subject: Why You Need Strategic Planning To Survive In Business [print this page] In business, setting strategies, goals, and plans is a very important part of business management. These should dictate the direction towards which you would like your company to lead. This is called strategic planning and it involves not just a definition of your business strategy but also your definite goals, the plans to reach those goals, and how you would allocate your resources to pursue and achieve the goals that you set.
In almost everything, planning is very important even more so in business. There are a lot of techniques in strategic planning that are often used. Some of these are the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis, PEST (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological) analysis, STEER (Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological, and Regulatory factors) analysis, and EPISTEL (Environment, Political, Informatic, Social, Technological, Economic, and Legal) analysis.
With all these techniques, the question is do you really need strategic planning?
- Match your strengths with opportunities. Strategic planning involves identifying your business strengths and matching that with marketplace opportunities.
- Set your business direction. Steering a business can be complicated so it is important to be able to set goals for your company. This way, the direction which your business should take is clearer to you and to everyone in the company.
- Be able to assess your progress. How do you assess how well your business is doing if you do not set goals? How do you determine whether your business is lagging behind or not? A clear set of goals, plans, and timetables would make your business more defined. It would be easier to identify which aspects of your business need some extra attention.
- Develop your business into a more cohesive organization. It will be extremely difficult to run a business where everyone has their own idea of what the business is all about. Strategic planning will bring all efforts of those in the company towards common goals and directions.
Craig West acts as a strategic business and financial mentor for business owners and has written three critically acclaimed books educating business owners on employee incentives, succession planning and asset protection.
