Coal/ Steel background

Financial forecasts when BHP and Bluescope demerged

http://www.bluescopesteel.com/file/download.cfm?DownloadFile=4AFC2142-AF4F-4973-897591EE555DBA5A

Comments on Assignment 2

1. As we research we should start to get a clearer picture of Bluescope and its strategy. From this we can start to analyse using SWOT as a basic tool.
2. Agree with Arv. We can use Porters 5 Competitive forces model and PESTLE to understand the effect of the external and internal environment on the organisation.
3. Units 3 can help us with the external environment, Unit 4 can assist with understanding the strengths and capabilities of the organisation and Unit 5 has tips on agility.
4. Unit 10 should help us with section 2 as we analyse and dissect the organisation across divisions and borders.
5. Units 6 and 7 are more technology and innovation focused and I think should assist us with section 3 of our project document.

I think we should nominate 5 questions that we want to present to Bluescope, here are some examples:
1. What is the strategic intent of the organisation for the next 3 years?
2. How is Bluescope using innovation/technology to gain a competitive advantage?
3. What innovating techniques is employing/ has employed?
4. What type of strategy will be used to remain competitive in the global market?
5. What is its current balance sheet and ROI?

ASX links

ASX links:
http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/companyInfo.do?by=asxCode&asxCode=BSL#chart

http://asx.netquote.com.au/summary.asp?code=BSL

Links on company’s strategy and financial focus

Gents,

In general ASX publications on Bluescope can be found here:
http://www.bluescopesteel.com/go/news-and-media/asx-announcements

I found the below to be good reading in terms of the company’s strategy and financial focus.

BlueScope Steel Ready For Recovery - Encouraging Signs Following A Tough Year
http://www.bluescopesteel.com/index.cfm?objectid=25225CCE-D2DB-B222-655D99ED27051D88


BlueScope Steel Unveils Blueprint to Significantly Build on its Heritage and Capabilities
http://www.bluescopesteel.com/index.cfm?objectID=846B921F-9454-4616-0056C636EDB67423

Some links found by Arv

Sri Lankan Daily News - BlueScope Steel leads with nerves of steel
http://www.dailynews.lk/2008/03/10/bus02.asp

Nerves of steel needed as metallic bubble bursts - from ABC Inside business
http://www.abc.net.au/insidebusiness/content/2006/s1578550.htm

SMH Business day - BlueScope posts $66m loss - and more to come
http://business.smh.com.au/business/bluescope-posts-66m-loss--and--more-to-come-20090817-empe.html

A whole bunch of links from BNET
http://resources.bnet.com/topic/bluescope.html

Arv's initial thoughts on assignment 1

Hi guys, here are my initial thoughts on the assignment. Please feel free to post comments about this.

Analysis

1. I think the main to analysis tools we'll use will be PESTLE and Porter's five forces model - the frameworks we use will largely be drawn from unit 3. It will be interesting to see what people get for assignment one. We should leverage our learnings from this - trying to take the best from the feedback we get from each team member's assignment.
2. We will need to agree on the list of strategic stakeholders. I believe we will need some theoretical framework to assess this.
3. This will build on the first part of the analysis. We can incoporate SWOT into this part. Again, the framework for this can come from unit 3. This is where our industry research will come into play. From our task list, I think the ASX reports and historical financial performance will be important. We can try to identify trends in the steel market and also markets that the steel industry relies on...like construction. These dependent industries will help us formulate the likely scenarios.
4. Vlade and Dave's access to Bluescope will become invaluable in this part. Units 7 and 8 will provide a good foundation to assess the strategies against. These units talk about strategy of product development companies and we can assess Bluescopes product development process against this. Unit 10 gives some insight into managing companies that span foreign markets. It will be interesting to see how bluescope's strategies have changed as they have expanded into countries outside of australia.

The Report

1. This will just take from conclusions drawn from the the analysis. Nothing to elaborate on here.
2. We should draw heavily on frameworks in the course notes. Unit 11 talks about how to effectively monitor strategy. It would be good to understand how bluescope monitor the success of their strategy and then respond to it and change. Unit 5 talks about the need to be agile in responding to change. How agile is bluescope? can we find evidence of this agility? what recommendations can we make so that bluescope can become more agile?
3. When making recommendations we should understand clearly what the company's mission, vision and objectives are and how successful they have been. We shuld try and draw on case studies and examples of companies that have similar vision or mission to Bluescope and see if we can apply some of their strategies to bluescope. I think we need to think outside the square here. Recognising company's with similar strategies, not just from the same industry as bluescope, but other industries.

Getting to understand this technology

Hi Guys,

I have joined a blog.

If you think google docs is a good way to manage this assignment documentation, i am happy to use this format.

All this new technology is a bit daunting to me but i will work on my competency.

I think i am going to be stuck here a but longer.

Warwick from Hidden Valley

Using Google docs

Hi guys,

I think that google docs might be a good way to manage our docs. We just need to create a document for each section. We can then edit these online. At the end we can collate the docs into the required format prior to submission.

Let me know what you think.

Arv.

Welcome team

Hi guys, welcome to the team blog. I am sure we'll get good use oout of this. I suggest that any information that you find about Bluescope you upload here. Try to use the label functionality to tag the item you post so that we can use the search facilities later down the track.

Cheers,
Arv.