In Pursuit of a Strategic Direction: a Strategic Audit of Fitec Sdn

F.I.T. Centre Sdn Bhd (FITEC) or MARA Furniture Technology Resource Centre is company wholly

owned by Majlis Amanah Rakyat (MARA), an agency of Ministry of Rural and Regional Development

under the purview of Majlis Amanah Rakyat. Since its inception in 1994, FITEC has faced various

challenges in its pursuit to achieve its mission of “strengthening entrepreneurship by providing

infrastructure facilities, training and commercial sector and defense development”. This paper

reports results of the strategic audit carried out as a consultation project to provide some

recommendations for strategies FITEC to consider. Strategic audit is a type of management audit

and is extremely useful as a diagnostic tool to pinpoint corporate wide problem areas and to

highlight organizational strengths and weaknesses. The strategic audit is carried out based on

Wheelen and Hunger’s (2010) framework for strategic decision-making process. The questions in the

strategic audit list are selected to be used as reference for a semi-structured interview with the Chief

Operation Officer. Based on information obtained through semi-structured interviews, PESTLE

analysis and SWOT analysis was carried out. From the TOWS analysis, recommendation on suitable

strategies are proposed.

Keywords: Strategic audit, technology transfer, furniture industry.

1. Introduction

The furniture industry is an important industry in Malaysia. In the last decade the exports of

Malaysian furniture have been steadily increasing in value year-on-year except during the year 2009

when there was a major recession. Malaysia is ranked as the world’s leading furniture exporters

rising from number 10 in 2006 - 2007 to number 9 in 2008 - 2009 and keep increasing to number 8 in

2010 - 2011. The highest export value was in 2008 where reached to 2.6 billion. In 2011, Malaysia

ranks as the 8th largest furniture exporter in the world and the 3rd in Asia (Malaysian Furniture

Promotion Council, 2011).