In 2019, Verizon—an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate—acquired 45% of Vodafone—a multinational telecommunications enterprise. The transaction was valued at approximately $130 billion.
Business acquisitions and mergers aren’t new. You may have heard about various enterprises around the world absorbing smaller businesses over time. A business acquisition is one of the most common corporate-level strategy examples. Read on to explore what is a corporate-level strategy and its significance in professional environments.
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What A Corporate-Level Strategy Deals With
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Corporate-Level Strategy Examples
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Importance Of A Healthy Corporate-Level Strategy
What A Corporate-Level Strategy Deals With
In the professional world, developing a sound corporate strategy is extremely crucial. In simple words, it’s an organization’s strategic plan that encompasses a clearly defined and long-term vision. It aims to create corporate value, promote workplace culture and motivate the workforce to take appropriate actions toward achieving overall objectives. A corporate strategy is often confused with a corporate-level strategy. While they share similarities, the two are quite different in their fields.
In its most basic form, a corporate-level strategy refers to the plan devised by the highest level of an organization. It takes into consideration an organization’s business environment and other internal capacities. It’s also known as the ‘grand strategy’ as it combines business moves, hidden goals and action patterns. It concerns various levels and departments of an enterprise such as the product lines, customer groups and technologies. All in all, it reflects the topmost decision-making as part of strategic management.
Here are some defining characteristics of a typical corporate-level strategy:
- It takes into consideration the overall growth and opportunities of the business in the long run
- It informs an organization of the direction it should head toward in the future; it also helps formulate middle and low-level strategies that inform the entirety of the organization
- What is a corporate-level strategy without thorough consideration and planning? Businesses need to be mindful of available resources and environmental factors while formulating a plan
- When it comes to decision-making, there should be a two-way communication channel that informs various levels of the organization about relevant information and resources
In a nutshell, a corporate-level strategy deals with an organization’s overall objectives and long-term vision, procurement and effective utilization of resources and coordination of multiple mid- or low-level strategies across various levels and departments.
Corporate-Level Strategy Examples
There are different types of corporate-level strategies and no two strategies are the same. Each informs and guides the organization in multiple ways. Let’s explore the various types with these corporate-level strategy examples:
1. Expansion Strategy
Also known as a growth strategy, this type of corporate-level strategy helps in achieving increased business growth. Whether it’s revenue, market share or market penetration, businesses prioritize concentration (focusing efforts in the same areas it’s currently operating in) or diversification (introducing new offerings or even moving to entirely different business areas).
2. Stability Strategy
Geared towards getting more out of the current business, this type of corporate-level strategy works best for organizations that want to maintain their performance. In other words, businesses want to maintain the status quo (current performance levels) and focus on boosting their valuation.
3. Retrenchment Strategy
This type of corporate-level strategy deals with improving the brand image or market position. The strategy is aggressive and businesses often resort to turning around (create a dramatic change in the course of action) or divestiture (getting rid of elements that led to poor business performance).
4. Reinvention Strategy
Among all the types of corporate-level strategies, this one is quite unique as it involves reinventing an existing business that hasn’t changed for decades, often with new technological support. Such strategies can be either evolutionary (the business model doesn’t change much, but the way a product or service gets delivered is revamped) or revolutionary (entire business model undergoes change, often leading to changes in market dynamics).
Importance Of A Healthy Corporate-Level Strategy
Corporate-level strategies are developed by the highest level of management and they impact business growth and opportunities in the future. In today’s volatile work environment, if you want to keep pace with ever-changing industry demands, you need to keep updating your corporate-level strategy. This requires consistent problem-solving and decision-making at every stage and level within an organization.
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