4a.2 making strategic decisions

1|Q u az i N a f i u l I sl a m – w w w . s t u d e n t t e c h .c o . c c

MAKING STRATEGIC DECISIONS
OVERVIEW

1. DECISION MAKING MODEL

a. Use of Ansoff Matrix to communicate intended strategic direction.
i. How the Ansoff Matrix can be used to show strategic direction of the business; e.g. if they're
expanding into new markets, this would be seen as Market development, which is more risky than
Market Penetration.

2. DECISION MAKING TECHNIQUES

a. Investment Appraisal
i. Simple Payback
ii. Average Rate of return
iii. Discounted Cash-Flow (Net Present Value only)
b. Decision Trees
i. Construction and interpretation of simple decision tree diagrams,
limitations of technique.
c. Project planning and Network Analysis
i. Nature and purpose of Critical Path Analysis
ii. Be able to draw simple networks
iii. Calculate Earliest Start Time and Latest Finish Time
iv. Identify the critical path and calculate the total float
v. Limitations of technique
d. Contribution and special order decisions, determining whether a
special order is worth the effort.

3. CONTRIBUTION WITH RESPECT TO SPECIAL ORDER DECISIONS

a. Need for contingency planning
b. Consideration of risk of operating in a country or seeking growth in
new overseas markets
i. Use the Ansoff Matrix to consider why a company may
seek to invest in a factory overseas, for example to
reduce dependence on domestic market through
planning for growth.
c. Risk reduction through information from decision-making models


DECISION MAKING MODEL

THE ANSOFF MATRIX
EXISTING NEW

PRODUCTS
EXISTING

Market Product
Penetration Development

INCREASING RISK
MARKETS

Market
Diversification
Development
NEW

INCREASING RISK

• The Ansoff Matrix is essentially a tool developed to help people chose what strategy they should use in order to
successfully develop their product. Essentially, these are marketing strategies for growth through the development of
new products and markets.

THE DIFFERENT MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR GROWTH

MARKET PENETRATION

• Concentrating on gaining greater growth in existing markets
• This has the least risk involved as the businesses has developed the product and knows the market
• Can be achieved through:
o Increasing brand-loyalty of consumers so that they use alternatives less
o Encourage consumers to increase usage; instead of selling a pack of chips in a medium sized pack,
chips makers make large sizes available e.g. Lay’s Extra Large
Figure 1 - Lay's XL Classic potato chips↑
MARKET DEVELOPMENT

• Finding new markets for existing products
• This is expensive as there needs to be investment into market research. However,
there are considerable risks in understanding consumer behaviour as it is constantly
changing.
o Repositioning the product to target a different market segment
o Moving into new markets, e.g. India, China etc.
Figure 2 - With saturated markets in the west Vodafone developed
markets in Africa and South Asia. Nokia simply added torchlight to
its previous model to help its phone-users in South Asia cope with
power outages.


PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

• Launching new products into existing markets
• One in five products succeed, even with heavy investment into R&D as well
as aggressive marketing
o Even the best companies such as Sony (Sony Egg), L’Oreal, Walls,
Cadbury (Cadbury Aztecs) and Microsoft (Zune, Windows Vista)
o Changing existing products
 Shampoos offering new and improved formulas
 Cars adding features to older models and releasing them
as new yearly models every year
o Developing new products from scratch

Figure 4 - The successful development of the iPod propelled
Apple into the music industry.

DIVERSIFICATION

• When a business tries to market new products in absolutely new markets;
making it a conglomerate
• This has the greatest risks involved in doing this, but successful
diversification has great rewards.
• It gives the business greater stability as a recession in one market can be
buffered by another.
• It gives businesses more room to make riskier decisions – which will
ultimately reap greater rewards.

Figure 5 - Nintendo was originally a card game making
company and Nokia made tires. Successful Figure 3 - Shampoo Companies always claim that their 'new
diversification led Nokia to become the world's largest and improved' formulas are really new and improved. But
mobile manufacturers and Nintendo to become a personally, no commercial shampoo has worked for me, only
successful console manufacturer. medicated shampoo.


DECISION MAKING TECHNIQUES

INVESTMENT APPRAISAL

Investment appraisal is the evaluation of an investment project to determine whether or not it is
likely to be worthwhile.

BUSINESS STUDIES 4TH EDITION, DAVE HALL

• Investment appraisal has a set of tools that we use in order to assess the return of an investment made by the
company.

SIMPLE PAYBACK

• The payback period is essentially the time taken for a firm to cover its costs. Basically, if you invested $30,000 into a
business, how long would it take the business to generator $30,000?
• Say, you have to invest $30,000 into capital and this capital is estimated to generate $10,500 a year and would take
$3,500 to maintain. Calculate the pay-back period.
• Calculating payback:
• As you can see, Year Cash In Cash Out Net Cash Flow Cumulative Cash Flow
that there is no
NOW $ - $ (30,000) $ (30,000) $ (30,000)
clear year that
YEAR 1 $ 10,500 $ (3,500) $ 7,000 $ (23,000)
the payment is
made up. So, we
YEAR 2 $ 10,500 $ (3,500) $ 7,000 $ (16,000)
are going to YEAR 3 $ 10,500 $ (3,500) $ 7,000 $ (9,000)
have to calculate YEAR 4 $ 10,500 $ (3,500) $ 7,000 $ (2,000)
it in months. YEAR 5 $ 10,500 $ (3,500) $ 7,000 $ 5,000

= $875
th

$10,500
• We can see that up till the 4 year, there was still a cumulative cash-flow of $2,000.

12
• In the 5th year, $10,500 was generated. So we need to calculate how much was generated per month,
• Therefore, we now need to calculate the number of months that it would take $2,000 to be generated,

$2,000 2
= 2 ��ℎ��
$875 7

• Therefore, the pay-back period is 4 years and 3 months.
• Often directors will set a pay-back period for the managers to suggest a suitable investment, such as being less than 20
months. This is referred to the criterion level.

Advantages Limitations
Easy to calculate and understand Ignores what happens after payback period.
Essentially, there is more effort being put into calculating finances
The method ignores the profitability of the project, since the
over a comparatively shorter period of time. So, it is likely to be
criterion used is the speed of repayment.
more accurate.
Takes into account timing of cash-flows. So the discounted cash-
May encourage short-termism.
flow can be calculated to gain its NPV.
Businesses with weak cash-flows will be able to seek out quick
payback investments.
It is of limited use on its own (because it does not pay attention to
This is useful for sectors with rapidly changing technology e.g. the
profits) and is therefore used together with the Average Rate of
electronics industry. New consumer electronics can be designed
Return as well as the Net Present Value
and introduced regularly. It is important to cover the cost of the
investment before the new good is designed.


AVERAGE RATE OF RETURNS

• This is the profit an investment will give over the period of its lifetime.
• How to calculate:

S TEP 1 – I DENTIFY P ROFITS AND INITIAL INVESTMENT

• Say, an investment will give $20,000 in profit over its lifetime.
• The firm invested a total of $25,000 to make this project happen.

S TEP 2 – D IVIDE THE PROFIT BY THE PERIOD OF ITS LIFETIME (I N YEARS )

• Say, the period is 5 years.

��
��

$20,000
=
5

= $4000

S TEP 3 – C ALCULATE ANNUAL PROFIT AS A % OF THE INITIAL INVESTMENT

��
�� = × 100
��

$4,000
× 100 = 16%
$25,000

• Usually, the exam will give you table from which you are going to have to interpret this from.
• However, there is another term that we must familiarise ourselves with, and that is ‘Reward for Risk’
• Basically, the business is taking a risk in order to make a profit. However, it can simply put the money in the bank and
get the interest out of it. Say the interest is 6%.

The Reward for risk is the �� − �� .
• So, the business can make 6% profit without even having to take any risks.
•
• So, in this case, the Reward for risk would be10%.

A DVANTAGES AND LIMITATIONS


Shows the profitability clearly and allows comparisons with other Not as accurate as payback as it makes assumptions over a large
modes of investment such as interest etc. number of years

Uses all the cash flows over the project’s life - Payback only
considers cash flow up until the payback month - it might be that
the project generates larger cash flows after this period, but the
method ignores these. ARR looks at all the cash flow projections Ignores the timing of cash flows
and included these, so it is fairer to projects that might generate
large incomes in later years e.g. those that might require a lot of
training and getting used to new equipment.
Focuses on profitability Ignores the opportunity cost of the money invested


DISCOUNTED CASH FLOWS – NET PRESENT VALUE

• $100 today will be worth a lot less in 3 years’ time. This is because of inflation that reduces the value of money and
makes goods more expensive as well as the interest that banks provide that increase the value of money.
• The ARR and payback methods provide insight into profitability and cash flow. But, what we need to now is the
opportunity cost of making an investment. What are we throwing away in order to make an investment?
• The higher the rate of interest and the longer the waiting time for the money to come in, the less money it is actually
worth in today’s term.
• The predicted value of money in today’s terms is calculated from discount tables that will be given to you in the
examination. Here is an example:

Rate of interest
Years Ahead 4% 6% 8%
0 1.00 1.00 1.00
1 0.96 0.94 0.93
2 0.92 0.89 0.86
3 0.89 0.84 0.79
4 0.82 0.8 0.75

• So the value of $200 in 4 years’ time at 6% interest would be $200 × 0.6 = $160

CALCULATING NPV

• Say a company has two projects, Projects X and Y. Say the rate of interest is 8%.
• Their cash-flows and Discounted cash flows are given below:

Project X Project Y
Discount Discounted Discount Discounted
Year Cash Flow Cash Flow
factor Cash Flow Factor Cash Flow
0 ($250,000) 1.00 ($250,000) ($250,000) 1.00 ($250,000)
1 +$50,000 0.93 $46,500 +$200,000 0.93 $186,000
2 +$100,000 0.86 $86,000 +$100,000 0.86 $86,000

�� = $40,500 �� = $61,500
3 +$200,000 0.79 $158,000 +$50,000 0.79 $39,500

• Despite the fact that both projects have the same initial cost, and they bring in the same quantity of money over their
lives, there is a large difference in the NVP, as project Y generates more income at the beginning, whereas project X
generates more income towards the end. As the discount factor increases over time, the actual value of the money
generated by X is reduced. Also, the predictions are less accurate the further we predict thus there is great uncertainty
as to whether project X can generate the NVP even if the value of money decreases as expected.

A DVANTAGES AND L IMITATIONS


Takes the opportunity cost of the investment into account Complex to calculate and communicate

A single measure that takes the amount and timing of cash flows
The meaning of the results is often misunderstood
into account
Only comparable between projects where the initial investments
are the same
Can consider different scenarios
The rate of discount used is critical, if the rate is not accurate,
the business could make big mistakes


DECISION TREES

• Decision trees offer a visual representation of the company’s possible choices that it can make.
• There are four parts to a decision tree:
o Decision points are the decisions the business has to make; represented by boxes.
o Outcomes are the possible outcomes of taking a decision; represented by circles.
 Obtained often from back-data.
o Expected Values are the financial outcomes of a decision i.e. how much profit or loss a decision will make.
• However, there is a term called the Expected Value – no s at the end.
Expected Value
Decision Point

Outcome

o �� = (�� × ��) + (�� × ��) +
• Calculating the expected value of B:

(�� × ��)
o �� = (0.3 × £50,000) + (0.3 × £30,000) + (0.4 × £10,000)
o �� = £84,000

o �� = (�� × ��) + (�� × ��)
• Calculating the expected value of C:

o �� = (0.5 × £40,000) + (0.5 × £10,000)
o �� = £25,000


Construction of diagrams may highlight decisions that we not
Much of the data including probability is estimated.
previously considered
Decisions often have several aspects. Decision tress only focus on
Putting numeric values on these choices tends to improve
the quantitative aspect. Qualitative data is also important, e.g. the
results.
effect on the environment of one particular decision.
There are time lags in decision making, by the time a decision is
finally made, some of the numeric information may be out of date.
The process is quite time consuming. However, computers have
Force management to take into account the risks involved in now made this a lot faster.
making these decisions. This helps to separate the important Managers may manipulate the probability of a decision to suit
risks from the unimportant risks. their preferences, distorting the final results.
Decision trees cannot take into account the dynamic nature of a
business. Sudden changes in the economic climate might render a
decision based on the decision tree obsolete.


PROJECT PLANNING AND NETWORK ANALYSIS

• In a production line, there needs to be proper organisation in order for the production to go on smoothly.
• In order to do this the needs to be a plan for the process to operate smoothly.
• This is done through a model called ‘Network Analysis’.

A network path diagram helps to identify the critical path, which shows the activities that require
the most careful management scrutiny.

BUSINESS STUDIES FOR A LEVEL, 4TH EDITION – IAN MARCOUSÉ

• There are different parts to a network diagram. The lines represent an activity: which is essentially that is a part of the
process that requires time and/or resources; waiting for supplies is an example of an activity.
• A node (represented by circles) is the start of or end of an activity.
• This is what a Network diagram looks like:

Start Node

The
Lines represent activity
Earliest Start Critical
Time Path

Step Number Latest Finish Time
End Node

INSTRUCTIONS FOR DRAWING NODES
1. The network must start and end with a single node need to put figures in those circles.
2. No lines in the network can cross 6. The start nodes all have an EST and an LFT of 0.
3. When drawing an activity, do not draw the end • The Critical path will have the following characteristics:
node, as you cannot calculate where the whole o The EST and the LFT will be equal
process is going to end, this is not exactly a rule o It will be the longest past through those nodes

�� = �� − ��
but rather a precaution.
4. There cannot be any line that is not an activity.
•
5. It is helpful to draw nodes with large circles and
short lines, to save space and also because you

Processes should be smoother as there is careful planning involved
It shortens the length of time taken to complete a project, as tasks A complex process which will have many lines and will be long;
are handles simultaneously – this can be very advantageous as getting computer rendering will be needed. Software may need to be made or
a product first to the market can often be a positive factor, especially bought which will be expensive.
with technology.
Delays can be handled adeptly as time is accurately planned.
Drawing a diagram does not ensure success; it will be the effort of
There is better time management, facilitating JIT management. Also, the managers that ultimately brings the results.
due to better management, there is reduced pressure on Cash Flow.


CONTRIBUTION AND SPECIAL ORDER DECISIONS

• A business might get an unexpected order from a new customer.
• In these cases the business has to consider whether the deal will be profitable and often this is done through contribution
costing.
• A business will have both fixed and variable costs.
• Based, on the contribution that each finished good
provides, the business will need to make this decision.
• Say, there is a special order for 2000 extra laptops and the
company needs to decide whether or not to accept. The
customer is willing to pay $670 for each laptop.
• The fixed costs are at $500,000 per year and the variable
cost is $350 for a laptop

be $350 + = $600.
$500,000
• So, the total cost for the laptop, for the manufacturer will

2000
• Thus, the business can take the order and still make a profit.
However, this is on the assumption that fixed costs remain the

If the fixed costs were to increase to $600,000, then the price of the laptop would become $350 + = $650, the
$600,000
same. If they were to increase, which they likely will, then the profit made from making laptops would be very small.

2000
•
business would be making very little profit. However, this might be a new customer that may become a regular customer
for the business, like this there are many non-financial motives to take or decline an order:
o Capacity: Whether the business has the machinery and the labour to take the order. Will taking this order sacrifice
something more profitable?
o Customer response: If existing customers find out that products were sold at a cheaper price to others, then it will
damage the image of the business and may lead to a loss of customers.
o Future Orders: Unprofitable orders might lead to more profitable orders in the future from the customer.
o Current Utilisation: An unprofitable order may be accepted in order to keep staff occupied. It’s better to have
permanent staff occupied with work that will give little contribution, than not working at all, because when
permanent labourers have no work to do, the business is still paying for their wages.
o Retaining customer loyalty: A business may accept an un-profitable order as a favour to a loyal customer. Greater
co-operation from the business to the customer will increase brand loyalty.

10 | Q u a z i N a f i u l I s l a m – w w w . s t u d e n t t e c h . c o . c c

BUSINESS CONTINGENCY PLANNING

NEED FOR CONTINGENCY PLANNING

Contingency planning is the creation of plans of how particular crises which might affect a
business will be dealt with should the arise

BUSINESS STUDIES 4TH EDITION, DAVE HALL

• Things do not always go according to plan, an employee might be sick – such as in a school, a class
teacher may be sick and may not come to class. If this happens, then there needs to be a
replacement teacher capable of taking the class. Contingency planning is essentially a back-up plan
the business has.
• Similarly, in times of a crisis such as a fire or flood, the business will need a back-up plan to make sure
that it can survive the crisis.
• But there are many other types of crises that may occur, and these may be financial, related to machinery,
human resources, public relations etc. To combat all these problems, the business will need a contingency plan in place.



It gives the business some kind of plan as to what it can do in times It can be argued that there are relatively few contingency plans that
of a crisis. are effective as there are many unforeseen eventualities.

CONSIDERATION OF RISK OF OPERATING IN A COUNTRY OR SEEKING GROWTH IN NEW OVERSEAS
MARKETS

• Developing a new market with existing products will fall into the
market development category. Essentially, if the business fails to do
well in the market, it will need a contingency plan to get itself out of
the operations e.g. sell the operations, or go into a joint venture with
a local firm in order to increase chances of survival and to gain
additional knowledge about the market as well as getting information
from the company.
• The extent of the risks will depend on how different the foreign
market is in comparison to the domestic market.
• The product may need to be modified, as when Whirlpool set out to
make the world washer, when it sold the washer to India, people
stopped buying it because some special types of Indian clothes got
stuck in the washer. Also, when PEPSI started out in China, when it
translated its logo, the literal translation was something very insulting
in Chinese culture.
• There needs to be thorough market research done, both primary and
secondary in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the
market. Even after thorough market research businesses fail because
of the ever changing nature of consumer taste.

11 | Q u a z i N a f i u l I s l a m – w w w . s t u d e n t t e c h . c o . c c

RISK REDUCTION THROUGH INFORMATION FROM DECISION MAKING MODELS

• Decision making models such as decision trees allow businesses to
assess the risk of an operation, because it highlights the probability
of both profits and losses.
• Investment appraisal shows how long a business will need to earn
its investment back from the operation i.e. payback. Also, ARR will
allow the business will allow the business to consider how much
rewards it is getting for the risk it is taking.
o When TESCO set up ‘Fresh & Easy’ stores in America, it
calculated that the payback period would at least be 5
years. But it did so, in order to get a foothold into the lucrative American retailer market.
• Network analysis will make the business more efficient and will highlight critical paths, which have the most risks
associated with them, so managers can proceed with more caution.

4a.2 making strategic decisions

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