Alliance Boots Future Strategic Directions Organisation Business Essay

Alliance Boots Future Strategic Directions Organisation Business Essay It is a multinational company with strong recognition and reputation as one of the leading pharmaceutical and beauty companies in the world. Alliance Boots revenue is more than  £22.5 billion in excess; it also has various outlets in more than 20 countries. Alliance Boots core areas of business are pharmaceutical and beauty, formed in 2006 as a merger Boots Group and Alliance UniChem and recently a global merger with Walgreens. The company main purpose is to help its customers to look and feel better than ever, by providing exceptional customer and patient care with great value for its customer. Product brands Alliance Boots Pharmaceutical Wholesale Division is experiencing a rapid growth and global sales; the company believes that its product innovation and development competencies are some of the resourceful factors, which enable the company to develop new and existing products for global consumption. Some of these products are, No7, Soltan and Botanics, 17, Almus and Alvita that were successfully launched recently. Organisation Structures Alliance Boots have over 185,000 employees and numerous pharmaceutical outlets. The aim of the company is to work closely with manufacturer of pharmaceutical, beauty and health products and use experienced pharmacists to provide services to their customers. Alliance Boots headquarters is in Zug Switzerland. Alliance Boots Strategy Options It is important that when a global business organisation wants to adopt a sustainable development strategy for its products and brands, such strategy needs to be applicable across a wide range of different product types, also has to be flexible to cope with the rapid turnover of products. Alliance Boots also believe that: The company strategy is capable to cope with three main routes by which products are introduced at Alliance Boots (own manufacture, third party supply of Alliance Boots brands and proprietary brand). The company strategy is providing leadership on where and how to improve its products and such improvement must be commercially successful. Marketing strategy Alliance Boots believe that by putting its customers first for all its pharmaceutical and beauty products with outstanding quality and service at a competitive cost will help the company to achieve excellent profitable margins in the global competitive market. Ansoffs Matrix Ansoffs Matrix is a unique marketing tool, which provides strategic choices to business organisations in order to achieve the objective for growth. Ansoffs Matrix has four main categories namely: Market penetration: Market penetration creates a good avenue for a company like Alliance Boots to sell existing products in existing markets. It is important for Alliance Boots to continue promoting its product with the new features and good quality .This is helping Alliance Boots to invest heavily and focus more on research and development in new market research creating more distribution channel. Market development: Alliance Boots use Market development as a growth strategy to sell its existing products into new markets, including new geographical markets, for example product exportation to a new country. It also includes new product packaging new distribution channels (e.g. Boots Pharmacy stores across UK and selling via e-commerce and mail order). Its ability to target new market makes Market development a unique strategy. Product development: Alliance Boots use Product development as a growth strategy creating a unique avenue for its business to introduce new products into existing pharmaceutical markets with great expectation that they will gain more customers and market share. Such strategy may involve the development of new capabilities and requires Alliance Boots to develop improved products to existing markets. Market Diversification: Alliance Boots Diversification strategy allows the company to diversify easily to another geographical market. In 2012, Alliance Boot acquired Nanjing Pharmaceutical; a company with a strong market position in China. Such diversification into China Pharmaceutical market now makes Alliance Boots, as the largest shareholder is Nanjing Pharmaceutical, continuing to create new products and opportunities in the Chinese market. Alliance Boots SWOT Analysis Alliance Boots Swot analyses are: Strength: Alliance Boots have an excellent and long-standing relationship with all its customers. The company also has a strong historical reputation for all its quality, using a nectar card to gather customer intelligence. Availability of Boots Pharmacy stores everywhere in the UK and Europe. Weaknesses: Due to strong competition with other pharmaceutical companies in the global market, Alliance Boots is struggling to cope with the increased competition in the market. Opportunities: Alliance Boots continue to use the internet opportunity to keep increasing its presence by using online shopping to transact with its domestic and global customers. Alliance Boots are also using its retail store presence across the global market such as Boots Pharmacy to create the right products with the right combination of price and promotion to achieve its long-term goals for growth. Threats: The major threat to pharmaceutical industries including Alliance Boots is the government higher tax on the price of medicine that Alliance Boots and other retailers must deal with. Porters Five Forces: Business organisations use five forces of Porter to make an analysis and attraction of its structure. Supplier Power: It plays an important role in competitive force, more suppliers one can greatly increase y bargaining power with these suppliers. For example, Alliance Boots successfully bargained with over 80 suppliers to lower prices of some of the drugs they sell over the counter in 2007. Buyer Power: Increasing customer loyalty is a way of reducing the power of the buyer, the introduction of nectar card by Alliance Boots is a way to reward its customers. Because of this, it allows the buyers to save considerably. It also allows Alliance Boots to capture useful information and monitor consumer-purchasing habits. Threats of New entrants: There has been a huge increase in the number of new entrants in the pharmaceutical market making it difficult for Alliance Boots to expand in the way the company wants. For example, Tesco is planning various new supermarkets across Britain that would restrict Alliance Boots ability to expand. This poses a real threat, which means that Alliance Boots need to change its marketing strategy with the possibility of reducing prices through advertising. Threat if substitute: In order to save money many businesses may decide to outsource their products and services to another company at a cheaper cost. Alliance Boots did not outsource its products and services; instead, the company IT department was able to make changes in the way customers pay for their products by replacing its traditional till machines to touch screen capability giving customers a faster way to shop on their own. Competitive Rivalry: This affects many businesses in terms of price competition and product identification. For example, other rivals in the business like Lloyds Pharmacy, Superdrug are expanding rapidly. Because of this, Alliance Boots are constantly improving its store marketing strategy making its products more affordable and available everywhere in the UK and continue to provide outstanding customer service. Alliance Boots PESTEL Analysis Political Factors: Various political decisions can have a huge impact in the business operate and its performance. For example the impact of government UK policies on the business allowing some major supermarkets to open numerous pharmaceutical stores within their stores. The government believes that such policy will increase NHS services and improved health care. Such move will not help Alliance Boots, instead, it will create a huge competition, which will eventually make Alliance Boots to lower its product prices and operate for longer hours. Economic Factors: The global economic recession has a huge impact on healthcare, with a huge increase in the prices of global healthcare affecting the way customers spend on their healthcare products especially Beauty products. The rising fuel costs also have a huge impact in the supply chain channel of Alliance Boots leading to price increase. Social Factors: The social factors are creating more awareness about how everyone should take care of himself or herself through, exercise, eating habits, type of food that is good for the body and many more. For example, government campaign that is promoting healthy eating (eatwell.gov.uk 2012 online) as a result in the rapid increasing level of obesity within the UK (Department of health 2012 online).Such information is boosting Alliance Boots sales by encouraging its customers to try its healthier products at a cheaper price than other companies. Technological Factors: The evolution of the internet is helping online retail sales, Alliance Boots are making use of the internet technology to its advantage with the internet is now generating more than a third of all revenue for Alliance Boots products and services. Alliance Boots Centre for Innovation is investing hugely in the development of inventive products and technologies that focus on: Ways to detect treat and monitor customers well-being issues. Environmental Factors: Many countries are now committed to green energy ever than before due to the risk of global warming is becoming a reality, Many companies like Alliance Boots have been told to play key role in reducing carbon footprint and increasing energy efficiency (Bream 2008). Because of this, Alliance Boots will have to invest more in greener products (selling of organic health product) and reducing their impact of carbon footprint on the environment. Legal Factors: There are various legal issues that are facing the way companies operate globally, for example, Alliance Boot Cases include application to the European Court of Justice in sex discrimination case of Neath versus Hugh Steeper Limited. New laws keep emerging everyday especially on healthy product and drinks, which mean Alliance Boots will have to be more cautious about its packaging and labelling policies, which will be an extra financial liability on the Alliance Boots. Globalisation Drivers This can be classified into: Market: Growth of global and regional channels Establishment of world brands 2. Cost: Fast-tracking technological innovation Transportation and distribution channel 3. Government: Reduction of tariff barriers and non-tariff barriers 4. Competitive: Huge rise in global strategic alliances with other companies. Future Strategic Partnership Walgreen Co., US largest drugstore chain is the latest future strategic partnership and direction that Alliance Boots are taking. Under this new strategy, Alliance Boots and Walgreen Co are bringing together the strengths and proficiency of both companies to create unique global pharmaceutical companies with a strong focus on health and well-being. Recommendations In order for Alliance Boots to continue maintaining its global presence as one of the dominant forces in the Pharmaceutical companies, the following are the vibrant future strategic directions that Alliance Boots must take for its business. Delivering of new innovative medical research using the next generation technology. A new global approach to marketing by sponsoring various events related to the well-being of Alliance Boots customers. Expansion of general merchandise ranges which in return will create sales with greater growth potential and effectiveness. Conclusion In conclusion, strategic management with a dedicated market focus is a driver to build a successful future globalisation and a successful merger process of the pharmaceutical industry. Alliance Boots continue to internationalise its key product brands, selling them to distributors, independent pharmacies and retail partners including online shopping sites globally.

Accredited Preschools VS Non-Accredited Preschools Essay

While both accredited and non-accredited preschools have similar ideas on structure and environments, only an accredited preschool prepares the child for school-like program. What is an accredited preschool? To be accredited, a daycare or preschool must prove that it actually offers programs known to benefit children rather than simply baby sit them. An accredited preschool is offered by National Association for the Education of Young Children also known as, NAEYC. Both daycares and preschools are required to be accredited and licensed by the government. This means that teachers must meet minimum standards and that the daycare meets health and safety codes. The building itself must pass health codes too. A non-accredited preschool has cheaper prices, is less structured and uses enriching activities such as using art through play. The curriculum is based off of learning through play, which lets the child use techniques throughout the day, during what is called â€Å"free play†. Schedules created by teachers must meet the standards created by the government and must meet the requirements suggested. Specific licensing standards vary by state and there are minimum standards by the government. Children spend all day at the facility whereas children who attend an accredited preschool only spend half of their day at the preschool. Most daycares accept younger children such as infants and toddlers. They provide childcare for school age children after school hours up to the age of twelve. Child ratios to teachers are higher for example in the Arizona. In the state of Arizona, we can have up to twenty- six children with two teachers, although, in an accredited preschool they can have up to twelve with two teachers. See more:  The Story of an Hour Literary Analysis Essay Title: Accredited Preschools VS Non-Accredited Preschools Most teachers and caregivers at a non-accredited preschool have lower  expectations for their performance. They are required to have first aid, CPR, food handler’s card, must be eighteen years of age or older, a high school diploma or equivalency, and a background check with a fingerprint clearance card. They are also required a minimum of eighteen training or workshop hours completed by the end of the year. A quality environment is well planned and invites children to learn and grow. Centers and family day care homes that had a â€Å"neat, clean, orderly physical setting, organized into activity areas and oriented to the child’s activity† were found to have good child development (Clarke-Stewart, 1987) This quote is meaningful and it sends a good message to people who want to learn more about child care centers or a non-accredited preschool. Teachers believe that children learn and grow in a facility where a teacher shows interest in the children. The effectiveness of a teacher at a non-accredited preschool depends on the amount of experience working with children and how many training workshops she has been to. Having much experience working with children helps the teacher maintain health and safety codes suggested by the government. An accredited preschool has higher prices, half days for children and is more organized and structured. It is a part of NAEYC. The curriculum is based off of a child’s social, emotional, cognitive, language and physical development. A curriculum also helps ensure that the teacher is planning a daily schedule that maximizes children’s learning through effective use of time, materials used for play, self-initiated learning, and creative expression as well as offers opportunities for children to learn individually and in groups according to their developmental needs and interests.(NAEYC,2008) Having these goals met for the children also allows an assessment for the teacher to improve o n her strategies whereas; a child care center does not use assessments to improve her quality and effectiveness. Children generally spend half of their day at this preschool and usually leave to go to a non-accredited preschool for afternoon daycare. Most accredited preschools end their day around 11:30 am to ensure that the child can experience school like tendencies. Families can then prepare their child for kindergarten. A teacher working at an accredited preschool must obtain a college degree in early childhood education. This means that the teacher must have an Associate’s Degree or Bachelor’s Degree in early childhood education. If preschool teachers work at a day care center or  private preschool, they do not need a college degree. A high school diploma is required. However, if the preschool is part of a public school system, the teacher will be required to have at least an associate’s or bachelor’s degree in early childhood education as well as a state license. Some states recognize the requirements to earn the Child Care Program include a high school diploma, experience in the field, and continuing education courses. Some of the other states require preschool teachers to have some work experience in a childcare setting. Most preschools and daycares ask for a minimum of six months prior of early child care experience. Maintaining a college degree or some college courses helps the teacher’s quality of effectiveness. Teachers who go to college and earn a degree are more likely appropriate for the job whereas, a teacher with only a high school diploma just wants to pay the bills. Teachers who become accredited want to be working with children and see the growth and development in the well-being of a child. Between an accredited preschool and a non-accredited preschool we can clearly see the differences noted. An accredited preschool has better options for children such as an organized curriculum based off of the child’s needs, a structured environment, and high quality teachers. A non-accredited preschool has better options for children who are not ready for school, a curriculum to meet the child’s minimum needs, and a less-structured environment. Personally, the preschool that would the best choice for a parent is the accredited preschool because then the parent will not have to worry about their child falling behind in school. Their child will be ready for all challenges headed their way for school. The quality of the teachers and staff at an accredited preschool will be more effective than a non-accredited preschool teacher. They are trained to do their best at all times and always put the children first. This is why parents should choose an accredited preschool. Title: Accredited Preschools VS Non-Accredited Preschools References: http://www.naeyc.org/academy/ Visited on 11/2/12 Clarke-Stewart, K. In Phillips, D (Ed.). (1987). Quality in child care: What does research tell us? Washington, DC: NAEYC

“Theme of Post-Colonialism in Things Fall Apart” - 657 Words

â€Å"Theme of Post-Colonialism in Things Fall Apart† The Post-Colonial literature that describes what happens to a strong African, Asian once colonist settle in the area. Post Colonial literature considers vexed cultural- political questions of national and ethnic identity, otherness, race, imperialism and language, during and after the colonial periods. The term is applied most often to writings from Africa, The Indian subcontinent, The Caribbean, and other regions whose histories during the 20th century are marked by colonialism anti-colonialism movement to post independence society. Things Fall Apart is a major work of Post Colonial literature that describes what happens to a strong Nigerian tribe during colonial rule in colonialism†¦show more content†¦The second part deals with the theme of exploration and exploitations. It expresses the arrival of Europeans in the Africa and exploitation of Europeans in African native Nigro. The men like Mr. Brown and Mr. James Smith being the rule policy in Umufia. They destroy native African culture by introducing Christianity. The marginal African like Osu Ibu people are attracted towards Christen religion as a result of that native African culture collapsed in Umufia. Post-Colonial theory thinks about subaltern, Marginal, hybrid people, the other, the untouchables of the whole world. The writers like Edward Said, G.C. Spivak and Homi Bhabha even Chinua Achebe focus the suffering of marginal and expose the cruel imperial rule. Okonkwo the protagonist feels great insult of his culture and nation, he has fight a gainst British Imperialism and other hand he has to fight against his own people. At a time he is fighting world war and civil war. On both levels he defeated because of cruel power of colonization, imperialism. When realized his helplessness dominance of imperialism he commits suicide. This Tragic end of Okonkwo doesn’t mean the real defeat- he has expressed his rage, revolt and strong protest towards the British cruel rule in Umufia. Though he died, he made the reads of the world to think about his commitment. He made the imperialist to do self-introspection give justice to the natives of Africa. So, the death of Okonkwo is

In between work and family responsibilities, women might...

In between work and family responsibilities, women might not find a lot of time for exercise. That doesnt mean your health should suffer, because you can still get a good workout right at home. Your exercise routine should include aerobics, strength training, and stretching to promote flexibility (See References 1) Start with beginner exercises so you can gradually learn proper form and improve your fitness. Work Up a Sweat Exercise that increases your heart rate and breathing is known as aerobic exercise or cardio. It improves the health of your cardiovascular system and burns calories. If you have the tools at home, walking briskly on a treadmill, or riding a stationary bike, are effective forms of cardio. If you dont have fancy†¦show more content†¦Beginner stretches can include a quadriceps stretch during which your bring your ankle to your buttocks, a lower back stretch thats done by lying face up and bringing one knee into your chest, a shoulder stretch thats done by crossing one arm over your upper chest and lightly pulling it into your body, and a calf stretch during which youre in a split stance and lean forward while your feet stay flat on the floor. (See References 5) Frequency, Sets, Reps, and Safety Whether you do cardio, strength training or stretches, always do a five to 10-minute warm-up of light cardio beforehand. The Centers for Disease Control recommends doing 150 minutes of cardio a week, and strength training on two days. (See References 6) Stretches are ideally done two to three times a week. Cardio can be split up into three, 10-minute sessions over the day. For instance, do 10 minutes in the morning before the kids wake up; 10 minutes after dropping the kids off at school; and 10 minutes after putting them to sleep. Start strength training with one set of eight to 12 reps, and as you get stronger, add one or two more sets. As for stretching, avoid bouncing while you stretch, and hold each stretch at least 30 seconds. (See References 4) If you have a health condition or injury, get clearance from your doctor before exercising. Key Concepts women beginner exercise women home exerciseShow MoreRelatedChildhood Obesity : Young And Oversized1320 Words   |  6 PagesCurrently, every one out of three kids is diagnosed as obese. Over the past years, obesity has highly increased in children and there are three things that lead to this issue; which are the consumption of fast foods, lack of physical activity, and certain family situations, like upbringing. 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