Strategic Planning Defined:
Strategic planning refers to the process of defining a strategy for a business to undertake; in essence the strategic planning stage of a corporation will ultimately define the direction that a business intends to take.
Strategic planning involves an evaluation of a decision making process; most importantly perhaps, the business must decide how to allocate its resources (capital and employees) to pursue its strategy.
Strategic planning is the formal evaluation and consideration of an organization’s future course; although the endeavor is complex, it can be summed up in three basic questions:
1. What does our company do?
2. Who is our target consumer base or audience?
3. How do we achieve or goals and excel
In business, strategic planning is the process for determining when an organization is going to be in the long run; the process does not involve the evaluation of the company’s health in the next year, but instead, is more focused on how the company will be doing 3 to 5 years in the future. In order to postulate long term viability, the organization will need to know exactly where it stands, then subsequently determine where it wants to go and how it wants to get there. That being said, while strategic planning can aid a company in plotting its long-term course, it cannot forecast the evolutionary tract of the market or factors beyond its analytical capabilities.
Steps in the Strategic Planning Process:
Vision: The Company will define how it wants to look in the future. Vision refers to a long-term view, describing how the organization would like to affect the market and the world in the future.
Mission: This stage of strategic planning will affirm the fundamental purpose of the organization and describe whit it exists and what it aims to achieve.Values: This portion of strategic planning will define the beliefs that are share among the stakeholders of the organization. Values will drive the organization’s culture and provide a framework that will ultimately influence the decision making process.
Strategy: This portion of the strategic planning stage will provide a description of the end (goals) for which the firm is striving towards and the means (policies) by which the company is utilizing to get there. Organizations will sometimes summarize their strategy and objectives into an all-encompassing document, known as a mission statement.