Concluding with results is not an end in itself. With the embedded limitations, the results involve many more implications, possible contributions to practice, and future research opportunities. This chapter is dedicated to these aspects: conclusion of the findings, implications, limitations and future research directions.
7.1. Conclusion of the findings
VATECH is in a rapidly growing, high-opportunity, and attractive industry. At the same time, it faces fierce competition with existing dental digital X-ray companies, most of which are local agencies of major companies mostly from the US, Japan, and Germany. In the past few years, VATECH Taiwan has been successfully gaining its share of the market and building on its reputation in the dental digital X-ray industry.
VATECH is at a cross roads of change where it’s the right decisions will help the company sustain its competitive advantage and continue to be successful in the industry.
In view of the forces operating within and upon the dental digital X-ray industry that VATECH Taiwan is in, this research paper identifies the issues the company should address.
The first major issue is creating new strategic vision. Currently, VATECH Taiwan is just an implementer of the parent company in the local market. Therefore there is a strong need to create a new strategic vision to reach further and become strategic leader serving as a partner of headquarters in developing and implementing
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important strategy. The implication of creating a new strategic vision is that VATECH Taiwan would have to tailor its value chain to provide new activities and products to the selected market segments by its own efforts, and therefore would be a strategic leader to develop and implement a series of strategies shared with the parent company.
The second key issue is related to providing cost effective offerings. In order for VATECH Taiwan to keep the leading position in Taiwan, it is important that the costs incurred in its value chain be reduced. VATECH Taiwan needs to make decisions to reduce the overall costs. This goal can be achieved through reducing operational costs and providing exceptional customer support.
The third key issue has been related to the current situation of centralized leadership in the company. Management of VATECH Taiwan needs to clearly identify and communicate a transition strategy for the time when the CEO (Mr. Cho) will be less active in the day-to-day management of the company, or when he leaves by HQ’s decision.
The fourth key issue is that the company is lack of human resource management skill among the current management. Therefore, VATECH Taiwan needs a well-trained human resource manager who can define and organized the tasks, workflow, and process, hire right people, and educate people to share the same enthusiasm, vision.
The final key issue is reconfiguring the value chain and organization. While the current value chain and organization of VATECH Taiwan can be effective, the company must take care to find ways of working across these organization and value
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chain in order to ensure agility, collaboration, quick decision-making, and sustainable growth as a subsidiary company.
It is necessary for VATECH Taiwan to select a strategy that enables it to meet both the growth and profitability targets imposed on it by its parent company. Given its core competence, culture, and support of the excellent assets provided by its parent company, it is recommended for VATECH Taiwan, to employ differentiation strategy as a sustainable growth driver. Moreover, VATECH Taiwan is advised to assess the state of its value chain activities, including its human resources, organization, and processes for sustainable growth.
7.2. Managerial implication
One of the purposes of this study is to give benchmarking responses to the current international subsidiary companies in Taiwan, and to provide better knowledge.
As the theoretical ground for this study is strategic analysis of the industry and the company, the results of this study have built up a reference guidebook for managers in international subsidiary companies investing in Taiwan or approaching its market. The results of the study, therefore, serve as a reference point to reflect on the strategic developing and planning, and to see its development in Taiwan over time.
These implications are important for managers in both subsidiary-level and parent company-level. At subsidiary-level, regional directors, and manager in international companies in Taiwan will gain a better understanding strategic
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management and planning to improve their competitiveness in Taiwan. On the other hand, at parent company-level, corporate CEOs, and International Directors will gain a better understanding of the distinctive features of business operation in Taiwan as regards value-chain aspects.
7.3. Limitations
This study does not pretend to generalize its results to universal level. This is a study of the strategic analysis of VATECH which have focused its business in Taiwan.
Thus, this study does not even attempt to discover any universal laws about the strategic planning and analysis in general. Naturally, there are many loads of other companies, which have faced the same issues as VATECH Taiwan. Still the events and activities explained in this study are not necessarily very familiar to all companies even in the industry where it belongs.
Nevertheless, even though the activities and strategies in this study have been the specific case of one company, VATECH Taiwan, it does not mean that these issues are limited only to this company. On the contrary, most small international subsidiary companies in Taiwan might face the same growth challenges and strategic issues sooner or later in their development. Although this research does not provide any definitive directives on how to function in these situations, it certainly offers some possible alternatives for consideration by other companies as well. Still, this study has not attempted to discover any universal laws or rules, and so the findings of this research
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can and should not be considered as such. They may apply in the case of some other company, but just as likely they might not.
7.4. Future Research
This study has disclosed several interesting opportunities for further research.
First, the scope of this study could be expanded to other dental digital X-ray companies in Taiwan, thus providing a more extensive picture of the whole industry. Next, a similar study could be carried out in other area of business in Taiwan, which would illustrate the usefulness of the framework in this type of study more broadly. On the other hand, the strategic development and planning of dental digital X-ray companies or the whole industry could also be studied by applying completely another framework that has been employed more often in strategic analysis. This kind of a study could offer new insights, but it might also help to reveal some new aspects to be considered in further research.
Finally, a comparable examination could investigate, for instance, the strategic analysis of other subsidiary companies in other countries or perhaps even globally. This kind of investigation would probably discover very fascinating similarities and differences between various countries, and would thus be especially useful for managers who are considering expanding their business into those countries.
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