Introduction

CareLead Medical is a healthcare facility that provides hospitals, urgent care, and COVID testing facilities. The company was founded in 1987 and has continued to grow. However, CareLead has seen a decline in revenues and profits in recent years. While it had double-digit annual growth for decades, in the past few years, it has only seen a growth of 1-3%. This has delayed the idea of global expansion as the focus shifts to the current business model.

Business Problem and Gap in Practice 

Every business, no matter its success, faces something that adversely affects the company. These issues are known as business problems. A business problem could have multiple layers, so getting to the actual problem leads to breakthrough solutions (Spradlin, 2014). When analyzing the issue, the source of the problem is known as a gap in practice. Identifying the gap in practice and resolving it can create more room for success. Therefore, any company needs to analyze the business problem and identify the gap in practice to resolve the situation and avoid it in the future.

Identified Business Problem

CareLead Medical has experienced a loss of revenue and profit over the last few years after spending decades increasing profit and revenue. The acquisition of the COVID testing and vaccination sites has been complex as there have been challenges executing the acquisition process due to a lack of knowledge. There is a lack of strategic planning processes within the organization, causing a growing problem with CareLead’s profits. This company had been successful for decades until it decided to expand globally. A poorly communicated and constructed business strategy became more apparent as the financial losses continued. 

Identified Gap in Process

The identified gap in the process is the lack of direction and consistent messaging within the executive team outlining a clear strategic strategy explicitly surrounding the acquisition. There is not a clear understanding of the current business model and strategy, which has led to confusion among the executive team and the rest of the leadership on the transparent strategic business model in the future.

The acquisition of the COVID centres brought the breakdown in leadership and strategy to the surface. The global expansion was at the forefront of Carelead’s business strategy. The acquisition was a stepping stone to gaining traction with the expansion. The gap in the proper execution strategy of the acquisition hurt CareLead financially and hindered the overall strategy of expanding the company globally. The lack of communication between leadership and a poorly constructed business model created a gap in the process.

Current Supporting Articles 

The transformation of strategy within corporations starts with communication. The corporate communication international (CCI) studies showed that communication approaches are changing from the traditional top-down approach to a more agile method to adapt to change (Goodman, 2019). This article supports the idea that corporate communication is key to the success of a business model. The communication trends in business have changed over the last few decades. In the example above, profitability and production suffer when a company does not evolve with the changes. CareLead Medical failed to evolve its communication strategy, which led members of the team to attempt to understand the next best steps of action to remain successful and expand. Communicating the business model and strategy along with the implementation method could have changed the trajectory of the expansion and acquisition, leading to further success instead of losses.

DBA FPX 8710 Assessment 4 Integrating Current and Past Literature

 There is a plethora of research on strategy formulation to support different theories and methods; however, there is a gap in research on methods to execute strategies (de Oliveira et al., 2019). This article supports the gap in the process for CareLead Medical, as the CEO had an outlined business model but failed to provide an execution strategy for the model. The model consisted of acquiring the COVID clinics, which was successful. The breakdown, however, was a lack of execution strategy once the acquisition was finalized. Poor execution of the acquisition began the downward trend in profits and the hold on expanding globally.

Past Supporting Articles 

Business models are evolving with societal changes. Often, business models fail due to a lack of evaluation of the implementation, which still offers successful development (Batocchio et al., 2016).In CareLead’s example, the business model was not communicated adequately. Without proper communication and understanding of the business model, there can be no adequate execution. Lacking the proper execution, the acquisition of the COVID clinics caused a rapid decrease in profits as the business model for the acquisition was not formulated and communicated. The focus was on global expansion, which had a detailed business model, but for that model to be successful, the acquisition needed to be executed successfully. This article outlines the importance of a business model while outlining the steps CareLead could have taken to ensure success.

Removing Personal Bias 

To properly support and validate research, it is critical to remove personal bias from the literature selection. Removing personal bias assists in identifying more relevant research that provides supporting evidence for the topic. The outcomes are unreliable and often inaccurate if personal bias is not removed from the research. For example, say the researcher is thinking about Their desired outcome in the study will tend to find research to support their desired outcome rather than utilize research that could challenge their desire. Allowing personal bias in research has many adverse effects on the project.

The researchers’ published work will be discredited, potentially ruining any further work they perform due to a reputation formed from the previous biased work.In CareLead Medical’s example, the identified issue was poor communication and execution of a business strategy for success. The research performed in the articles outlined properly indicates that clear communication of the business strategy and execution is crucial for success. The articles have provided proven information that supports the business problem and gap in the process.

Reflection 

This assessment has allowed me to understand better the importance of planning my research before starting my project. I have learned to dive deeper into the research and articles I choose to ensure they are valid and accurately prove my points. Creating my literature matrix forced me to read and fully comprehend the resources I wanted to use in all my assessments in this course. This kept my thoughts organized as I completed each assessment.

Not only did I gain vast knowledge of the importance of proper research, but I also gained useful skills to apply to my current professional life. I am now able to identify the true business problem in my daily work, get to the root cause and gap in the process, and make positive and impactful changes using strategy and innovation.  Read more about our sample DBA FPX 8710 Assessment 3 Aligning Frameworks for complete information about this discussion.

References

Batocchio, A., Ghezzi, A., & Rangone, A. (2016). A method for evaluating business models implementation process. Business Process Management Journal, 22(4), 712–735. https://doi.org/10.1108/bpmj-08-2015-0117

de Oliveira, C. A., Carneiro, J., & Esteves, F. (2019). Conceptualizing and measuring the “strategy execution” construct. Journal of Business Research, 105, 333–344. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.03.012

Goodman, M. B. (2019). Introduction to the special issue: corporate communication – transformation of strategy. Journal of Business Strategy, 40(6), 3–8. https://doi.org/10.1108/jbs-07-2019-0149

Spradlin, D. (2014, August 7). The Power of Defining the Problem. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2012/09/the-power-of-defining-the-prob