Planning Strategy

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Planning Strategy is a core part of business strategy: the most effective way of laying down an effective strategy is to undertake a complete strategic review during the annual review process. Get together with your key people for a couple of days of undisturbed time; maybe even go off-site, or hire a facilitator. For starters, here's a few of the most basic issues every company should discuss:

Vision Statement and Mission Statement: determine what kind of company you want to be five years out.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis: ask a series of questions, such as, "what aspects of our work do we do well? What aspects don't we do well? What market opportunities can we see? What challenges loom ahead in the markets we serve?"

Strategic Options: explore your basic alternatives and their implications.

Strategy Selection: ask yourself which strategy you should select.

You will also want to work on developing strategies for the initial launch and growth of your venture, as well as a strategy for continued business development once your launch has taken place and your venture has been established for a period of time. Keep in mind that nothing is ever set in stone; these strategies may change based on new information, directions, influences, etc. You may need to hold several strategic reviews to ensure that your strategy evolves with your venture, and you will need to be open to the inevitability of these changes.

Strategy Implementation

Once you have carried out some strategy planning and determined which strategy is the best to use as your approach, your team will need to figure out what changes need to be made to your tactics to implement the chosen strategy. Some areas of a business that could be varied in order to achieve a possible strategy include:

High quality – versus – low price

Narrow – versus – broad product line

High-tech – versus – low-tech products

Trendy – versus – conservative products

Brand-name – versus – generic

Customized – versus – standard

Niche – versus – mainstream market

Creating Strategy

While the possible elements of a successful strategy are limitless, here are some of the most common ones. Many strategies will include several of these elements.

Price and quality

Price and quality are the most common strategic elements. The strategy may be to produce a superior quality product or service and charge an appropriate price, or to produce a lower-cost item and charge a lower price.

Scope of product line

A broad product or service line allows customers to do one-stop shopping, saving them time and effort. It may also allow economies of scale that can benefit customers. A narrower product line may allow more depth of product, perhaps including more alternatives for the same product type. It may be coupled with more in-depth expertise.

State-of-the-art products

Offering the most technically advanced products can form a powerful strategy if the firm truly has the capability to offer state-of-the-art products. Usually technically advanced products will cost more than less advanced ones.