Strategy and Business Model Innovation (BMI) Australian firms

Question: Write a Report on Strategy and Business Model Innovation (BMI) for two Australian firms. Answer: First Key Idea- Strategy and its application to Coles Supermarkets The strategy is a key term used in the most of the business organizations for developing a framework to achieve the business objectives and targets by aligning the organizational vision, mission statement, goals, and value proposition with the organizational resources and core competences. The strategy directs the workforce for achieving the business objectives and targets by communicating the organizational vision, mission statement, values, goals, objectives and organizational practices with them. The strategy implementation is a sequence of strategic activities carried-out by the organization for managing the execution of the strategic plan. The strategic implementation is related to provide the firm a competitive advantage by maximizing the resource optimization, utilization, and management for the best organizational practices (IFM, 2015). The strategy influences resources, technologies, product development, and manufacturing operations for offering the unique and valued added products or services that create value to the customers. The strategy provides the firm a sustainable competitive edge by offering the reliable and effective customer service through offering the high-performing and exclusive quality of the products. Application of Brand Positioning strategy to Coles Supermarkets Coles Supermarkets Australia Pvt. Ltd. is the second largest retailing supermarket chains in Australia after Woolworth Supermarkets that is owned by the parent company, Wesfarmers. It was founded by George Coles in 1914 in Collingwood, Melbourne in Australia. It currently has 766 retailing supermarket stores at different locations across the Australian markets and has employed more than 1, 00,000 employees to operate both internal and external business operations. It is a retail subsidiary company that operates in business at different locations across the Australian markets with supermarkets stores as well as re-branded BI-LO supermarkets. The marketing strategy of Coles is aimed at attaining the sustainable competitive advantage by delivering the quality and valued retailing foods products and grocery items through its supermarkets stores (Low, 2016). The brand positioning is used by Coles as its marketing strategy to place itself among the top retailing brands in Australia. Coles brand positioning strategy is aimed at achieving the leading position in the Australian retailing supermarkets chain industry by beating the marketing strategy, product development, and technologies of its closest competitor, Woolworths. The brand positioning strategy includes the fresh and high-quality products, economic pricing strategy, centralized distribution through its supermarkets chains, effective marketing strategy and digital promotional campaigns, technological advancement and innovation, diversification of the service operations and highly integrated market research. The market research is based on analyzing and anticipating the current and future customers needs and demands and representing the specialized products for the targeted market segment (Australian Food News, 2015). It uses the public relationship campaigns, digital advertising ca mpaigns, social media marketing, and promotional sales tactics for maintaining its product positioning and market share in the Australian retail industry as well as developing good customer relationships by creating the high brand awareness and customer loyalty toward its products. Second Key Idea- Business Model innovation and its Application to Vocus Communications The business model innovation (BMI) is redesign or restructuring of the business operations, manufacturing processes, production technologies, and customer service operations for creating something new in order to deliver the value-added and high-end customer service through its supermarkets stores chains. The BMI puts significant changes and innovation to the existing business model for creating, capturing, and delivering values to the products and services. The BMI creates new path for the sustainable growth of the organization. The BMI creates the profitable ventures for Coles by revolutionizing its business operations through the modernization of the business operations, processes, and systems. The BMI is the combination of the strategic statements including organizational vision, mission, goals, values, strategies, core competences, and resource strengths for enhancing the brand image, competitive advantage, and value proposition of the firm in the relevant industry (Design Innovation, 2015). The BMI enhances the suitability, adaptability, survival, sustainability, and acceptability of the products and services to meet the growing market demands and diverse customers needs. The BMI is intended to deliver value to the customers by developing new concepts, and ideas to the existing products or service operations for determining the success of the business firms. The BMI improves the organizational strategic decision-making, value chain management operations, and customer service experiences. Application of BMI to Vocus Communication Limited Vocus Communication Limited is an Australian-based international telecommunication company that offers a range of services, such as mobile and unified communications, broadband services, and data network services, such as Internet, Ethernet, IP, Data Fibre, WAN, VOIP, and submarine data cable. It is a public limited company that is traded as ASX: VOC. It was founded in 2008 and has its business operations in Australia and New Zealand. Vocus owns and operates 18 data centers and an Onshore Network Operations Center (ONOC) for offering the data services to the customers across Australia and New Zealand. Vocus Communications Ltd. applies the BMI to its organization for incorporating changes and innovation to the organizational practices through the development of new ideas and engineering concepts to support the telecommunication technological operations (Hopkins, 2012). The BMI of Vocus Communications Ltd. includes organizational vision, mission statement, goals, values, strategies, core competences, and value proposition for enhancing the supply chain networks, value chain, resource maximization, and customer service experiences. The BMI of Vocus is based on cloud computing technology and Information and communication technologies (ICT) for providing the web-based technologies and range of telecommunication services. It uses the disruption model of innovation for ensuring the highly technological advancements through the use of ICT for offering the reliable, quality, high speed and flexible internet connectivity services at cheaply rates to the clients (Vocus Communications, 2017). The BMI model assists to improve the voice communication in the wholesale market for allowing the clients to capitalize on its significant network growth through the integration of Nextgen network infrastructure. Conclusion From the above discussions, it can be concluded that both key ideas of Business Model Innovation and Marketing strategy were developed for the firms representatively for attaining the competitive advantage in the relevant Australian markets. The BMI is used in the organization of Vocus Communications Ltd. for developing technological advancements and innovation in order to deliver effective customer service. The retailing branding positioning strategy of Coles provides the firm the competitive edge over the competitors in the Australian retailing industry. References Australian Food News (2015). Wesfarmers has Coles supermarket group growth plan strategy. [Online]. Available at: https://www.ausfoodnews.com.au/2015/11/16/wesfarmers-has-coles-supermarket-group-growth-plan-strategy.html. (Accessed: 26 April 2017). Design Innovation (2015). Using Business Model Innovation to Create New Paths to growth. [Online]. Available at: https://www.innovation-management.org/business-model-innovation.html. (Accessed: 26 April 2017). Hopkins, R. (2012). 7 Best practices for Business Model Innovation. [Online]. Available at: https://sandbox.businessinnovationfactory.com/articles/7-best-practices-business-model-innovation. (Accessed: 26 April 2017). IFM (2015). Porters three Generic Strategies. [Online]. Available at: https://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/research/dstools/porters-generic-competitive-strategies/. (Accessed: 26 April 2017). Low, C. (2016). Wesfarmers Fresh Strategy to Safeguard Coles Growth. [Online]. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/business/retail/wesfarmers-fresh-strategy-to-safeguard-coles-growth-20160224-gn2dih.html. (Accessed: 26 April 2017). Shephyken (2015). SIX STRATEGIES TO COMPETE IN BUSINESS. [Online]. Available at: https://hyken.com/customer-service-3/six-strategies-to-compete-in-business/. (Accessed: 26 April 2017). Vocus Communications (2017). Business Internet-You Get What You Pay For. [Online]. Available at: https://www.vocus.com.au/news. (Accessed: 26 April 2017).