Business Strategic Planning

How is Business Strategic Planning different from ordinary Business Planning? There isn’t much difference as strategic planning forms part of an organizations business plan that involved the actual business development strategy.

Well at least it should. You need more research into your market and know your goals before set out put together your plan. If you are using business plan software, strategic plans are in built.

Business strategic planning is that part of the overall plan that would include the company’s process of defining its strategy, direction, and how it will make its decisions on allocating resources to carry out said strategy.

This would include the organizations capital and people. SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats ) and PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological analysis) or STEER analysis (Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological, and Regulatory factors) and EPISTEL (Environment, Political, Informatic, Social, Technological, Economic and Legal) are all part of business strategic planning.

Business Planning on the other hand is really the nuts and bolts of the business, its’ goals and objectives, reason for being. Strategic planning is the more formal part of the plan that plots out it’s future course and how it plans to reach those goals and objectives.

Any strategic plan would also need to include an implementation strategy and management strategy so you can monitor the success of the plan. Strategic thinking is very different from marketing or normal business thinking. Find a good model for strategic planning as well as sound business advice from consultants can also be helpful to overcome some of the challenges involved with doing it yourself.

Business Strategic Planning - Key Questions

In business strategic planning it is always important to ask "How can we beat or avoid competition?". (Bradford and Duncan, page 1). In order to answer that question you will need to know “what do we do?” and “who do we do it for”. Know your target market. If you answer my target is everyone, everyone needs my business, service or product then you are in trouble. You need a target market and accurately planning out our business strategy will help you define this market to target your efforts to.

Strategic planning cannot foretell how the market will evolve and what issues will surface may surprisingly surface. Neither can it predict what will happen in the economy and how that will impinge on your business plan. However, having a good business strategic planning session before you launch your organization can help combat many other issues.

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