All over the world, businesses are being carried out under threats amidst opportunities because they are conducted in an uncertain environment. The associated risks can be better imagined.
The environment of a business cannot be predicted because it is constantly and ever changing. The shape and character of an environment to an organization depends on the perception of the strategist.
A change or new development in the environment may be viewed different by different strategists especially where such new development is seen as an opportunity by one company and as a threat for another company.
Strategy that determines the direction and action focus of an organization goal development is an integral part of strategy formulation. Strategy deals with the generation and alignment of programs to meet predetermined goals. Certain initial criteria for evaluating a strategy include its clarity, motivational impact, internal consistency, compatibility and workability.
In addition, effective strategies should of a minimum measure encompass certain other critical factors and structural elements.
Strategies are purposely built to allow for flexibility and maneuver. A planned maneuverability and repositioning allows a media manager to use minimum resources while keeping competitors at a relative disadvantage they permit the strategy planner to reapply the same forces to selected positions at different times.
The environment for corporate policy and strategy could be either internal or external. Internal environment includes all factors within an organization, which impact strength or cause weakness of strategic nature, while the external environment includes all the factors outside the organization, which provide opportunities or pose threats to the organization. The strengths, weaknesses opportunities and threats in the environment can be discerned through SWOT analysis.
A systematic approach to understanding the environment is crucial for the existence, growth and profitability of any media firm. Such an approach is the SWOT analysis and is used for formulating effective policies and strategies that capitalize on the opportunities through the use of strengths and neutralizes the threats by minimizing the impact of weaknesses.
Nigeria is a democratic country, where the government plays an active role as a planner, promoter and regulator of economic activities. Because of this, media managers should be very conscious and sensitive to the political environment.
The federal, state and local governments take various actions that have positive or negative impact on business. Regrettably, some governmental decision affecting business may have been made out of political considerations.
In responding to their environments, media managers adopt different strategic approaches; some adopt defensive and protective approaches. In this case, their interests and the measures could be crafted around their products, process, promotions, distribution channels and protection of their strategic interests.
In responses to external environment, media firms maneuver strategically by strengthening their strengths, weakening their weaknesses, exploiting the available opportunities and confronting the threats to their strategic interests by playing around the marketing mix or policy or strategy or 4ps products, prices, places and promotions.
It must be noted that the publishers as modern business managers operate in a dynamic environment. The change in the environment has been rapid and unpredictable. Readers and advertisers have been showing complex behaviour.
The most dramatic change has been that exhibited by competitive pressures. Competitors have been applying one strategy or the other to adapt to the dynamic business environment. Weakness in competitive practice can be observed in any aspect of business operation.
This may be in form of inadequate strategic management practices in the organizations functional areas. No matter the form of competitive weakness, it is inability of the business organizations to adapt to changes in its environment that is the salient problem. The consequence from this weakness is decline in performance measures or even outright ‘death’ of the company in some areas.
The constant competitive change today in Nigerian business environment requires greater organizational adaptability. There is an increasing complexities as well as accelerating rate of change in environments and there are conviction that future of environment is unpredictable.
Strategies of planned innovation and long-range planning are undermined by unpredictable changes. The environment of any media firm is the aggregate of all conditions, events and influences that surrounds and affect it.
It is widely agreed that the development and communication of strategy are among the most important activities of top management strategies, which helps to shape an organization towards having its purpose and mission accomplished. Without strategies the organization is like a ship without a radar going round in circles.
Some media managers ascribed failure to lack of strategy or wrong strategic plan or lack of implementing a good strategy. They concluded therefore that without an appropriate strategy, effectively implemented, failure is a matter of time.
This agrees with the views of Stainer et al when they posited that strategy is the forging of companys mission, setting objectives for the organisation in high for external and internal forces, formulating specific policies and strategies to achieve objective and ensuring their proper implementation so that the basic purpose and objective of the organisation will be achieved.
A media firm is not just an innovator of ideas but a practitioner. Its role is to ingenuously seek out profit making opportunities under an uncertain environment.
However, the ultimate source from which organizational profit and loss are derived is the demand and supply future uncertainty.
If a media manager who has successfully deployed analytic techniques to uncover significant insights which ought to be converted to quick competitive advantages fails to act and take such advantage, he will surely have less than optimal results. Delay will obviously enable other media companies to discover almost same insights.
A media firm can make more profits only if it anticipates future conditions more correctly than other competitors and act with speed in the strategy that it ultimately adopts to take appropriate advantages of its discoveries.
Media managers can only respond very well to competition under uncertainty by reviewing, periodically the newspapers contents, different contents for different platforms, distributional channels of the newspapers, pricing and promotion. Those at the helms of affairs should be concerned about how to position their newspapers in a calculative attempt to distinguish a particular newspaper from those of its competitors. This aims to help readers know the real differences with a distinct features that will ensure and sustain their patronages.
Blending of these tools have however taken a back row while energy is being deployed to giving awards at a fee. Any other things outside these will amount to winkling in the darkness; this is very dangerous!
Finally, business analytics delivers competitive insights that very good media firms must act upon speedily in order to be competitively in advantaged position. These opportunities must be reconfigured in a strategic contexts and implemented before they become commonplace and does not confer much extra- ordinary advantage than what any other competitor can gain from it.
Abiola Ayankunbi is MD/CEO at AbingMO3 Marketing Management Consultancy
0802 305 1315
abiolaayankunbi@yahoo.com