Challenges
Discuss about the Strategic Review of Egon Zehndr International.
Egon Zehndr International is an executive search firm operating globally across 35 countries with more than 58 offices. An executive search firm offers specialized service to other organisations in hiring top level management. It was founded by Egon Zehndr in the year 1964 with its headquarters at Zurich, Switzerland. It is recognized as the third largest executive search firm. The revenue of the company was calculated to be around $300 million USD. EZI provides services and expertise in various fields such as Broad Consulting, Leadership Strategy Services and Executive Search. The strategic management in collaboration with the collaboration culture has provided the organisation with competitive advantage. Collaboration in the company is reflected by the ways in which the partners and the clients of the company interact, the process by which the company organizes and plans, the way the operations of the business are conducted and also the remuneration structure. The collaboration culture of the company include: equality, collegiality, non-competitive internal environment of sharing. The company also has a non-hierarchal organisation structure which allows the culture to grow and thrive in the organisation. However, some of the challenges that the company has been facing are as follows:
The Egon Zehndr International emphasizes on collaboration attitude of the business, deviating from the strategy of ‘promotion’ that most of the companies use. In order to maintain the collaborative culture the leaders of the company assure that strategy of collaboration have to be backed up with financial security. Since the company is operational in multiple nations change in the macro-economic situations lead to a total collapse of the strategic management that the company has that needs to be strategized accordingly. There are instances where the company has supported the global peers who were facing issues with their specific economic downfall. This is a challenge as the company itself during 2001 was facing economic setbacks due to the global downfall in the executive search market.
The company had its focus on the international market form the time of establishment, as a part to create a collaborative culture the company was to hire people who would understand the collaboration model of the company, this rule out a number of opportunities for the company to hire talented people. Thus, it often becomes a challenge for the company to influence all the employees with its strategies and business processes. However, employees today are very much driven by the money factor and search for better opportunities. Moving out of the company in a random way affects the entire management system of the company. The attrition rate of the company is very low compared to the other organisations in the industry ranging from around two-five percent yearly. But the company is still finding ways to reduce the rate even further.
Five Practices for Collaboration
The EZI Company is operating with a single firm. With this strategy, it has been free of complexities to be operational through a matrix of separate profit and loss centers. However, the major challenge that it faces due to such operational strategy is the huge burden that the company undergoes. The entire company faces financial loss and downturn when a specific unit is facing issues. As a part of the collaborative culture the company has the value of uplifting all the peers globally instead of focusing on the specified area of operation. The company also pays the partners of the firm less during difficult times; this can lead to a conflict situation in the internal environment.
The company in order to enforce the collaborative culture employees a lot of investment in the training as well as in the single company approach. The company wants to ensure that the culture of collaboration is in every aspect of the business. This is a challenge in itself as there is more and more changes in the professional ethics that people follow, new frameworks related to professional standards makes it a challenge for EZI to maintain their culture that was established with the company.
The industry has not been in the right place, as EZI is one of the major players in the industry the company has faced revenue downfall during 2001. The fall percentage was around 7 percent. It has been reported that the worldwide revenue of the top six organisations operating in the industry had faced a decline of 27 percent from the previous year’s revenue.
With the help of a strategic review, the company can recognize its opportunities in order to maintain the competitive advantage over the other organisations in the Executive search industry.
The company follows five practices in order to ensure that there is collaboration in the business process. With the single operation of the firm is the first approach that the company has taken and this can be reviewed with the help of the survey as to how the people working in the organisation feel about the culture of the company.
The company follows a strict selection process of the employees and ensures that each person associated with the company is aligned with the culture of the company. This helps the company to maintain their stand of the culture among the stakeholders like the partners and the employees. The clients of the company will relay of the employees for the services and will also bank on the culture that they are aware is prevalent in the company and hence it is important for the company to employee such people who are in sync with the company. The failure or the success of the strategy can be measured with the help performance management tools that are employed by the company.
Prioritizing Customer Satisfaction and Organic Growth
The review of the strategies should be taken place on a gap of two years in order to keep up with the changes in the external business environment. Meanwhile if there are some drastic changes in the factors the company should review the strategies immediately so that the impact of the issue is not significant. To monitor the progress objectives to each of the strategies must be set. In achievement of the strategy in the dedicated time the management can decide on the success. The department that is associated with each of the strategy should have a report of progress submitted with the top management at the end of each year so that in two years the reports can be collaborated and reviewed. In the process of review the company should draw up a clear and transparent evaluation system which should be shared by all the departments in order to maintain a culture in the organisation that is unbiased and promotes the collaborative strategy of the company even further. Since the company works as a single unit, there is a need to increase the likelihood so that the potential employees are sorted. Employing people who are most qualified than the ones who seek highest salary is one of the very effective strategies that EZI must incorporate for its greater progress and reputation.
Training is also given precedence in order to “foster deep collaboration” culture among the people. The company incorporates more than 5 million US dollar every year on the training program. There are three programs that are equally distributed in two years service of the employee and the review of the strategy can be measured by the help of the success cases that each of these employees bring to the company.
The company attributes to a compensation system and engages in the pooling of income from all its firms. It encourages collaborative work and promotes team work. Due to this, the company fails to recognize the individual success of the employees. Thus, it is very important for EZI to encourage individual performance simultaneously with the team work that would render greater success for the company as a whole. The strategy will impact the employees on a large scale as their remuneration will be impacted with this design, not only that this will also motivate and encourage the people. The review will focus on how the employees are impacted with the strategy of collaboration and will also showcase a positive or negative outcome of the strategy of collaboration, training and performance management.
The company EZI works with the chief objective of rendering its services with collaborative work. It prioritizes collaboration as the core value and ethics to perform its activities. According to the facts in the case study the company focuses on the clients to be the most important stakeholder. The clients are the most important external stakeholders and the value of the clients impacts the company and helps it grow in the future this strategy will help in developing valuable relations with the clients. The clients of the company are aware collaboration culture and this can be reviewed by talking to the clients of the company and understanding their perspective of the challenges or the advantages. EZI must implement strategies so that its communication means and processes are more productive. Greater interaction of the company with its customers would enable them to provide clients with information regarding their concern and provide them with better consultants. A smooth communication process would make it easy to allocate consultancy accordingly that would increase customer satisfaction and thus make the company more renowned and preferred.
EZI has been organically growing by acquiring local firms and selling firms to its partners. The company has the objective to expanding its market and has been operational in multiple nations. It has been successful in its expansion processes and has been able to increase its market as well. Thus, it is very important for EZI to continue in its expansion with no stagnancy. That would promote its better growth and greater success. This will impact the internal as well as the external stakeholders who are directly associated with the company like the employees, the management, the shareholders, clients etc.
It must prioritize their opinion in all its framing of business processes and work collaboratively the way it always does. The management and the partners of the company are going to be impacted with this strategy ensuring a healthy and long lasting business relation. Collaboration is a unique approach to the market place as there are no other organisations in the industry which incorporates this culture and not only extends it to the internal environment but also explores the external environmental factors as well. This can be reviewed with the help of a financial analysis of the company as compared to other organisation in the industry. It has been stated in the case study that the company is one of the leading organisation in the “executive search” industry. During the global economic downfall of the industry during 2001, though the company has faced revenue downfall, the revenue that the company has secured during that period was more than other companies. Therefore such comparisons of the company will help in understanding the effectiveness of the collaborative culture that the company has incorporated from during the time of establishment.
This strategy will impact the clients and the employees associated with the operations of the business directly. The fame of EZI resorts to the quality service that they provide with less consideration to quantity. Thus, the company must abide by its concern for quality the way it does. It must be flexible enough to adopt positive changes in the management of the company to be progressive. Strategic reviews in accordance with the opinions of the partners must be considered that would lead the company to be more successful.
Evaluation and monitoring process is essential for all companies but it is important for EZI to incorporate modern technology in the process of evaluation, EZI can use talent management software to implement strategies such as using data for tracking employee performances, candidate researching, developing relations with customers as well as the partners and various others. The talent management system integrates the candidates and the organization to keep a track of all its business renderings that helps it to work on the weak places and strive to achieve more success in the future. Maintain records through the new technologies and being a company that strives to soar higher is something that would enable EZI to grow in the present business market. The stakeholders who are impacted with this strategy are the employees and the clients, the employees are impacted as their performance is measured and they are provided with appreciation and other awards based on the evaluation. On the other hand the quality of the service helps the clients in getting the best services.
In order to implement the review process the company has an internal audit team which will focus on various factors of the operations of the business. These factors are: Market, strategic positioning, internal business environment, external business environment as well as financial analysis. The strategies that are discussed above will be reviewed accordingly.
The strategic management is much more than basic rules to be followed by the companies. Being a philosophical approach, every business must think strategically with primary concern. After that they must strive to apply the thought process into practice. Moreover, it is very important for all the people engaged in the business to realize the strategies that the company undertakes. The strategic review of EZI suggests that it needs to implement and integrate few strategies in order to be more pronounced in the market. Some of the aspects that the strategies, which need to be taken up by EZI addresses, are discussed further:
In order to be progressive, EZI must employ strategies with prior studies and gathering of relevant information. Before the implementation of any strategy, it is very essential for companies to analyze the information gained and assess the various data. This would help it to establish itself with effective strategies that would elevate the company’s vision. It must not integrate methods in a blindfold way and try to understand the situation in which the company is functional. The needs of the business must always be looked upon and enable it to be sustainable in the market. The initiatives that the company takes and the strategic direction that it hints at must help EZI to grow. The company is functional I various countries, thus, it must be well aware of the various internal and external issues and strategize its management system so that it does not have any negative effect on the business.
Be a profit or a non-profit business, every organization has a financial plan and a budget. They perform in accordance with the clear understanding of the costs. Thus, for EZI as well it is very important for the company to perform in proper alignment with the financial element. Every strategy that it takes need to have a well established cost structure. Finance being a fundamental aspect of strategic management is very essential for the company to follow and address to in order to sustain its operations.
EZI works with a huge collaboration and thus it has multiple stakeholders. It is very important for the company to balance the stakeholder listening and work in consideration with them. The employees and the customers are very important for EZI. Thus their views and opinions must always be prioritized. Listening, balancing and prioritizing the stakeholders make the businesses more progressive. Thus, coherent alignment among the stakeholders and institutionalized social responsibility of the company would enable EZI to be more successful and enable it to hold a high word of mouth among the customers.
Profitability of the strategy: the company has gained the position of being the market leader in the international market of executive search. Indicating that the strategy that the company has used in the process of business function is effective, at the starting of the millennium the industry was facing severe downfall but the company was not as impacted as other competitors in the industry. The review should state how it will influence the profitability of the business.
Resources and capabilities: the company has committed workforces who are not only skilled in their own way but is also guided by a holistic training program to understand and cater to the clients. Goodwill is another asset that the company gathered over the years and this has helped the company to maintain a valuable relation with the clients. Technology and human resource form the major resource of EZI. Therefore the review should address the impact and the rate of impact that will be on the resources.
Understanding the clients: one of the major stakeholder of the company are the clients, EZI is an organisation that strategies to provide the clients with improved services therefore there should be feedbacks form the clients on the basis of the strategies, this will help in improving the process of business even further.
Internal resources: The assets or the resources that the companies are the major aspect of any strategies that are taken by the company. Based on the resources the management takes decisions for the business, therefore in the review it is essential to analyze the internal resources and their value as well. The focus of the quality rather than quantity depends on the performance of the resources that the company has. Some of the milestones of the review should include the importance of retention, the market trends as well achieving the objectives of the strategy.
Competitor activity: The competitors’ growth trends and the industry should be closely monitored in order to understand the gap after two years when the strategies will be evaluated. The competitors’ analysis is important as it gives idea to the company where it is lacking and what does it require to improve. Thus making competitor activity analysis an important part of the review process.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
