Business Intelligence

Strategic Planning

As you move into the Iraqi market, you need to recondition your business climate and adapt your working assumptions: particularly market segments, competition, opportunities, threats, and industry scenario.   

The strategic approach to management is as old as warfare, and has, in modern corporate practices, always aimed at the "big picture." The focus is on results or outcomes, rather than on details and explanations. Strategic planning is less concerned with how to achieve outcomes than with defining what those outcomes should be.   It does this by focusing  on WHAT, HOW MUCH and WHEN rather than on WHO or HOW.

Aljawda adopts what we call a “Portfolio Approach” to strategic business planning, in which our focus moves away from organizational policy and structure to the management of risk, industry growth, and market share; appropriate strategies lead to improved economic performance.

Poor strategic planning is worse than no strategic planning. It can be a big waste of time and money. Even worse, it can lead to disaster. Planning is all about minimizing failures and maximizing successes.   The reality is that high-return strategies usually come with high risk.  Opportunity is thus an equation of the ratio of risk to reward.
We can propose general strategies in the face of perceived realities and predicted developments.   In so doing, we proceed from the dual conviction that YOU CAN DO IT and WE CAN HELP.

Market Trend

The process of identifying market trends relies greatly on the concept of efficient market hypothesis   In Iraq, this concept essentially involves understanding, as closely as possible, the factors that have no small a share in impacting market trends, and these are, by-and-larger, socio-political in both nature and objectives.
Since it is possible to research the factors influencing market conditions by taking efficient market hypotheses into consideration, it is usually possible to understand how the market reached the current position, which factors are domination than others and what could occur to change the current trend at some point in the future.  In addition to the more permanent  or "Primary" trends, the market may witness what we call "Secondary" trends.  These are usually transient and short-term events or developments which we have the means and expertise to monitor and assess to the benefit of our clients and their business activities.

Due Diligence

One of the key factors to acquiring resilience and achieving success in new or foreign markets  is the ability to learn the intimate details of the business and to identify the strengths, weakness, pluses, minuses, growth opportunities and areas of concern.    Without an efficient job at gathering data and information, the business will remain uncertain about too many surrounding components, players and pressure factors affecting the business environment.
The importance of starting your search and investigation as early as possible cannot be stressed strongly enough.   This way the business management will be in a position to ask the right questions at the proper moments.    If you have not gathered the right information or failed to investigate the business thoroughly, you will not be on hundred percent certain of how to address a problem, or what decision to take on a given situation.
Aljawda  views any due diligence service it renders to client companies as fact-finding engagements which include a process of studying financial facts and accounting practices, assessing  the involvement of any independent  auditors or accountants, reviewing past financial statements and taxation aspects, as well as helping prepare a pro forma or prospective financial and market standing.

Competition Assessment

Competition amongst business firms is always affected, both in nature and in scope, by government policies and the laws and regulations of the land.    Iraq has, for far too long, been a government controlled and government dictated operation, not only in steering its political and security prerogatives, but also in the management of its national economy and development programmes.   The impact brought about by the regime change of 2003 to the Iraqi business environment has by all means been tremendous in terms of opening up the country and its borders, to almost all avenues of free-market economics.   But these developments are yet to change the beaurocracy, red-tape or mentality governing business relations in Iraq.  A proper competition assessment should in no way overlook the dynamics of the market, while studying the variety of ways in which government policies can impact the markets and competition.    New regulations, or changes in existing regulations, often have significant effects.