Corporate-level strategy

What is corporate-level strategy?

A corporate-level strategy refers to a company’s top management’s approach to managing and guiding the company. It is a business-level strategy that’s made for long-term operations, but it can be adjusted along the way if changes in the market occur.

An organization’s corporate strategy also affects its finances, management, human resources, innovation, marketing, and everything else in the company.

The purpose of a corporate-level strategy is to increase profit and maximize and maintain financial success in the future.

In addition, this plan of action helps increase competitive advantage over competitors and continue to have a unique image in the business market.

When creating an organizational strategy, you need to break down all the steps so your employees can clearly see the path that you want them to take.

Key characteristics of a corporate-level strategy

Here are the key characteristics of corporate-level strategy, as listed by GetSling:

Long term

Corporate-level strategies are made for the long-term process rather than the short-term. You can create a corporate strategy quickly, but the implementation and completion will take a long time because your business cannot adapt easily.

As you decide on changes, you also need to prepare the people around your business in order for them to accept the change.

Powerful

Corporate-level strategies make your business more flexible in the market and prevent it from falling down.

If you want your business to cope with consumer demands, your corporate-level strategy should be as powerful, dynamic, and impactful as possible.

Aligned toward goals

Corporate-level strategies improve the business. This strategy gives every department and management team, from the owners to the employees, a place to focus their efforts.

Corporate-level strategies get everyone aligned toward your goals, and they may help to bring up the customer, market, and the whole industry to a new level.

Far-reaching

Corporate-level strategies are far-reaching and will positively impact the whole business, from top management to the newest employee.

Every department, executive, manager, and employee has a place to do tasks with effort.

If upper management, middle management, and the employees are pulling in completely different directions, it would not be beneficial to the company.

Corporate-level strategy gets everyone set toward their goal and pulling in the same direction.

Types of corporate-level strategy

Strategies may take various forms. When establishing your company’s corporate-level strategy, you should consider the best way to achieve the planned objectives.

Here are some examples of corporate-level strategies that can be applied to different business units:

Expansion or growth strategies

You can use an expansion or growth strategy if you are planning to innovate new products and reach a wider target market.

This strategy can also be used if your business needs to upgrade its operations, such as dealing with new clients or hiring more employees.

Expansion strategy looks at methods of increasing executive revenues, but it can also help expand employee benefits.

Additionally, a diversification strategy is a type of expansion strategy that helps increase profits by expanding the company’s portfolio of products or services.

This type of corporate strategy also involves joint ventures or acquiring companies to grow further in a different or the same industry. It can be a strategic direction that helps maintain existing customers and, at the same time, ease new market penetration.

Vertical strategies

A vertical strategy is a comprehensive approach where a company engages in various stages of its industry’s value chain. This extends a company’s influence both upstream and downstream to enhance control, efficiency, and competitiveness.

An example would be forward or backward integration. Forward integration involves a company expanding into distribution and customer-facing activities, aiming to enhance control and connection with end consumers.

Basically, this type of vertical strategy seeks growth towards and with new markets.

In contrast, backward integration sees a company moving into manufacturing or raw material production to secure a stable supply chain and reduce costs.

Forward or backward integration aims to improve efficiency and competitiveness in the industry value chain and business operations.

Stability strategies

When you start dealing with clients in your sector, you’ll use the stability strategy. This method also assumes that your firm is thriving under its existing business model.

Companies should use a stability strategy to guarantee that your company can make gradual progress while still generating income.

Retrenchment strategies

A retrenchment plan requires careful consideration of changing your company model. This might mean that a product’s production stops or its functioning reduces.

Entrepreneurs may need to spend extra time on accounts receivable to guarantee that they’re paid for the services they supply.

A retrenchment strategy is only used when your company needs to protect and solve some issues in the business.

Before you use this business-level strategy make sure that you already have your SWOT analysis in your hand to see if this strategy will work in your brand.

Combination strategies

A combination strategy is the mix of expansion, stability, and retrenchment strategies to create your business model.

The purpose of this dynamic corporate-level strategy is to increase your company’s performance and find out which aspects of your company can grow.

A combination strategy makes it easier for you to make adjustments to your business plan because you can be more flexible in applying them.