Personal App the Strategic Management

Personal App The Strategic Management Club Online (SMCO) offers a list of mainly online resources for graduate and undergraduate business policy and strategic management students. Resources include links to specific case, financial, graduate school, job search, and strategic planning websites. The SMCO also sells software, sample case analyses, site licenses, and a Microsoft template. All the software, templates, and sample case studies are written by Forest David, the owner and manager of SMCO, contributing author to several case instruction manuals and textbooks, and instructor at Francis Marion University.

Although the site is not much to look at, it does offer students who are new to business policy and strategic management a solid starting place to start their Internet research. Anyone who needs to compile a case study can use the SMCO instead of Google to begin a search for relevant information. The SMCO website could use a facelift. Pages are published on a light gray background with the words "Strategic Management Club Online" watermarked in several different sizes. The title and header fonts are hideous and out-of-date.

Although the site is fairly simple and easy to navigate, the site author should have made the title into a hyperlink for the home page. To return to the home page, users have to scroll down to the bottom of each page. Besides that flaw, SMCO's website is fairly functional and serves its purpose.

A frame at the top of each page and below the title includes links to each section of the site: Case Links, Financial Statements, Grad School Links, Job Search links, Strategic Planning Links, Manufacturing and Service Links, CheckMATE software, ordering and contact information. Contact information is e-mail only and clicking on the "tab" for either Dr. David or Forest opens a new e-mail in the user's default e-mail client, which may or may not please users.

In fact, many users will have Web-based e-mail accounts and will find the links frustrating. Thankfully, Forest David offers his mailing and e-mail addresses together on the home page. The SMCO home page offers a brief introductory paragraph that explains the purpose of the site and its intended audience: students. Except for its software the SMCO website does not necessarily offer anything new or original. Many of the links could be easily found by using Google instead of the SMCO.

Even so, the list of links is located on one page and therefore can be helpful for students or anyone new to strategic management and business. The site will give visitors a valuable starting point for research or investigation that may help some students save time. In this sense, the SMCO is like a portal for business students. The SMCO also sells specialized software, templates, and sample case studies; none of these are free.

SMCO also does not link to scholarly databases, white papers, market analyses, PDF files or articles in peer-reviewed journals. Therefore, the SMCO is not helpful for students needing assistance with scholastic papers. As a fairly useful addition to a professional resources list, the SMCO includes career search links and quick links to a large number or relevant business sites. I might occasionally look to the SMCO for its Case Links.

Those are the most extensive and useful of the site and include links to business research firms, trade magazines, worldwide stock exchanges, and other sites that would save time over using Google. The SMCO site would serve as a portal bookmark and I might return to it if I needed to research a topic and needed to know at once a list of all the major business trade magazines, or if I needed to find multiple ways of checking company data on sources like ZDNet and Bloomberg Financial Market reports.

I can see how the SMCO would be a helpful place to start compiling material for a case study. The SMCO also comes in handy because it would be too cumbersome to bookmark all the links offered there. Several issues about the website seem disappointing, though. The SMCO's graduate school links is practically useless. Instead of offering a list of programs and departments, the SMCO simply gives useless links such as to the Kaplan GMAT Test Prep.

Undergraduate or transfer students would find it much more helpful if the SMCO listed universities offering relevant degree programs, linking to those universities and directly to their department heads. Similarly, the list of "Case Links" is not really case study links as I had hoped. Rather, the list links to other websites that might then lead the user to a case study. The SMCO does not include any free sample case studies, which would make the site much more valuable for its intended audience.

Although the SMCO does not need to include links to generic search engines, the site does offer a list of sites I never would have heard of otherwise. Other students would also find the links useful because they are not companies or publications they would have known to search for. Therefore, there are several links I would follow up on in the future. A long list of trade publications and international markets is helpful. Some of the research links may also be helpful in the future as.