For an international company of your choice, analyze the impact of Coronavirus on the strategic, tactical, and operational level. Based on your analysis, provide the company with actionable recommendations. What should the company do in the short term? Once the crisis is over, what should the company do differently (if anything)?
You should base your analysis and recommendations on information about the company (either what is available online, or if you have contacts at the company feel free to interview them), information about the industry (what have other companies done, industry analyses by experts etc), information about the countries in which the company is operating and what measures are imposed there. Also, you should try to consult expert sources (books, academic journal articles, best practices) so that you can examine the situation from a different angle.
Examples: a) you could consider companies whose supply chain is disrupted and analyze their response to consumers in the context of their strategy. What should they have done differently in terms of marketing communication? What should they have done differently in terms of supply chain management? b) you could consider companies in the travel industry (always pick one) and examine their response to government regulation, communication to customers, and measures taken. How can they regain customers’ trust? c) you could examine companies whose products or services are extra valuable during the crisis (e.g. companies assembling ventilators, or offering to reconfigure their production to make ventilators, companies selling disinfectants or beer companies switching their production to make handsanitizer) and analyze how they are responding to the crisis. What is the impact of the increased demand on their supply chain? How are they coping? What is the long term outlook for them?
Tips & Tricks
You can choose any international company that you think interests you. You could get in touch with your work placement company if you think you can get information from there. You can also choose a publicly traded company as they are legally required to publish extensive information quarterly or annually
depending on where they operate. You can also pick a company that has been in the news lately or use your network. However, the company needs to be international. This means that it needs to operate in at least two countries, and either its supply chain or distribution channel need to span two countries. This implies that large multinationals like Coca Cola or the local strawberry producer that can’t sell his/her strawberries in Belgium are fair game. The size of the company does not matter, however for a thorough analysis and insightful recommendations you will find that the company’s operations need to be somewhat complex, yet not too much.
Regarding the structure of the report, you are free to follow any structure that you deem appropriate. If you aren’t sure, these are some tips:
• Always include an introduction providing some context/ background and a conclusion where you synthesize your main findings.
• For the content of the report you can choose to follow the timeline: this is what the company did initially, this is what the company is currently doing, this is what I believe the company should do in the future.
• You can also choose to present your analysis in terms of disciplines: this is what the company promised to do marketing wise, this implies the following changes to the supply chain and therefore I anticipate the following consequences finance-wise.
• You can also choose to order your analysis in terms of strategy → tactics → operations. Your analysis will then focus on whether the company’s response (tactics) is in line with its mission/ vision (strategy) and whether it has the means to execute its response (operations).
• To summarize: depending on the point (conclusion) that you are trying to make, you will find that a good structure will support you in making that point. So there is no “best” structure to your report.
