Talking about strategies and strategic planning sounds great from afar, and making plans is a type of art since implementing it is a real art. This implementation requires familiarity with a very important concept that is a key element in the success of projects, which is strategic planning. So, what does strategic planning mean? What is its importance? And his role in identifying and developing performance indicators for companies and organizations. Through this article, all the previous points will be discussed.
What is strategic planning:
Strategic planning is the management process used to create a long-term plan for the future success of any entity. The strategic plan gives you a place to record your mission, vision and values, as well as your long-term goals and action plans that you will use to reach them. A well-crafted strategic plan can play a pivotal role in the growth and success of your small business because it tells you and your employees how best to respond to opportunities and challenges.
The importance of strategic planning in various fields of work:
Strategic planning is important to organizations because it provides and sets measurable goals. It is a useful tool to guide day-to-day decisions as well as to assess progress and change approach as you move forward. Here are some key points that highlight the importance of strategic planning:
- Increase the productivity of organizations: Strategic planning is an opportunity for you and your employees to brainstorm. It enables you to provide your employees with a great view of interest about the business and enables them to share their unique opinions and thus helps in increasing productivity.
- Determining the direction and goals of your small business: One of the advantages of strategic planning is choosing the direction of business is headed in. This, in turn, allows you and your employees to focus on working toward your specific small business goals.
- Defining Small Business Goals: Strategic planning also gives you the opportunity to set goals and objectives that are meaningful, realistic, and measurable.
- Evaluate business results and progress: The strategic planning process does not end when you create the first form of your strategic plan, in fact an important part of the strategic planning process is to regularly review and evaluate your business performance according to the plan.
- Helping build competitive advantage: Looking at your industry and thinking of ways in which you can meet the challenges facing your business puts you in a proactive position, which can offer a competitive advantage.
What is the difference between strategic planning and a business plan?
As mentioned earlier, a strategic plan is the process of management used to create a long-term plan for the future success of any entity. It typically covers a planning period of 10 to 15 years and conveys the high-level plan to achieve a comprehensive set of goals by the end of this period. A business plan is a detailed planning document that defines in specific terms how to achieve a specific milestone or goal during the strategic planning period. The business plan covers details about product/program development, marketing tactics as well as revenue/growth goals and plans to achieve these goals.
The strategic plan contains guiding numbers that tell a high-level story of how the business model evolved as the strategic plan was implemented. The business plan contains more specific and detailed financial projections that guide investment needs, resource reallocation and annual budget. The action plan documents what needs to happen in the near term to align the organization with the goals of the strategic plan.
Tools to help implement strategic planning
- SWOT analysis
- PESTLE ANALYSIS
- The VRIO framework
Conclusion
Strategic planning is extremely important to all organizations and companies. One of the most important components of the success of strategic planning after defining the organization’s main objectives and the goals emanating from them for the internal sectors and its initiatives are classified and harmonized according to the vertical and horizontal structural hierarchy, and the performance measurement indicators are determined after analyzing the degree of contribution of each sub-goal in achieving the main goal.
