The Five Phases Of A Strategic Planning Process

There seems to be a usual misconception of idea whenever the topic about strategic planning and business planning arises. There is actually nothing to be confused about between the two. Both of them are planning processes but they have a totally different focus. The topic of this article is all about strategic planning, but first, let us clear that air of confusion.

Business planning is all about the products or the services that a certain company renders. It focuses on the aspects of the organization that has everything to do with marketing, advertising, short and long term effects of processes and delivery. On the other hand, strategic planning talks about what the company will be like over the next years, how it will be able to get there and how to determine if they attained that goal. Plain and simple, right? Now, let us talk further about strategic planning and how to successfully conduct its process.

An organization should engage to strategic planning in order to determine and asses the internal and external factors and base its situation to formulate a strategy that will last through the test of time. There are five phases that sums up an entire strategic planning process:

1.Mission and Objectives

-It is important for an organization to have a firm and unchanging values, complete with a forward looking purpose. This is called the business’ vision.

2.Environmental Scanning

-The organization has to scan the conditions of their target marketplace in order to be prepared and equipped if they plan to deliver goods and services. There are a lot of methodologies to perform this, but it is recommended to never leave out these three: PEST Analysis, SWOT Analysis and Porter’s Five Forces.

3.Strategy Formulation

-The next step to the strategic planning process is to formulate a strategy based on the environmental scanning information that has been gathered. Addressing the four aspects of SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), the firm should be able to match their strengths to the opportunities while noting their internal weaknesses and external threats as well.

4.Strategy Implementation

-Obviously, if you formulate a strategy, you have to implement it. This is usually a process that involves the implementation of procedures, programs and budgets.

5.Evaluation and Control

-This may look like the last part of the process, but actually, it is not. This is merely maintenance. The firm should be able to control all their procedures and strategies and conduct alterations if necessary.

There are a lot of strategic planning models, mainly because developing a strategic plan depends on several organizational factors like the nature of leadership, organizational culture, environment complexity, personnel expertise and the size of the organization, to name a few. These are called “models” because there is no standard strategic planning method. Oftentimes, organizations develop their own, based on models that depend on type and focus. Basically, there are five types of models that companies often tweak to fit for their advantage:

-Basic Strategy Planning

-Issue or Goal-Based Model

-Alignment Model

-Scenario Model

-Organic Planning

By: Sam Miller

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