Internal Analysis as a part of strategic planning process of WRSX Assignment

Internal Analysis as a part of strategic planning process of WRSX - Assignment Example Strategic planning is a means of planning at present about the desired future of the company using the knowledge and information about the company today (Special Libraries Association, 2001, p.1). WRSX is a global advertising company, which has been successfully delivering good fortunes in the advertising industry for the past 8 years. Until recently, for about a year, the company had been underperforming below what it is capable of. Failure in strategic management is the primary reason behind this situation. A well-defined, effective strategic plan is the key to success of the company in the near future. This study shows the benefits involved in including internal analysis as a part of the strategic management process and how it can bring WRSX in the right track towards its sustainability and success, in this changing world. Typically, a strategic management process consists of four broad areas. They are: Environmental Scanning, Strategy Formulation, Evaluation and Control (Akhafaji , 2003, p. 6). All these four components are inter-related to each other. Effective strategic planning helps the company to remain focused and achieve the future goals and objectives successfully. Basically a strategic planning process has four main purposes.... The Resource Based View (RBV) approach to strategy management is a tool to identify the potential resources of a firm which can be utilized to achieve competitive advantage and can result in strong performance of the company in future (Barney, J & Penrose, E, 2011). Short-term competitive advantage created from use of available resources of WRSX productively can lead WRSX to sustaining that competitive advantage for a long term if these resources are not imitable or substitutable easily. WRSX needs to develop its resources into core competencies to create competitive advantage. For this VRIN model can be utilized. This model includes the following five attributes of resources: 1) Valuable, meaning the resources must be valuable to the company in creating the strategy, 2) Rare, meaning the resources must be scarcely available to others, in creating value to the company, 3) In-imitable, meaning it cannot be easily imitated, and 4) Non-substitutable, meaning that availability of substit utes are rare (Rothaermel, 2008, p.208-209). WRSX has always been known for creativity and innovation. These are the two key attributes which is very much valuable to the company. These can neither be imitated nor substituted because creations and innovations of WRSX are its own and developed by WRSX only. WRSX enjoys a core competency in developing creativity and is an absolute necessity for an advertising agency like WRSX to satisfy its customer requirements. This helps WRSX attaining competitive advantage over its rivals and must build on it and work for more and more creations and innovations and encourage it at all levels of the company. Development of strategic capabilities can also be a key to the success WRSX. The six