Strategy Development Business Strategies Product Design Financials

1. Strategy DevelopmentBusiness StrategiesProduct DesignFinancials

2. Strategy Development • Environmental Scanning • Surveys, pie charts, etc. • Customer and Market Requirements • What will make your product viable in the market? • Order winners- What convinces the customer to buy? • Competitors and other threats – who/what are they and how will you overcome

3. Example of Environmental Scanning Figure 6: Flavoredvs Original Figure 5: Filtered VS. Tap

4. Customer/Market Reqs • Product example: Hairbrush that repels hair • Viable in the market: • Addresses a current issue woman have • No direct competitors • Easy to use, distribute • Order winner: • Easy to use plastic sheets rip the hair right off the brush, works on any type of hair

5. Customer/Market Reqs • Competitors/Threats • Phillips, Vidal Sassoon, Monroe, etc • How did we overcome our competitors? • Market research • R&D • External Threats • Supplies, Distribution, etc

6. Competitive Priorities • What will your company compete on (pick 2 or 3)? • Cost • Quality • Time to market • Flexibility • Innovation

7. Core Competency • What does your company do better than anyone else? • Examples: • Research and Development • Advertising (Brand Equity) • Manufacturing speed and quality • Employee Training • DO NOT CONFUSE CORE COMPETENCY AND COMPETITIVE PRIORITIES!!!!!!

8. Tie Competitive Priority to Core Competency • Product Example: Recycling Bin that has built in shredder and can crusher • Competitive Priority: Quality and Flexibility • Core Competencies: • Quality = Supply chain management to procure the best raw materials • Flexibility = Highly tuned manufacturing processes with integrated IT systems that allows customers to customize their recycling bins.

9. How do you support the Core Competencies • Supply Chain Management = Relational contracts with suppliers with week-to-week interaction • Highly tuned manufacturing processes with integrated IT systems = Highly trained and well paid IT department

10. Product Design • Acceptable: • Draw by hand (make sure it looks good) • Draw using PowerPoint, Visio, etc. • Find relevant pictures • Unacceptable:

11. Financials • Use Regression and Break-even analysis template • http://ta.ba.ttu.edu/jtriche/docs/Forecasting%20and%20BE%20Template.xlsx • Inputs needed: • Selling Price • Variable Cost • 1styear sales (template provided) • Last 5 years sales from competitor

12. MAD and Tracking Signal • Use MAD and TS Template • What does it mean? • How did you calculate it? (Don’t say template) • How do you interpret it? • Remember: • Negative TS means over-forecasting • Positive TS means under-forecasting

13. Seasonality • If your product is seasonal, attach a seasonal forecast. • If not, just say “We are not a seasonal product”

14. Production Capacity • Plans for the next 5 years • Defend safety capacity • Example: We will maintain 20% safety capacity of finished goods in our warehouse in our first year. • Expansion plans • From a physical (plant) perspective • From a product perspective • From a customer demographics perspective