Managerial and Critical Success Factors

Q.1. Critical Success Factors (CSF) are the elements that organizations require to accomplish their mission.
They are the factors that create success to the business. The success factors should focus on all stakeholders of the organization. Success factors are elements such as the money, customer satisfaction, quality improvement, product development, employee attraction and retention, sustainable business development, good strategic management among others (Betz, 2001). The business should focus on the future customers by improving quality in product and service delivery.
The strategies that an organization sets should be aimed at increasing the profitability of the business as well as increasing customer satisfaction. The strategies should focus on the future as well as improving the leadership of the organization so as to enable employees to be innovative. Cost should be properly managed to reduce the price of the product and increase the profits of the business. Success factors are aimed at improving strategy development and cost management skills of the managers (Drejer, 2002).

Q. 2. Competitive advantage is gained through increasing innovation through the use of technology and increasing customer value.
Innovation is the implementation of new ideas in the production and marketing of the products that are being marketed by the organization. The use of technology is important in developing new products which differentiate the company’s products from those of the competitors. Customer value is the total satisfaction that the customer gains from the consumption of the products of the organization. Examples of organizations using innovation are Microsoft Inc. , Apple Corp; Virgin Group; and others. Examples of organizations using customer value as a strategy are Daimler AG, Boeing and others (Drejer, 2002).
Q. 3. SWOT analysis analyzes the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that an organization’s products have compared to others in the market.
The value chain analysis describes how Michael Porter explained about increasing the value of products in all the stages of production (Betz, 2001). Each level of production increases the value of the product so that the end product has highest value compared to competitors’ products. Execution analysis investigates how a company implements its strategies as compared to competitors.
The balanced scorecard gives a range of figures that are used to rate the achievement of the goals of the organization. The four strategic resources are linked in that they establish the ability of the organization to outdo the competitors in the market. The aim of each method is to identify how better the organization is in a competitive market environment. They use tools and strategies that are almost similar in evaluating the business (Drejer, 2002).
Q. 4. Management by exception is a policy where the organization concentrates on issues that show a big deviation from the planned policies.
The organization has pre-determined results that it expects all the systems to achieve. Major deviations from the expected results are dealt with while minor deviations are rejected. More important matters are dealt with and this reduces the wastage of resources on insignificant matters. For example, the management may decide to concentrate on departments producing one thousand units. The rest are ignored since their contribution is not significant (Drejer, 2002).
Q. 5. Balanced scorecard is a method of evaluating the success of a business using both financial as well as non financial measures.
The non financial measures are customers, internal business processes and the learning and growth strategy of the organization. Different companies have different strategies. They have different problems and their resources are also different. The scorecard will differ in different companies because each company has different situations and cannot give the same evaluation figures (Drejer, 2002).
References

Betz, F. (2001). Executive Strategy: Strategic Management and Information Technology.
John Wiley & Sons. New York. Drejer, A. (2002). Strategic Management and Core Competencies: Theory and Application. Quorum Books. Westport, CT.