Strategic Management and Employees

Values and Strategy The strategic management process serves an integral role in creating competitive advantage in the marketplace. It stipulates the steps an organization takes to create value for its key stakeholders. With reference to WEX Inc., a payment processing firm, this paper discusses how the strategic management process creates value for the organization. The paper also evaluates the organization's mission and vision statements as well as motivation, innovation, and people strategy, and highlights the role of ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in strategic planning.

Strategic Management Process WEX Inc. was founded in 1983 as a payment processing company. With its headquarters in South Portland, Maine, the firm has operations in the U.S., Canada, South America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Its services fall in two segments: Fleet (payment processing solutions for vehicle fleet industries); and MasterCard (payment processing solutions for corporate transactions). The strategic management process at WEX usually occurs every three years and involves four major steps: analysis and assessment, formulation, implementation, and monitoring.

The first step involves a comprehensive evaluation of the status quo. This particularly includes assessing the organization's internal environment (resources, capabilities, processes, activities, procedures, and current position in the market) and the external environment (competitors and macro-environmental forces such as social, economic, legal, and political factors). Assessment and analysis of the internal and external environment leads the organization in formulating where it wants to go or what it desires to achieve in the next three years. This specifically involves formulating business-level strategy (e.g.

eliminating some business units); corporate-level strategy (e.g. acquiring a competitor), and global strategy (pursuing more foreign markets). Once strategy is formulated, the next step is implementation, which is concerned with the actual execution. This involves processes such as communication of goals and objectives as well as roles and responsibilities, mobilizing resources, training employees, and introducing new processes and procedures. The final step of the strategic management process involves monitoring. This involves tracking the achievement of the goals and objectives set in the second stage.

Indeed, strategic evaluation is a very important step (Hill & Jones, 2012). The organization must evaluate successes and failures. At WEX, strategic evaluation is an ongoing process. Though the strategic period is three years, evaluation occurs more frequently, often quarterly. This ensures areas of improvement are identified and rectified early enough and on a continuous basis. WEX's strategic management process has been crucial for creating value for the organization. The organization has made tremendous achievements in a little more than three decades.

Presently, the organization has more than 2,000 employees serving a wide array of clients throughout the U.S. and worldwide, including fleet, travel, healthcare, financial services, media, and retail industries. The organization boasts efficient and affordably priced payment processing services, which has resulted in considerable customer satisfaction and impressive financial performance over the years. Today, WEX is one of the well performing firms in the Russell 2000 Index. The organization's impressive performance is a clear indication of how its strategic management process has generated value for itself and its stakeholders.

Mission, Vision, Innovation, Motivation, and People Strategy WEX identifies itself as a global leader in payment processing solutions. The organization seeks to simplify the complexity associated with transferring payments across continents. It is driven by the need to give its customers greater control over their business, leading to smarter decision making, reduced cost of doing business, increased efficiency, as well as higher customer satisfaction.

Key to the success of the organization has been its commitment to continuous innovation, a commitment driven by the organization's dedication to fostering an atmosphere of creativity. Through innovation, the organization has been able to provide an unparalleled level of service. Some of the innovative services associated with the organization include virtual payment solutions, purchasing cards, fleet cards, and travel payment solutions. As mentioned earlier, WEX provides employment to more than 2,000 people. The organization sees its employees as not just employees, but associates.

Indeed, this constitutes a crucial source of motivation for employees. Employees are seen as important collaborators in the innovation process and in the achievement of organizational goals and objectives. Employee motivation is further driven by cultivating diversity, growth, and a fun working environment. Concern for the needs of its people has significantly contributed to the success of the organization in the rigorously competitive payment processing industry. Ethics, CSR, and Strategic Planning The strategic management process focuses on not only economic objectives, but also social objectives.

Indeed, the importance of attending to social objectives in today's business environment cannot be overemphasized. While business organizations primarily exist to make profit, they have obligations to a wide array of stakeholders, including employees, customers, suppliers, regulators, communities, and the environment (Hill & Jones, 2012). They are.