Strategic management refers to the creation and implementation of organizational goals and objectives by top managers on behalf of the owners regarding available resources and the impacts of external and internal factors on the organization ( Rothaermel, 2016) . The purpose of strategic management includes; offering a competitive advantage over competitors, helps achieve set goals, increase growth, organizational cohesion, accelerate managerial awareness amongst other benefits.
A company that has successfully employed strategic management strategies is SolarWinds Inc., a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT management software. For example, when SolarWinds introduced a new digital product to the market, it employed the two components of strategic management namely; SWOT analysis and generic competitive strategies.
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SWOT analysis
In the past, SolarWinds Inc. had encountered many challenges with marketing and selling their earlier products. Therefore, before the launch of the new digital product, the company decided to run a SWOT analysis. The affordability of the product and the quality were their strengths. Weaknesses were discovered to be poor marketing and language barriers with non-English speaking markets. Opportunities were low taxation on their product and adequate capital ( Wheelen et al,. 2017) . The only threat found was competition from other providers of a similar digital product. Through the SWOT analysis, SolarWinds Inc was able to identify its competitive advantage in the market and help the company make informed decisions.
Generic competitive strategies
Since the market has been crowded with digital products, SolarWinds Inc. applies product differentiation to edge competition. Product differentiation refers to a marketing process where a product is offered uniquely appealing to a target market. Unfortunately, product differentiation has so many limitations, such as increasing the price of the products since it adds production and marketing costs, which are eventually passed to end-users ( Hitt et al., 2016 ). There is also a challenge of no guaranteed revenue increase since SolarWinds Inc. cannot ascertain whether the clients will appreciate the new product.
References
Hitt, M. A., Ireland, R. D., & Hoskisson, R. E. (2016). Strategic management: Concepts and cases: Competitiveness and globalization . Cengage Learning.
Rothaermel, F. T. (2016). Strategic management: concepts (Vol. 2). McGraw-Hill Education.
Wheelen, T. L., Hunger, J. D., Hoffman, A. N., & Bamford, C. E. (2017). Strategic management and business policy (p. 55). Boston, MA: pearson.
Rothaermel, Frank T. Strategic management: concepts . Vol. 2. McGraw-Hill Education, 2016.
