysian especially Muslim especially for halal Japanese food.

Lot of responses about the sharing session in MGB4013 Facebook.

WEEK 8 : AWESOME TOWS MATRIX!

Such a challenging week. Of course! Because the mid-term break is coming. :D

So for week 8, for the tutorial class we learn how to “marry” the strength & weaknesses with the opportunity & threats. We also learn how to give “name” for the babies that was born. Its sounds interesting! Using the last week case study ( The Digital Age ) all of us  asked to list down the strength, weakness, opportunity and threat as much as possible. 

Muaz & Waznah take the opportunity to share their  idea.

Madam Huda also teach us how to read the case study wisely so that we can take out all the 4 important things from a very long case study using the colouring sticky notes. For example Green for Strength, Yellow for Weaknesses, Blue for Opportunity and Red for Threats.

Example of the way we use sticky note for reading the case study. 

 As we done listing all the points. We have to combine the idea and try to find the solution. For example weaknesses and opportunity, strength and threats and so on.

This is my group members. Shabirah trying to list down the point.

THANK YOU AND HAPPY HOLIDAY :D

WEEK 7 : Study Case of THE DIGITAL AGE: SHALL I TAG ALONG?

For this week, i choose to write about our case study given by Miss Ummi titles "THE DIGITAL AGE: SHALL I TAG ALONG? ". 

       Such a great case study to read because its tell us the journey of Rahim, the founder of Ambang Mata Sdn.Bhd. in manage their business and survive in publishing industry. From the stories, there's a lot of challenges faced by Rahim but he didn't give up and keep trying until he successful now. The case study also tells about how Rahim adapt with the existence of internet technology and e-marketing in the era of information and communication technology (ICT) offered opportunities and had affected the retailing marketing process and strategy including the book publishing industry. With the increasing of new competitors and other problem like failures of getting the Government tender, Rahim try to strive with various ways to ensure that his 25-year-old company will survive albeit competing in the modern technology market environment.

#we learn chapter 6 this week which is STRENGTHENING A COMPANY’S COMPETITIVE POSITION: STRATEGIC MOVES, TIMING, AND SCOPE OF OPERATIONS.

19-20 October

Program Transformasi Diri

SMK Bandar Tasik Selatan

Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia

CHAPTER 5 : THE FIVE GENERIC COMPETITIVE STRATEGIES: WHICH ONE TO EMPLOY?

Salam. Start your day with smile guys! 

What are the key factors that distinguish one strategy from another? For this topic, its focuses on the five generic competitive strategies and their functions. Let’s know further explanation about the five generic competitive functions.

For the low-cost provider like Air Asia, they are striving to achieve overall costs than rivals on products that attract a broad spectrum of buyers. And as we can see now, Air Asia services get a great response and gain greater total profits from the customers better than MAS as they offer cheaper airfares. 

Focus ;D

Secondly, broad differentiation strategies. They use higher prices and have their own brand loyalty that bonds buyers to the firm products. A uniqueness driver is a factor that can have a strong differentiating effect. Other example for this strategy is ROLEX, and HARLEY-DAVIDSON. Remember the 4 things that Broad Differentiation offer to customers that rivals cannot. Lower the buyers overall cost, tangible features, intangible features and signal the value.

Next, is Focused Strategies that divided into two approaches which are Focused Low-Cost and Focused Market Niche Strategy. Both of them is very attractive because its big enough to be profitable and the rivals have no little or no interest in the target segment. But , whatever strategies a company use, they  have their own advantages and risk. As for Focused Strategies, some of the risks is as attractiveness of the segment increases, it draws in more competitors, intensifying rivalry and splintering segment profits. Example: GAP, Porsche and Ferrari.

Main referrence .
Crafting and executing strategy

Last but not least, best cost provider. This kind of strategies is a combination of all the four other strategies above. It is a combination of Low-Cost Providers and High-End Differentiators as There is competitive space near the middle of the market for a competitor with either a medium-quality product at a below-average price or a high-quality product at an average or slightly higher price.

Happy Birthday to Hadi, Me and Sahidah. 

We're October Babies! 

_______________________________________________________________________________

GENERIC STRATEGIES

: Place each firm you know  in one of the four categories of generic business strategies.

  What are some common features for firms you have placed within each category?

CHAPTER 4 : Evaluating A Company's Resources, Capabilities and Competitiveness.

Salam everyone!

For this week we move to chapter 4, where we are trying to evaluate how well a company’s strategy is working in terms of their resources and capabilities. How? The best indicator is the firm is achieving its stated financial and strategic objectives.  Without these 2 things, a company may fall. Other than that, we can see a company is success if there are increasing profits margins, net profit, ROI, growth in firms sales and market share and etc. Next, they also have to give more attention in controlling the resources and capabilities of a firm to perform some activity because both of them is a powerful tools for sizing up a company’s competitive assets and determining if they can support a sustainable competitive advantage over market rivals.

Shabirah trying to explain something to shima.

Besides that, a company should make their SWOT analysis in order to grab the market opportunities and external threats. Swot analysis is very important as it is a powerful tool for sizing up a firm internal strength, internal weaknesses, market opportunities and external threats. From SWOT analysis, we can match its strategy to its internal strengths and to market opportunities and also correct important weaknesses and defend it against external threats.

 In addition, we grasp how a company’s value chain activities can affect the company’s cost structure and customer value proposition. Actually, a company’s value chain identifies the primary activities and related support activities that create customer value. Example of value chain analysis is facilitates a comparison, activity-by-activity and etc. The industry is focuses on the firm’s internal, industry suppliers and channel intermediaries. From my understanding, industry value chain gives effects to end consumers, industry sales volume and customer satisfaction.

Do you know what is benchmark? It involves improving a firm’s internal activities based on learning other companies’ “best practices.” This is done in order to assess whether the cost competitiveness and effectiveness of a firm’s value chain activities are in line with its competitors’ activities. A company can get the benchmarking information in several ways like getting data from consulting firms, visits the benchmark companies and etc.

Have a nice day!

CHAPTER 3 : Evaluating A Company's External Environment

Let’s pray for our friend Kak Nazifah so that the operation goes smoothly and everything will be fine. Al-fatihah.

For the third class, we learn chapter 3 which is EVALUATING A COMPANY’S EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT. Basically this chapter tell us to thinking strategically about the company’s situation to choosing the best strategy. There are two important core concepts that should be focused which are the macro-environment and the PESTEL. PESTEL analysis focuses on the six principal components of strategic significance in the macro-environment:

Competitive pressure from rivals ;D 

After that, we have to know the five competitive force. For example competition from rival sellers, potential new entrants, producers of substitute products, supplier bargaining power and customer bargaining power.In business it is common situation of competitive pressures that increase rivalry among competing sellers. For instance buyer demand is growing slowly or declining, it is becoming less costly for buyers to switch brands and many more.

But, there must be solutions for every problem. Business should use the ‘weapon’ for competing the rivals like price discounting, clearance sale, using ads to enhance a company image or maybe building a bigger, better dealer network.Besides that, in a business operation they have to know competitive pressures from the sellers of substitute products, stemming from supplier bargaining power and also stemming from buyer bargaining power and price sensitivity. 

A company’s strategy is increasingly effective the more it provides some insulation from competitive pressures, shifts the competitive battle in the company’s favor, and positions firms to take advantage of attractive growth opportunities.

In addition, we have to know what is strategic group is. Strategic group is a cluster of industry rivals that have similar competitive approaches and market positions. Strategic group mapping is a technique for displaying the different market or competitive positions that rival firms occupy in the industry. There are typical variables used in creating group maps such as price/quality range, geographic coverage and so on.

In order to build a success business, of course we have to know the key success factors are the strategy elements, product and service attributes, operational approaches, resources, and competitive capabilities that are essential to surviving and thriving in the industry.

"Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations."

--Herbert Spencer 

CHAPTER 2 : The Business Vision and Mission

17 September 2013

For the second lecture, we learn 2 chapters about The nature of strategic management and The business vision and mission. Basically, strategic management includes three stages which are formulation, implementation and evaluation cross-functional decisions that enable an organization to achieve its objective. On the other hand, strategic planning involve only formulating stages. And I sure, in order to make a good strategy there are so many aspects that need to be concerned.

These three strategies have their own benefits. For example, it is very useful in enhancing communication, improved understanding, and greater commitment and surely to help the firm succeed (the result).

Secondly, we proceed our lecture with second chapter. Roughly, it’s about vision and mission of business. In our life, we also need vision and mission to make sure that we get what we dream in the end. Similarly with business, it needs vision and mission to forming a journey of successful business. The vision statement is “what do we want to become?” and the mission statement is “how are you want to become?” .

                       Happy Malaysia Day!

Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.

-Old Japanese-

Syahirah ST

CHAPTER 1 : The Nature of Strategic Management

10^th September 2013.

My first class for strategic management. Personally I didn’t expect to get a young, active and very cute woman as my lecturer. For the first activity, Miss Ummi provide newspapers for each group and told us to build high tower. High as we can. The class become noisy as we laughing and screaming in order to build the best high tower. 

And finally, the champion is our classmate group, Ada. For me, it is such a fun and great starting for this subject. From this activity, we learn how to manage the time given in order to get the best result. Everyone in the group have to participate directly and give their own opinions and idea either he/she is the leader or the followers. Such a good and beneficial subject as we can apply what we learn in the class to our daily activities.

 "Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them."

—Paul Hawken, Natural Capitalism


Syahirah ST