Analyze internal and external business environments
Recommend short-term and long-term strategic focuses
Communicate strategy to a variety of audiences
Scenario
You have been appointed the director of strategic planning for the Fortune Global 500 company you selected in Module One.
The vice president of strategy and operations (VP) has confided in you that strategic planning has been a challenge for the company over the past year; specifically, crafting new strategies and aligning them to the company’s mission and goals. You have now been tasked with creating a new strategic planning proposal to help the company explore at least one new growth opportunity to increase its revenue or market share in the industry.
Your proposal should present a detailed analysis of the company’s internal and external environments as well as specific actions the company can take over the next five years to achieve the targeted growth. Your proposal will be presented to various stakeholders at different levels in the organization, so you will need to adapt parts of your proposal to suit different needs. Additionally, you will need to send a shorter executive summary of your proposal to the leadership team.
Directions
Strategic Planning Proposal
Complete an analysis of your company and organize this information into a presentation. Compile all slides from your milestone assignments to create a final presentation for your stakeholders. Use resources such as the company website, which will have pertinent information including its sustainability report, and other relevant sources to help complete this presentation. Be sure to address any feedback you have received on your milestone assignments.
Part 1: Presentation
Your final presentation should include the following elements:
Perform an internal environment analysis of your company to understand the company’s current business environment and future goals. Present the results of your analysis.
Overview (slide 1): Provide a brief overview of the company’s products, services, and customer base.
Existing entities (slides 2–3): Identify at least two existing partnerships, mergers, or acquisitions. Explain how these entities contribute to the company’s revenue or market share.
Five-year goals (slide 4): Speculate on what the company wants to achieve in the next five years by considering their mission statement, values and goals, and relevant sections of their sustainability report.
Perform an external environment analysis of your company to identify the company’s competitive environment and find an opportunity the company can utilize to grow its revenue or market share in the industry. Present the results of your analysis.
Competitors (slide 5): Identify at least two of your company’s top competitors and explain how they compete with your company.
Competitive advantages (slides 6–11): Evaluate your company’s competitive advantages.
Summarize the unique skill sets, products, location, and values of your company.
Use Porter’s five forces to analyze your company’s competitiveness and growth potential in its industry. Assign a rating to your company for each of Porter’s five forces as very high (VH), high (H), low (L), or very low (VL). Justify your ratings.
Area of opportunity (slides 12–13): Identify one area of opportunity that will help your company increase its revenue or market share over the next five years. Explain how this opportunity can lead to an increase in revenue or market share.
Conduct a buy-build-ally analysis for your company and recommend actions your company can take to realize your identified opportunity within five years.
Implementation strategy (slides 14–17): Recommend an implementation strategy for your company.
Determine whether the company will need to buy, build, or ally with another company. Consider the skills, facilities, products, and services the company will need, to capitalize on the identified opportunity.
Use the speaker notes of your presentation to explain the strategy behind your buy, build, and ally recommendations.
Timeline (slides 18–19): Construct a timeline of what your company should achieve by the end of each year for the next five years.
(Note: Use both on-slide text and narration or speaker notes to convey your information effectively. If narration is not possible, precise and extensive speaker notes should be used, while addressing all of the rubric elements in the presentation. For example, you can use brief bulleted lists summarizing the highlights of your analysis on the slide and include more detailed explanations in your narration or speaker notes.)
Part 2: Executive Summary
Create an executive summary of your strategic planning proposal. Remember to consider the audience and purpose of this report when drafting your summary.
Purpose: Briefly explain the purpose of the proposal.
Current business environment: Describe the internal and external business environments of the company.
Outline the various analyses you conducted and briefly summarize their importance.
Describe the opportunity for growth you identified and how it will impact the company’s revenue or market share.
Recommendations: Recommend actions, such as buy, build, and ally, that the company should take to utilize the identified opportunity and explain the reasons for your recommendations.
Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell.
In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.
God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.
Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.
To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.
References
Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.
Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies, 4(8), 487.
Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.
Strategic Planning Proposal: Driving Growth Through AI-Powered Healthcare Solutions
Company: Microsoft Corporation Director of Strategic Planning: [Your Name/Title] Date: May 20, 2025
Part 1: Presentation Slides (with Speaker Notes)
Slide 1: Overview – Microsoft Corporation
[On-Slide Text]
- Company Name: Microsoft Corporation
- Core Business: Global technology leader empowering digital transformation.
- Products & Services:
- Productivity & Business Processes: Microsoft 365 (Office apps, Teams), Dynamics 365, LinkedIn.
- Intelligent Cloud: Azure, Windows Server, SQL Server, Enterprise Services.
- More Personal Computing: Windows, Surface devices, Xbox, Search & News advertising.
Strategic Planning Proposal: Driving Growth Through AI-Powered Healthcare Solutions
Company: Microsoft Corporation Director of Strategic Planning: [Your Name/Title] Date: May 20, 2025
Part 1: Presentation Slides (with Speaker Notes)
Slide 1: Overview – Microsoft Corporation
[On-Slide Text]
- Company Name: Microsoft Corporation
- Core Business: Global technology leader empowering digital transformation.
- Products & Services:
- Productivity & Business Processes: Microsoft 365 (Office apps, Teams), Dynamics 365, LinkedIn.
- Intelligent Cloud: Azure, Windows Server, SQL Server, Enterprise Services.
- More Personal Computing: Windows, Surface devices, Xbox, Search & News advertising.
- Customer Base:
- Individuals (consumers, students)
- Small & Medium Businesses (SMBs)
- Large Enterprises (governments, healthcare, education, retail, manufacturing, financial services)
- Developers & IT Professionals
[Speaker Notes] Good morning/afternoon, everyone. My name is [Your Name], and as the Director of Strategic Planning, I’m here to present a proposal designed to address the challenges in strategic crafting and alignment that the VP of Strategy and Operations has highlighted. Microsoft Corporation is a global technology powerhouse, foundational to how individuals and organizations operate today. Our vast portfolio spans productivity tools, cloud computing infrastructure, and personal computing devices. We serve an incredibly broad and diverse customer base, from individual consumers utilizing Windows and Microsoft 365, to the world’s largest enterprises leveraging Azure for their digital transformation. This broad reach and foundational technology position us uniquely for future growth.
Slide 2: Existing Entities – Strategic Partnerships
[On-Slide Text]
- Partnership 1: OpenAI
- Nature: Multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment and strategic partnership.
- Contribution to Revenue/Market Share:
- Azure OpenAI Service: Directly integrates OpenAI’s powerful AI models (GPT-4, DALL-E 3) into Azure cloud, driving significant Azure consumption revenue for enterprises adopting generative AI.
- Microsoft Copilot Integrations: Powers AI features across Microsoft 365, Windows, Dynamics 365, and other products, enhancing productivity and driving adoption/retention.
- Innovation & Competitive Edge: Positions Microsoft at the forefront of AI development, attracting top talent and customers.
[Speaker Notes] Our strategic journey is often bolstered by powerful alliances. One of our most impactful relationships is with OpenAI. This isn’t just a financial investment; it’s a deep technical collaboration that has fundamentally reshaped our product offerings. The Azure OpenAI Service allows enterprises to deploy state-of-the-art generative AI models securely within Azure, directly fueling our Intelligent Cloud revenue. Furthermore, the integration of OpenAI’s capabilities through Microsoft Copilot across our entire product suite – from Office applications to Windows and Dynamics 365 – provides a revolutionary boost in productivity. This isn’t merely about new features; it’s about fundamentally changing how people interact with our software, driving user engagement and competitive differentiation. This partnership firmly establishes Microsoft as a leader in the generative AI space, attracting cutting-edge enterprises and top talent.
Slide 3: Existing Entities – Mergers & Acquisitions
[On-Slide Text]
- Acquisition 1: LinkedIn (2016)
- Nature: Acquisition of the world’s largest professional social network.
- Contribution to Revenue/Market Share:
- Revenue Diversification: Significant direct revenue from subscriptions (Premium, Sales Navigator), advertising, and recruitment solutions.
- Data & Insights: Provides invaluable professional network data for Microsoft products (e.g., Dynamics 365 integrations, talent solutions).
- Ecosystem Expansion: Expands Microsoft’s reach into professional networking and talent acquisition, strengthening its position as a holistic business solutions provider.
[Speaker Notes] On the M&A front, the acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016 stands out as a transformative move. LinkedIn contributes directly to our revenue streams through its various subscription offerings and advertising. Beyond direct revenue, LinkedIn provides Microsoft with unparalleled insights into the global professional workforce and talent landscape. This data fuels integrations across our business applications, enriching Dynamics 365 for sales and customer relationship management, and bolstering our talent solutions. LinkedIn has significantly expanded Microsoft’s ecosystem, enabling us to offer more comprehensive solutions to businesses, from productivity and cloud infrastructure to professional networking and talent management. This strategic integration enhances our market share in the enterprise solutions space by offering a more complete and interconnected suite of services.
Slide 4: Five-Year Goals – Strategic Horizon
[On-Slide Text]
- Mission: “To empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”
- Core Values & Goals:
- Innovation & Growth Mindset
- Customer Obsession
- Diversity & Inclusion
- Trust & Responsibility (AI Ethics, Privacy)
- Speculated 5-Year Goals:
- AI Leadership: Be the undisputed leader in responsible and beneficial AI, embedded across all products and industries.
- Cloud Dominance: Solidify Azure’s position as the leading enterprise cloud platform, driving industry-specific solutions.
- Human-Centric Computing: Reinvent productivity and personal computing through seamless AI integration and next-gen hardware/software experiences.
- Sustainable & Ethical Tech: Achieve net-zero carbon, water positive, zero waste, and uphold rigorous AI ethics standards.
[Speaker Notes] Our strategic aspirations for the next five years are deeply rooted in Microsoft’s enduring mission to empower. We envision a future where Microsoft is the undisputed leader in responsible and beneficial AI, not just as a technology provider, but as a driving force for positive societal impact. This aligns perfectly with our core values of innovation and trust. We also aim to solidify Azure’s dominance as the preferred enterprise cloud platform, increasingly through tailored, industry-specific solutions. On the personal computing front, we seek to reinvent productivity by deeply embedding AI across all our experiences, fostering a more intuitive and human-centric interaction with technology. Crucially, our sustainability report emphasizes our commitment to ethical tech, aiming for significant environmental achievements like net-zero carbon, water positive, and zero waste, while upholding the highest standards of AI ethics. These ambitious goals reflect our commitment to growth, innovation, and responsible leadership.
Slide 5: External Environment – Top Competitors
[On-Slide Text]
- Competitor 1: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Competition: Direct competitor in cloud computing (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS). AWS has a larger market share in public cloud infrastructure. Compete on scale, breadth of services, pricing, and ecosystem for enterprise clients.
- Competitor 2: Google (Alphabet Inc.)
- Competition:
- Cloud (Google Cloud Platform): Direct competitor in cloud infrastructure.
- Productivity Suites: Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Gmail) competes with Microsoft 365.
- AI/Search: Google is a strong AI research leader, competing in foundational AI models and search advertising.
- Operating Systems: Android competes with Windows in mobile space.
[Speaker Notes] Turning to our external environment, our competitive landscape is dynamic and intense. Amazon Web Services, or AWS, is our primary rival in the cloud computing space. They currently hold a larger market share in public cloud infrastructure, and we compete fiercely on the breadth and depth of our services, pricing models, and the strength of our developer ecosystems. Google, under Alphabet Inc., is another formidable competitor, particularly with Google Cloud Platform, which directly challenges Azure. Beyond cloud, Google Workspace competes head-to-head with our Microsoft 365 productivity suite. Furthermore, Google’s extensive investments and leadership in AI research, search, and mobile operating systems (Android) present broad competitive pressure across several of our core business segments. This intense competition drives continuous innovation within Microsoft.
Slide 6: Competitive Advantages – Unique Skill Sets
[On-Slide Text]
- Deep Enterprise Expertise: Decades of experience serving large organizations, understanding complex IT needs, security, and compliance.
- Hybrid Cloud Leadership: Strong capabilities in integrating on-premises infrastructure with cloud solutions (Azure Stack, Azure Arc), a key differentiator for many enterprises.
- AI Research & Development: World-class research labs (Microsoft Research) and significant investments in AI, including foundational models (via OpenAI partnership).
- Global Talent Pool: Ability to attract and retain top engineering and research talent worldwide.
- Sales & Partner Ecosystem: Extensive global sales force and a vast network of partners (ISVs, SIs) for solution delivery.
[Speaker Notes] Microsoft possesses several distinct competitive advantages. Firstly, our deep, multi-decade expertise in serving enterprise customers is unparalleled. We understand the complex requirements of large organizations in terms of security, compliance, and integrating existing IT infrastructure. This leads directly to our second advantage: leadership in hybrid cloud solutions. Many enterprises cannot simply migrate everything to the public cloud overnight, and our offerings like Azure Stack and Azure Arc provide seamless integration between their on-premise systems and the cloud, a critical differentiator. Thirdly, our significant investments in AI research and development, including our pivotal partnership with OpenAI, place us at the forefront of this transformative technology. We also benefit from a truly global talent pool, attracting the brightest minds in tech. Finally, our expansive global sales force and vast partner ecosystem enable us to reach customers and deliver solutions at scale, a powerful asset that few competitors can match.
