What is Strategic Planning?

What is Strategic Planning?

I’ll Start with what Strategic Planning isn’t.

It is not making a plan!. It is not simply sitting down and planning how we are going to perform day to day operations.

Strategic Planning is deciding what strategy are we going to use and we have to decide on five things!

  1. Where will we be active?
    • Product categories
    • Market Segments
    • Where
    • Value Creation
  2. How will we get there?
    • Internal development
    • Partnerships
    • Acquisitions
    • Licensing
  3. How will we win in the market place
    • Image
    • Customization
    • Price
    • Style
    • Quality
  4. How fast will we grow, in in what order will we do things
    • Which initiatives will we try
    • In what order
    • How fast
  5. How will we make money
    • Lowest cost
    • Volume
    • Quality pricing
    • Unique feature pricing

It is important for us to decide on all of these things before we decide what we are doing on a daily basis. Like our Mission, Vision, and Values, Strategy is a guide. We use our MVV to help us choose our Strategy and guide our daily operations. So a COO or whoever is in charge of how we do things repetitively has to make sure those activities are done coherently with our strategies. Here’s an example.

lets look at Gijits inc. the maker of premium gijits:

M.V.V.

  1. Mission: Gijits inc. exists to create a healthy company that respects its employees and its clients by affording people with stable employment and products that fulfill the needs of their clients and their expectations.
  2. Vision: Gijits inc. will be the largest supplier of the needs people express for Gijits where ever they may be when they need them.
  3. Values:
    • healthy living
    • community
    • Value

Strategy:

  1. Where will we be active?
    • Economy products
    • People who need Gijits Now
    • North American vendor sites & e-commerce sites
    • Environmentally sensible economy manufacturing
  2. How will we get there?
    • being Costumer-centric
    • creating partners of our suppliers and encouraging local production
    • investing in our ecological partners to create economies of scale
  3. How will we win in the market place
    • Being the best quality for the price
    • being just behind the latest Gijit fashions
    • having extremely satisfied clients who give us great word of mouth.
  4. How fast will we grow, in in what order will we do things
    • High Customer Satisfaction with a core group of customers
    • Working from a core fan base to vendors and then expanding organically
    • Within five years we will have 40% market share.
  5. How will we make money
    • Best bang for buck, highly controlled manufacturing process
    • high volume
    • economy pricing
    • fashionable design aspects

So now that we have our strategic plan we have to start planning our operations and all of our choices by asking ourselves does this choice promote our MVV and is it in line with our strategic choices. This company obviously has to promote local production; have gijits that are attractive from, a design perspective have a rock solid guarantee on their products; and work hard to have client experiences that are nothing short of enchanting; this leads to needing a training program for their vendor partners to be able to offer an excellent return and or maintenance program. This is why me make a strategic plan it is a series and choices that help us to build a company that reflects us and our beliefs. That is what is Strategic Planning

 

 

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