ESTA Technologies - What is Strategic Planning?

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - March 2, 2014 - PRLog -- Strategic Planning is a comprehensive process for determining what a business should become and how it can best achieve that goal. It appraises the full potential of a business and explicitly links the business's objectives to the actions and resources required to achieve them. Strategic Planning offers a systematic process to ask and answer the most critical questions confronting a management team—especially large, irrevocable resource commitment decisions.

How Strategic Planning works:

A successful Strategic Planning process should:

- Describe the organization's mission, vision and fundamental values

- Target potential business arenas and explore each market for emerging threats and opportunities

- Understand the current and future priorities of targeted customer segments

- Analyze the company's strengths and weaknesses relative to competitors and determine which elements of the value chain the company should make versus buy

- Identify and evaluate alternative strategies

- Develop an advantageous business model that will profitably differentiate the company from its competitors

- Define stakeholder expectations and establish clear and compelling objectives for the business

- Prepare programs, policies, and plans to implement the strategy

- Establish supportive organizational structures, decision processes, information and control systems, and hiring and training systems

- Allocate resources to develop critical capabilities

- Plan for and respond to contingencies or environmental changes

- Monitor performance

Companies use Strategic Planning:

- Change the direction and performance of a business

- Encourage fact-based discussions of politically sensitive issues

- Create a common framework for decision making in the organization

- Set a proper context for budget decisions and performance evaluations

- Train managers to develop better information to make better decisions

- Increase confidence in the business's direction

ESTA Technologies

www.estatechnologies.com