Completing Your Strategy Playbook and Summary Diagram

BLACKBERRY PLAYBOOK

Student’s Name

Course Title

Lecturer’s Name

Date of Submission

Executive Summary

The main challenge facing Blackberry Company is the need to re-establish its position in the highly competitive Smartphone industry and win the loyalty of the Consumers. The purpose of this strategy playbook is therefore to analyze strategic response of the Company to its major challenge. The Blackberry brand has failed to reckon its past performance and to re-establish its dominance in the market. Among the key areas that are slowing down the company’s progress towards establishing its image in the market include the marketing area and the top management of the entity. The marketing function has failed to initiate ways of bettering public relationships which is vital towards enhancing market dominance and productivity. It is in the interest of this strategy therefore to convey an understanding of the current position of Blackberry Company and its prospects for future improvement.

This playbook presents an analysis of the key strategies that the company has put in place and their performance and the ability of the newly initiated strategic approaches to meet the desired goals. Other findings that have been made regarding the inability of Blackberry to sustain its market dominancy includes the collapse of the US market, the challenges paused by the unfinished playbook tablet, sovereign conflicts, BlackBerry blackout, phone delays, and the disappointing earnings it recorded.

The strategy playbook conveys an analysis of the way through which the firm has been operating and the desired changes that would help to overcome areas of weaknesses and shortcomings. The teams involved require an understanding the scope of their service in order to stimulate the comeback of the company. In order to promote this understanding and an understanding of what needs to be done to promote the success of Blackberry, this playbook addresses the following six areas in a detailed way. These areas include; the vision of the company, Strategic approaches towards achievement of the vision, company Rivalry and ways of establishing a competitive edge, measures towards ensuring maximum employee productivity and lastly ways in which staff and the management relationships can be bettered.

An assumption that was made to address the situation of Blackberry is that the onset of its downturn of events was promoted by internal inefficiencies therefore addressing these efficiencies would guarantee it a position in the market. The launch of Blackberry 10 for instance comes with many challenges. Its operating system was not the best which made the company to lose its customers to other competitors like the Apple.com, Inc. Inefficiencies were as well witnessed in the area of public relations.

Recommendations

Leadership change which is prioritized by the company would ensure the establishment of a visionary and transformative leadership needed to overcome the experienced down turns (Lichtenstein, 2012) The Blackberry could as well overcome its challenges by focusing on various strategies. It is evidenced that the company has a poor reputation which has seen it loose its customers to other competitors. The delays witnessed inconvenienced its customers making it to have a poor public rating. There is therefore the need to establish consumer outreach programs aimed at regaining its lost glory. This approach however should come after the entity has made great strides in technological development. Application of modern technology in the operations of the company will not only promote efficiency but will as well attract more consumers to the entity (Ekvall, 1996). Establishment of shares as well as customer loyalty programs which can be adopted by introducing subsidized prices on various programs targeting the consumers will as well play a fundamental role in attracting new customers to the entity. This avenue is the best if BlackBerry is to retain back its market share and monopolize the Smartphone Industry across the Globe.

The top management of BlackBerry Company should focus on investing highly in its employees. The Human asset is the most valuable in any organization. A motivated labor force ensures it provides services that are valuable and which advance the interests of the company. Employees to this effect will be able to serve customers very efficiently since they would be satisfied and would have no excuse not to record maximum productivity.

The customer relations department performs wonders in any organization (Spenner, 2012). Settling up a customer relations department would boost the ability of the company to respond to the needs of the customers in a timely manner. The feedback from the customers will be applied in bettering the marketing, production, and other areas of the Company which are related to its productivity. a focus on enhancing customer relations will not only give the company a better public image but will serve to promote its relative position in the market thus making it present a considerable challenge to other companies operating in the Smartphone company (Pfeffer, 1999). The top management should focus on establishing clear communication channels in order to manage its operations in an efficient way. The delays that were evidenced in the organization were for instance due to poor communications between the productions department and the top management. Clear communication would have seen the top management project the failure way before the embarrassing moment occurred. Efficient organizational communication function instills confidence in employees since they get sure of what they are to do (Hamel, 2009). This therefore increases the changes of recording maximum productivity.

There is the need for the company to consider enhancing its marketing function in order to penetrate the market and command a large share of the market (Cabrera, 2012). The company needs to consider re-introducing the use of celebrities in the advertisement function. This move will play a vital role in boosting the image of the brand thus enhancing its future prospects. The marketing function should not create false expectations among the consumers as this may hurt the image of the entity thus hinder its comeback.

Risks and Mitigation Strategies

In the process of implementing the recommended strategy, BlackBerry Company could run the risk of high operational costs and imitation from other companies. The recommended programs would require investment of a lot of resources. The recommended strategies could be implemented and bettered by competitors thus making it hard for BlackBerry to effectively compete in the market. Failure to initiate the recommended strategies could imply that the company would continue to experience poor public rating. This will expose the company to the risk of recording hefty losses due to low market share. This implies that the company has no option but to implement the recommended strategies if it has to regain its market dominance. The risk of imitation can be overcome by the company by focusing on differentiation strategy. Differentiation strategy would see the company formulate unique programs which will popularly be associated to it thus enhancing its image. To reduce the risk of incurring high costs in implementing the recommendations it is necessary for the Company to ensure efficiency in all operations in order to eliminate unnecessary costs (Ekvall, 1996).

Strategy Map

Appendix

Blackberry’s mission statement is aimed at achieving the status of a high designer, manufacturer, as well as a marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile market. The mission statement aligns to the company’s vision that addresses its future goal of becoming a leading global telecommunication as well as wireless entity by the aid of its innovative orientation.

The utilization of the company resources show that the company is committed to the achievement of its future goals. The company applies its innovativeness in revolutionizing the global Smartphone industry. The devices adopted by the firm enable its employees to work from anywhere without necessarily being in an office. BlackBerry has moved to address its leadership challenges by focusing on restructuring its entire leadership with a hope of realizing visionary and transformative leadership necessary for the achievement of the goals and objectives of Blackberry Company (Meadows, 2008).

Furthermore, the area of stakeholders points out various points on Blackberry. There has been a reduction in the number of subscribers which informs its downturn in terms of profit gains. The company needs to establish working relationship among all stakeholders in order to have one spirited move towards the set objectives. The stakeholders would be important in providing strategic guidance in order to make the company overcome intense competition.

It is important to understand that the competitive landscape of Blackberry is so mush congested. Differentiation strategy, blue ocean organization, and maximizing the distributive efficiencies would be vital in overcoming competition from rivalry firms (Spenner, 2012). Redefining the business to make it more concerned with the satisfaction of its consumers and maintaining a steady focus on the needs of the employees would be a sufficient requirement towards maximizing profit for Blackberry Company.

REFERENCE

Cabrera, E. F. (2012). The six essentials of workplace positivity. People &Strategy, 35(1), 50–

60.

Ekvall, G. (1996). Organizational climate for creativity and innovation. European Journal of

Work and Organizational Psychology, 5(1) 105–123. Hamel, G. (2009). Moonshots for management. Harvard Business Review, 87(2), 91–

98.https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/web/pl/product.seam?c=20331266&i=20331394&cs=502ded68209602b62fec1adb81951e0d

Lichtenstein, S. (2012). The role of values in leadership: How leaders’ values shape value

creation. Integral Leadership Review, 12(1), 1–18

Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea

Green.

Pfeffer, J., & Veiga, J. F. (1999). Putting people first for organizational success. Academy of

Management Executive, 13(2), 37–48.Spenner, P., & Freeman, K. (2012). To keep your customers, keep it simple. Harvard Business

Review, 90(5), 108–114.