Strategic Planning Of Expanding The Business In Thomas Cook

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1. Knowledge and understanding about most popular strategic options:

Franchising:

Franchising is focused on the concept of marketing that can be selected by a company as a strategy for expansion of business. They enforced the franchiser licenses and any-how, intellectual property, procedures, use of its business brand, model, rights to sell and exchange its branded services and products to the franchisee. The franchisee give definite fees and accept to follow with certain rules and responsibilities and set out in the dealership contract. For example: Thomas cook company renders a licensed perquisite to the franchisee for doing business and offers assistance in training, organising, managing, marketing and merchandising in return for a consideration in monetary term.

Importance of Franchising:

There are many benefits of franchising which are as follows:

Indicates success of business: The effort need to create a franchisor corporation advise that the enterprise cognisance successful sufficiency to engage in enlargement. It also trust that brand is valuable establishing or feels equipped to control all their franchisees in which business improve its brand. If Thomas cook adopt this strategy then easily growth in the success of business and they give chances to start up to the others.

Builds brand: Franchisor companies develop their franchises to change their brand name in a household name. To build a placeable brand, franchisor of Thomas Cook should perform with its franchises to ensure that they deliver the outcomes the brand promises(Albrechts, 2015). This needs providing proper training along with procedure and policy of operating which support franchise serve its consumers.

Management contracts:

A management contract refers to a contract in which an organisation's operational control is vested by agreement in a separate organisation that execute the essential functions of management in return for a charge or fee. Management contracts consider not selling a process of doings operations but include actually doing them. A contract management can include a broad scope of functions like production and operation facility, accounting, management of personnel, marketing training and services. In hospitality industry, Thomas Cook can be operate in management contract in which they can easily acquire scale of economics, brand recognition, a global reservation method etc.

Importance of contract management:

In the context of Thomas Cook, there are many importance of contract management which are as under:

• Administration support to track control and ensure that all fund go through in a sourcing cycle are getting.
• Effectively manage and monitor the risks bearing by government.
• It can keep a track of significant dates link to renewals of the contract and create alert for the same.
• Management contract assure that contractual obligations meet by the both parties.
• It giving perfect documented audit track(Bryson, 2018).
• Management contract support to eliminate that situation in which risk of potential breach of contract.
• Maximising operational and financial performance and reduce the risks.

Joint venture:

A joint venture is an entity which is established by two or more parties, specifically defined by shared governance, shared risks and returns and shared ownership. For instances: Thomas Cook can engage in joint venture for many reasons such as particularly rising markets, to access capabilities and skills, to approach a new market, to share risk for broad projects and investments and to increase standards of efficiencies by combining operations and assets(Cassidy, 2016).

Importance of joint venture:

In the context of Thomas Cook, there are many importance of joint venture which are as under:

• Support to Thomas Cook and its party to save money in advertising, marketing and operating costs.
• Enables them to offer their consumers new services and products.
• Enables them to achieve territories of new geographical place of market and new technological any-how.
• In this, dose not need of commitment for long-term.
• Support them to save time.
• Support them to get referrals and new business associate.

Mergers and acquisition:

In Acquisition and Mergers, transaction of possession of company, their operating units and other businesses of company are consolidated and transferred with other entities. For example: prospect of management of strategic, mergers and acquisition can permit Thomas Cook to downsize or grow and change the nature of competitive position and their business(Dibrell,Craig and Neubaum,2014). In legal point of view, a acquisition is a legal combination of two companies into one business, it is happen when one company take s possession of another company's assets, equity interest and stock etc.

Importance of Merger and Acquisition:

In the context of Tomas Cook, there are many importance of merger and acquisition which are as follows:

• Change product line and raise product offering.
• Increase share of market.
• Gain access to technology, research and development, patent etc.
• Straight integration of supply chain.
• Value enhancement and potential advantages of tax.

Thomas cook choose strategy of merger and acquisition. This strategy is more beneficial for this hospitality industry because they can control over the markets, it takes the form of returns improvement and cost savings(e Costa and et. al., 2014).

Student may also like to read: Customer Value Management of Homebase

2. Critically analyse the factors affecting implementation of strategies:

Strategic implementation is an activity which put strategies and plans into action to achieve targeted goals. This is a critical to an organisation's success, and addressing the how, when, where and who reaching the targeted objectives and goals. Its focus on the whole business activities. It is also described as the way in that a company should amalgamate, utilise and develop culture, control systems, culture and organisational structure to follow methods which increase better performance and competitive advantage. There are some factors which affect the strategies implementation are as under:

Leadership:

Leaders behaviour and action influences organisational and group behaviour and leadership plays an significant role in implementation of strategy. Its main role is to transforming the business into a successful organisation. Effective leadership motivates and inspires the individuals in the organisation to perform together to complete objectives of organisation. In Thomas Cook company, if behaviour of leaders and their leadership style is effective in the organisation and people work good from motivate them, then its affect the strategic implementation in positive manner because now they can decision about how to implement the plans for achieving the targeted goals of the company(Goetsch and Davis, 2014).

Leadership style is effective in Thomas Cook but they can more improve in leadership style. So, they can properly put the plans for achieving the specific goals of the company. There are some points in which they can improve the leadership of their leaders which are as follows:

• Improve by increasing the trust in the employees.
• Become a honourable leader whom employees inspires to follow.
• Leverage inter and intra organisational cooperation.
• Foster competitive advantage and innovation.
• Develop, coach and attract top talent(Hübner, Kuhn and Wollenburg, 2016).
• Sustain operational, quality and speed excellence.
• Build teamwork, trust or spirit of community.

Hence, above all points can help to better leadership which effectively influence the implementation of strategy.

Structural Design: Organisational structure is a main priority in apply a carefully developed strategy. If some aspects such as structure, the chain of command, organisational chart, components that determine structure of organisation etc. are effective, then Thomas Cook easily implement the strategies for achieving goal of the company. Its positively affect the strategy implementation in the company. Designing a structure needs a consideration of the company's values, business and financial goals. Thomas Cook can more improve their organisational structural design for implementing the strategies more effectively.

Identify which type of structure of organisation best suitable for their needs of business. Company's business units, types and how it operate can identify that which kind of structure is choose for the company. Managers and executives are liable for assuring every business units meets the goals of the organisation. This all can help to implement the strategies in effective manner.

Information and Control Systems: Information and control systems, both development can be view as strategies to cope with growing uncertainty of environment. This is the way in which various prospects of control systems and attribute of environment combine in a many of ways to improve performance. This affect the strategy process and trade the information which evaluator important and relevant in respect of strategy implementation and development(Malekpour, Brown, and de Haan, 2015). Thomas Cook control all their activities and secure the information which is protect the company's operational activities which affect the implementation of strategies.

Human Resources: Human resource is a key assets of the company because they perform all the activities of the company for achieving the targeted goals. Human resource is exploited to define both the persons who perform for company and the department liable for maintaining resources related to workers. Human resource management department affect the implementation of strategies because if they are select most skilled and qualified employees from the outside environment, then they perform proper work and increase productivity of the company. In Thomas Cook, HRM main role is selecting, recruiting, give training and development to the employees, their benefits, performance appraisal. If these all aspects are done properly by HR department, then its helps in implementation of strategies of the company.

3. Analyse and evaluate the different performance metrics:

Performance metrics are fundamental to tracking how well performance of worker. Apply them the accurate way is difficult. Employee performance metrics good both the employee and the organization. These matrices must be analysis by a ratio that represent the development of the process. Metric of performance measures the Thomas cook business's performance, activities and behaviour(Newman, 2016). It assesses how company is completing their goals and how well employees are perform their job and work. It gives accurate data and information and also provide results which evaluate clearly defined quantities within a scope that help in upgrading and improvements. It can helps a range of stakeholders necessarily from consumers and shareholders to workers.

Critical Success Factors (CSFs): Critical success factor is a administration term for an component that is required for a project or a company to attain its objective. A CSF is critical activity need for assuring the growth of an organisation. Critical success factors are those some property that should go effectively to assure growth for the organization and a manager. Hence, they stand for those enterprise and managerial areas which should granted continual and special attention to take about advanced performance. CSFs consider issues critical to the company's actual operational processes and to its future growth. Critical Success Factors are those circumstances and variables required to change a positive result for a business strategy and program. The CSFs are the anticipated causal circumstances of a specific desired result. Examples include: A project group determined the necessity to gain education on Quick method to renew their certainty on conventional the critical path project method as a captious success element with the complex new software improvement initiative.

Key Performance Indicators: In respect to create a successful employees tracking system, Thomas Cook necessity to understand what key performance indicators they do and for what. It is the performance of someone's. If employees giving better performance in the company, then their KPI's will be satisfied(Phillips and Moutinho, 2014). This company use KPI at many levels to appraise their growth at reaching targets. KPI's of high level focus on the entire performance of the company and KPI's of low level focus on employees and activities in department. The KPI's followed by various individuals in the same company and also depending on their duties. In KPI process includes some steps such as:

• Determine a set of applicable KPI's to track for business of the company.
• Create scoreboards and dashboards to display and measure KPI results.
• Appraise how well goals of business are being met focused on the KPI's.
• Change process and strategies as needed to enhance the performance.
• Approach whether the KPI's still match with objectives and modify them if required.

The Balance Scorecard: Balance Scorecard is a work metric which is used in strategic management to improve and determine several internal roles of the company and their results comes in external outcomes. It is adopt to evaluate and given feedback to the company. Collection of data is important to giving quantitative outcomes and data gathered is taken by executives and managers for use to create effective decisions for the Thomas Cook company.

The balanced scorecard is adopt to learn good activities in the company by isolating 4 different function which required to be analysed. Those four areas include growth and learning, finance, customers and business processes(Wolf and Floyd, 2017). The balance scorecard is adopt to achieve goals, measurement, objectives and initiatives which outcome from those special functions of the company. Company can easily determines components hindering performance of the company and boundary strategic changes tracked by scorecard.

CONCLUSION

From the above given report it has been summarized that strategic planning is very effective for any company because it set priorities, strengthen operations, assure the employees are perform toward common objectives, focus on resources and energy etc. Franchising is a most common way to enlarge their business in other location or areas. Effective franchising can lead and improve the brand name of the company in the market. Joint ventures are effective when two companies are joint together to approach new markets, increase share and profit of the company, to rising efficiency and sharing risk on broad investment. In Mergers and acquisition, one company take over the other company for expand their business successfully in the market. They want to achieve higher profits. If organisational design of structure is good and well maintain the structure, then it enhance the productivity of the organisation. Leadership and human resource effectively and positively affect the implementation of strategies because they motivate and encourage the employees in which they give better performance and helps to organisation in achieving goals.

REFERENCES

• Abdallah, C. and Langley, A., 2014. The double edge of ambiguity in strategic planning. Journal of Management Studies. 51(2). pp.235-264.
• Albrechts, L., 2015. Ingredients for a more radical strategic spatial planning. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design. 42(3). pp.510-525.
• Bryson, J. M., 2018. Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations: A guide to strengthening and sustaining organizational achievement. John Wiley & Sons.
• Cassidy, A., 2016. A practical guide to information systems strategic planning. Auerbach Publications.
• Dibrell, C., Craig, J. B. and Neubaum, D. O., 2014. Linking the formal strategic planning process, planning flexibility, and innovativeness to firm performance. Journal of Business Research. 67(9). pp.2000-2007.

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