Scenario of planning- Cindy

Scenario of planning can be seen as a long-term strategy that the corporation needs to take into account.

As I was just an intern in HSBC, I am not familiar with its scenario of planning. However, I can think of a situation under which HSBC could probably formulate some strategies.

The branch where I worked is located in the city of Xi'an, because HSBC is a British-funded corporation, if anti-British sentiment occurs one day, I think some strategies can be implemented by HSBC.

Scenario Planning Implementation Process:

1. Identify focal issue

2. Driving forces

3. Find uncertainties

4. Formulate scenario logic

5. Strategic Analysis

Identify focal issue:

The focal issue is the rise of anti-British sentiment; clients of HSBC want to withdraw all the money from the bank.

Search for driving forces:

1)    Political: Chinese government and British government has some serious conflicts during that time and neither party would like to compromise.

2)    Economic: The economy situation of British gets better and better, poses a threat to China

3)    Social: Some British-funded companies in Xi’an loose their reputation; sell unqualified products, bad attitudes of after sell-services, even offensive words to locals.

Find uncertainties:

HSBC is not sure how long the demonstration will last, temporary or several days or even longer. And they can’t make sure that people say they want to withdraw money to demonstrate their discontentment or they really mean it seriously

Formulate scenario logic:

1)    Collect more related information and inform the public

2)    Prepare enough cash to guarantee that people can withdraw money any time they want and appease the customers at the same time

3)    Ask for help from relevant units. For example, ask the police force to send policemen to maintain the scene order to ensure security of all the people on the spot.

4)    Request cooperation of related organizations. For instance, if HSBC don’t have so many cash in hand, they may ask some other banks for help

Strategic Analysis: For each of the five steps, HSBC need to come up with more ideas or solutions that could lead to the best result. We can see the importance of scenario planning, if something happens suddenly and HSBC doesn’t make preparations, HSBC would get into a very bad situation.