Porter Generic Competitive Strategies †Free Samples to Students

Question: Discuss about the Porter Generic Competitive Strategies. Answer: Introduction Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) operates in six countries, including, Australia, Indonesia, Fiji and Samoa, Fiji and Samoa and Papua New Guinea. The company specializes in producing non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverages, fruit juice, coffee, tea, water, beer, flavored milk, energy drinks and food snacks ready to eat. The company operates for more than 100 years, it employs about 14 thousand people. The company serves more than 270 Mn. customers which encourage it to lead the innovation and create a sustainable future. Amatil is committed to build a talented and diversified workforce, which is aligned to its core values and culture. It allows for a career path to its employees that fulfills their aspirations (Coca Cola Amatil, 2016d) The Amatil sustainability framework focuses on four areas according to Coca Cola Amatil (2016d), as follows: People: Refers to the workforce at the company, as it provides an open workplace to motivate them. Wellbeing: By providing the consumer with a variety of goods that fulfill their needs and disseminate quality information to them to make their decisions. Environment: The company avoids activities that may harm the environment to keep its sustainability. Community: the company operates with its partners to deliver and gain shared benefits. This report analysis the strategies of Amatil, practices, its environmental analysis and its corporate culture. The development and growth of the organisation from its beginnings to the present: Mission: Amatil seeks to refresh the world and inspire people with happiness and optimism (UK Essays, 2017). Vision: The Amatil vision is to create millions of happy moments to its customers and make them possible. To fulfill this vision, the company diversifies its products, creates shared value with its customers, creates common purposes with its partners, lean production system and offers attractive returns to the shareholder. Amatil vision reflects the scale of business in the current time and in the future (Coca Cola Amatil, 2017). Core competencies: In order to fulfill its mission, the company has its unique and inimitable fashion that could not be imitated by competitors, the company uses different bottling partners to focus on marketing and beverage creation (UK Essays, 2017). Amatil follows the group strategy to achieve its success, as it positions the company to create growth and get long term value. As a result of market changes, Amatil creates partnerships to adapt to the changing environment by working close to its partners, produce and sell a variety of products (Coca Cola Amatil, 2015). Creating a relationship built on trust and collaboration is the enabler for growth for the company (Coca Cola Amatil, 2016d). According to Coca Cola Amatil (2017), there are three pillars that the company' strategy depends on: Lead of strengthening position: Through brand leadership in different categories in the market, leading innovationsand responding to customer's demand. Execute changes in the production and the market: Through customer service, diversification of production, leveraging the company economies of scale. Partnership: Through aligning the company strategy with the Coca-Cola Company strategy and other partners, creating a shared vision with partners and increasing the profitability of the company and its partners. Porters generic strategies Porters framework of competitive strategy (1980) as cited in Strategic Partners (n.d.), discussed the generic strategies that organizations adopt as the cost reduction and product differentiation, but the new strategies depend more on the value chain which require building and sustaining long term relationships with partners to increase the organizational capabilities among the organizational activities. It is obvious the Amatil depends on leveraging its value chain and stringing its relations with its partners. Also, as Porter argues that firms that have a big market share are successful as they can benefit from reducing their costs, which is a strategy also adopted by Amatil as it benefits from the product differentiation strategy to reduce its costs. Accordingly, Amatil combines different strategies (Tanwar, 2013). In order to improve its current strategies, Amatil reformulates several projects as introducing smaller packs, uses its innovation capabilities, improving the market model, by improving the consumer experience and automating the routine tasks. The sales team is freed for new market and business development activities and to use the digital marketing tools (Coca Cola Amatil, 2016a). Criticisms of the business practices of the company: Amatil has to deal with a large volume of data, which requires information systems to manage and monitor the quality of data. The use of information system requires changes in the technical infrastructure and the employees' acceptance to change (Coca Cola Amatil, 2012). The solution: Implementing the SatoriCCM. Monitoring system (Coca Cola Amatil, 2012). The outcome: The company implemented a control and monitoring system, but the employees' resistance to change created an obstacle of applying the system. The company lacks the managerial capabilities that could lead the implementation of the new system and change the employees' behavior. As the staff refused to deal with the new system, it was not monitored. It was supposed to monitor the staff credit card activity through the SatoriCCM. But efforts were made to change the employees' culture by describing the benefits of the new system (Coca Cola Amatil, 2012). Challenge of managing global business Being a global company result in facing some strategic challenges represented in the rapid expansion of the brand portfolio, the diversified product types, the complexity of distribution, and aligning to legislations (Coca Cola Amatil, 2016c). The solution: Implementing ORTEC for SAP ERP and ORTEC Route Scheduling (Coca Cola Amatil, 2016c). The results: Achieving increased levels of flexibility in production and delivery, cost cut, increased customer satisfaction, optimizing the logistic operation and on time delivery (Coca Cola Amatil, 2016c). Third: The environmental analysis for the involvement of the organisation in the context of the industry: The SWOT analysis is conducted to analyze the organizational internal strengths and weaknesses and the external opportunities and threats, according to UK Essays (2017), it could be discussed as follows: Strengths: It has a strong brand capabilities and superior returns for the company shareholders. The company has an excellent value chain, which involves the operational planning, logistics, infrastructure and manufacturing. Amatil is very responsive to customer demand, has innovation capabilities, valuable resources, high technological capabilities and quality system that enables the company to keep its leading position in the market and achieve efficiency. The company key capabilities, includes, the improvement in the inventory management system. The inventory management system ensures that the appropriate quantities are distributed and the appropriate stock is kept in the store. Operating with low inventory levels reduces the costs. The company invests in the automated manufacturing, warehouse led to cost saving. It also invests in the semi-automated distribution center, which resulted in better customer service. Accordingly, Amatil is considered among the most cost saving branches in the global Coca Cola group. Weaknesses: The company has to monitor its safety levels at workplace to provide a healthy platform for its staff. The company needs to promote for the zero harm teams concept. Opportunities: The Coca-Cola Amatil is a world class leader in the beverage industry. It has good capabilities in customer service and distribution service in the market. Amatil could flexibly respond to consumer needs, as it gathers information about its customers, their needs and their preferences the company technological capabilities enables it to track its customer through the wireless technology as it monitors the vendor machine stocks. These capabilities inform the company about the consumer intends to purchase the products and it could be used in the company promotional activities. Amatil adopts the policy of cutting the greenhouse gas emissions. Threats: The rareness of the raw material used in the soft drink creates the company competitive advantage, however, the soft drink industry in Australia is about to reach its maturity phase. The market conditions encouraged the Amatil competitors to produce and promote for healthier products as the fruit juice and energy drinks. Coca-Cola Amatil faces the challenge of deteriorating earnings-per-share ration, also the company expects more decreases in its earnings-per-share over the coming year (Roddan, 2016). The Amatil major risk related issues resulted in an initial settlements estimate about $250k, that is why the company has to identify the sources of risk in the strategic and the operational levels, to adopt a collaborative process for risk management and transfer and to review its risk management framework and its potential impact (Aon Corporation Australia Limited, 2014). To overcome its threat, Amatil started to expand its business beyond the carbonated soft drinks, by diversifying its production to include coffee, alcohol, fruit juice and water (UK Essays, 2017) and (Coca Cola Amatil, 2016b). The organisational culture within the organisation: Coca Cola Amatil corporate values control and guide the staff behavior and the decision making process (Coca Cola Amatil, 2016d). The company main values could be described according to Coca Cola Amatil (2017), as follows: Openness and straight forward Taking initiatives and owing the output Focusing on the short and long run Coca Cola Amatil does not rely only on the good management systems, but it also focuses on changing the corporate culture. Face to face communication facilitates the problem solving. Promoting good health and safety at the workplace among the employees result in their satisfaction besides of setting promotional system for safety practices. The staff promotes for good brand image and safety at the workplace to be engaged in the corporate culture. The company promotes for the zero harm teams concept to show the importance and the value of the teams. Also, it promotes for reporting culture to enhance the knowledge sharing across the organizational departments, as employees are encouraged to report everything they practice (Adams, 2011). Coca-Cola Amatil in Australia promotes for the culture of empowering female talent in the leadership positions. It plans for increasing the senior leadership women from 25% to 35% to encourage managers to think broadly by evaluating the employees' skills at different levels (The Ministry of women's affair, 2012). The Amatil policy is to find the talents who have cross-functional and transferable skills, as women who have the cross-functional skills and can develop their careers. The future leaders are invited to be enrolled in a 12 month development initiative which is called Excel (Coca Cola Amatil, 2013). CEOs who inspired the employees, developed / implemented the strategies successfully and created the companys culture: Amatil could leverage its global network through its brand partners, shareholders, the Coca-Cola Company to boost its capabilities in Asia. Amatil gain benefits from the existence of two of the international Coca-Cola in the Asia region. Amatil directors are responsible for decision making and promoting for the corporate culture, investment decisions, the change processes and employee development. The group managing director, Alison Watkins, argues that the corporate board of directors could make the major growth business for Amatil in Indonesia. Also, India witnessed the practice of using the perfect fruit under the guidance of Non- executive Director of Amatil and Chairman of Hindustan. As Amatil believes that it is very important to hire the best leaders and develop the skills of the future leaders (Asialink Business, 2017). Conclusion: The report assumes that the diversified and differentiated strategies conducted by Amatil enabled it to sustain its growth and avoid potential risks. The company could also create its unique competitive advantage by differentiating its designs from other competitors. The corporate culture at Amatil guides the staff towards fulfilling the organizational goals. It is obviously the Amatil depends on leveraging its value chain and stringing its relations with its partners and it combines different strategies to achieve its business objectives. Amatil could leverage its global network through its brand partners, shareholders, the Coca-Cola Company to boost its capabilities in Asia. Amatil gain benefits from the existence of two of the international Coca-Cola in the Asia region. Coca Cola Amatil does not rely only on the good management systems, but it also focuses on changing the corporate culture. Promoting good health and safety at workplace among the employees result in their satisfaction besides of setting promotional system for safety practices. References Adams, G., 2011. Our zero harm journey. The Business Leaders Health and Safety. Aon Corporation Australia Limited, 2014. Australian case study- Coca-Cola Amatil. Australia. Asialink Business, 2017. Coca-Cola Amatil - Case study. 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