Strategic Management Research Journal Part 2

1. Strategic management includes an analysis of a business's current state. Continuing with your research of Caterpillar, Inc., you will leverage the business SWOT tool to identify and drive organizational strategic decision making and evaluate problem-solving strategies for the company. Review the Strategic Management Project Background document. Watch the SWOT and how to apply it lecture video posted on the Week 2 Content page. Create a Word doc and title it Strategic Management Research Journal Part 2. Write a 350- to 525-word response to the following prompts in your journal entry: 1. Conduct a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis of Caterpillar, Inc. and create a SWOT matrix. Each SWOT quadrant must contain 7-10 items, (this is not included in the 525-word count). 2. Analyze Caterpillar's strengths and include specific examples based on your SWOT analysis findings. 3. Analyze the weaknesses and threats for any common themes that might be a risk. 4. Compare Caterpillar's Strengths against the Opportunities ( from the SWOT ) and identify the best probable opportunity to increase competitive advantage. 5. Propose problem-solving strategies to address Caterpillar's weaknesses or threats that could be mitigated by a business opportunity or business decision. Note: You will use information from this entry in your presentation due in week 5.

Check that your paper follows the Journal Writing Requirements for This Course on the main content page. Check that your Citations and References follow the Citation and Reference Samples on the main content page. Submit your assignment. Strategic Management Research Journal Part 2 Analyze Caterpillar's strengths and include specific examples based on your SWOT analysis findings.  Strengths , thus the Caterpillar strength includes the company contains strong free cash: according to Brush and Bromiley free cash flow positively influences sales growth (2000). As such, free cash flow also has an outstanding performance in the new market, good return on the capital expenditure on the goods and services also reliable suppliers and also the Caterpillar has higher customer satisfaction and establishment of new product development which encourage more customers to be buying from the company.  Weakness of the Caterpillar includes the high turnover of the manpower, also the company posses Weak organizational structure which hinder its development, the company of Caterpillar is hinders by the high days inventory which is costly also marketing strategies are weak and thus there is need for improvement in marketing and also other weakness of the Caterpillar is the limited success in all the product lines.

 Also Caterpillar enjoys opportunities like the enhancement of the new technology, low inflation rate, access to the online market which increase the product availability to customers in foreign countries and also within the country and thus helps to reduces transportation cost but helps to Increases customer spending due to availability of product and also there is market dilution enjoyed by the Caterpillar.  Threats encountered by the Caterpillar includes the Stronger local distributors ,exposure to currency fluctuations, also there is liability laws of various countries, Seasonal demand counterfeit and low-quality product and the threats on the new environment regulations. Weaknesses and threats for any common themes that might be a risk.  Thus Caterpillar Company contains higher turnover ratio and thus it has to face a lot of loss of talent frequently thus the Caterpillar Company is not able to come up with new researches as it has lower investments.  Also the organizational structure of the Caterpillar company is weak in comparison to the other competing industries and thus it is not able to deal with the new business model and also marketing strategy of the Caterpillar company is relatively weak and it needs improvement.  Also in the threats perspective the Caterpillar company faces a lot of issues like the local distributors have greater bargaining power and currency fluctuations as it operates in a number of countries and also some of products that have seasons demand and thus the profitability of the company is restricted and the government regulation related to the green

environment also poses some threats to the company and thus the Caterpillar company also has to deal with a fake and products which have low quality.

Comparing Caterpillar's weaknesses against its opportunities  For example if we can compare the weaknesses and opportunities of the company thus it is shown that the Caterpillar company is required to put more efforts on R&D so that it can come up with more innovative technology as this has decreased investment and thus the company contains low presence in the online market and thus this will result to opportunity to expand its business and thus the government initiatives to promote green products can help the company if it is able to invest of green product Proposing the problem solving strategies to address Caterpillar's weaknesses or threats that could be mitigated by a business opportunity or business decision.  Use of act it out thus the Caterpillar company need to make a table of different issues that are facing, and depending on these issues and problems and thus the management has to find out the most effective method of dealing with the issue for example the company has to invest more so that the management must decide which field it needs to invest more.  Also the Caterpillar company can use identifying pattern thus helps to find out the trends and patterns which can be found from the past performance and then it has to come up with the probable solution to certain problems . Reference Brush, T. H., Bromiley, P., & Hendrickx, M. (2000). The free cash flow hypothesis for sales growth and firm performance. Strategic management journal , 21 (4), 455-472.