When a person starts a business whether it be a restaurant, bakery,
small manufacturing plant, etc they do not want to always remain a
"small fish in a big pond." They want to become one of the "big fish"
and in order to do that requires strategic planning. To increase their
businesses revenue the owner needs to not only plan intelligent
strategies but they also need to implement them wisely. If not
implemented wisely the business is not going to see a profit and they
may even be forced to go out of business.
Strategic planning
involves formulating business growth strategies and policies over a
specific period of time. If your business involves mobile or internet
technology the trends in these fields change quite often so you would
have to do it more often so formulating a six month to one year business
strategy plan would make more sense than doing a five year plan. When
doing business strategies or strategic planning you or the management
team can concentrate on the entire business or just one aspect of the
business.
Writing a business plan deals with the challenges that
you are likely to occur when the business is just starting out. The
actual strategic planning will deal the opportunities to grow the
business and the methods that will be used. Although they are two
different things, you do need to make sure that you have a business plan
written up so everyone will know just what direction the business is
going. If you do not have a business plan which is usually used for
strategic planning there is a strong chance your business will not
succeed.
In strategic planning there is no definite model that a
business can use because each business is different and usually
formulates their own model that will work with their particular
business. Although the model may vary there are some important compounds
that you need to include.
One component is the purpose of the
business which is when the business will explain the entire idea of why
your business exists. This component is not complicated and will focus
just on the businesses objective. Another component is the ultimate
goals of the business called organizational objectives which will help
you achieve the purpose of the business. You want to make sure that
goals you set are achievable within the time period you set up.
The
next component is strategy planning for every goal. Having strategies
in place will help to insure that you will accomplish each goal that you
have set out. You should also make checkpoints so you can see if the
strategy is working or not and if you need to make any changes. The last
component is monitoring implementation of your strategy plan. If your
strategic plan is not monitored you will not know how effective it is
and whether it needs to be revised.
