What is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is an organizational management activity

that is used to set priorities, focus energy and resources,
strengthen operations, ensure that employees and other
stakeholders are working toward common goals, establish
agreement around intended outcomes/results, and assess and
adjust the organization's direction in response to a changing
environment. It is a disciplined effort that produces
fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what
an organization is, who it serves, what it does, and why it does
it, with a focus on the future. Effective strategic planning
articulates not only where an organization is going and the
actions needed to make progress, but also how it will know if it
is successful.

What is a Strategic Plan?

A strategic plan is a document used to communicate with the
organization the organizations goals, the actions needed to
achieve those goals and all of the other critical elements
developed during the planning exercise.

What is Strategic Management? What is Strategy Execution?

Strategic management is the comprehensive collection of
ongoing activities and processes that organizations use to
systematically coordinate and align resources and actions with
mission, vision and strategy throughout an organization.
Strategic management activities transform the static plan into a
system that provides strategic performance feedback to
decision making and enables the plan to evolve and grow as
requirements and other circumstances change. Strategy
Execution is basically synonymous with Strategy Management
and amounts to the systematic implementation of a strategy.

What Are the Steps in Strategic Planning & Management?

There are many different frameworks and methodologies for
strategic planning and management. While there is no absolute
rules regarding the right framework, most follow a similar
pattern and have common attributes. Many frameworks cycle
through some variation on some very basic phases: 1) analysis
or assessment, where an understanding of the current internal
and external environments is developed, 2) strategy
formulation, where high level strategy is developed and a basic
organization level strategic plan is documented 3) strategy
execution, where the high level plan is translated into more
operational planning and action items, and 4) evaluation or
sustainment / management phase, where ongoing refinement
and evaluation of performance, culture, communications, data
reporting, and other strategic management issues occurs.

What Are the Attributes of a Good Planning Framework?

The Association for Strategic Planning (ASP), a U.S.-based, non-
profit professional association dedicated to advancing thought
and practice in strategy development and deployment, has
developed a Lead-Think-Plan-Act rubric and accompanying
Body of Knowledge to capture and disseminate best practice in
the field of strategic planning and management. ASP has also
developed criteria for assessing strategic planning and
management frameworks against the Body of Knowledge.

These criteria are used for three primary purposes:

Ensure that the ASP Body of Knowledge is continuously
updated to include frameworks that meet these criteria.
Maintain a list of qualifying commercial and academic
frameworks recommended for study and training, to prepare
participants to sit for the three ASP certification examinations.
Provide a resource and check list for practitioners as they
refine and improve their organizations systems and for
consultants as they improve their product and service offerings.
The criteria developed by the ASP are:

Uses a Systems Approach that starts with the end in mind.
Incorporate Change Management and Leadership Development
to effectively transform an organization to high performance.
Provide Actionable Performance Information to better inform
decision making.
Incorporate Assessment-Based Inputs of the external and
internal environment, and an understanding of customers and
stakeholder needs and expectations.
Include Strategic Initiatives to focus attention on the most
important performance improvement projects.
Offer a Supporting Toolkit, including terminology, concepts,
steps, tools, and techniques that are flexible and scalable.
Align Strategy and Culture, with a focus on results and the
drivers of results.
Integrate Existing Organization Systems and Align the
Organization Around Strategy.
Be Simple to Administer, Clear to Understand and Direct, and
Deliver Practical Benefits Over the Long-Term.
Incorporate Learning and Feedback, to Promote Continuous
Long-term Improvement.



High revenue - Low cost = High profit.
In the course of time there are a number of push and pull
factors drawing firms towards certain locations and away from
others.
Push factors include
Rising competition in an area, rising costs, poor
communications systems, falling demand.
Pull factors include
Government incentives, low labour costs, good communication
systems, developing markets.



Factors influencing the location of industry in this country have
changed over time.
Manufacturing industries often needed to be close to sources
of raw materials, transport links and markets.
Manufacturing industry became increasingly less significant in
this country during the twentieth century to be replaced by
service industries as the driving force behind the economy.
Services to people and businesses typically need to be located
near to centres of population - e.g. cinemas, insurance,
banking, retailing, etc.
The development of the Internet since the mid-1990's has
meant that business generally is less tied to centres of
population. Online banking and insurance for example can be
conducted online using web based and telephone
communications. Call centres that serve these service
industries do not have to be located in urban centres anymore -
so that many jobs have been relocated where labour costs are
lower e.g. Northern Ireland, Scotland, etc. There has also been
a growing trend to outsource service work overseas to
countries like India.
In choosing a business location therefore firms need to weigh
up the following range of push and pull factors:
1.Closeness to market. This is the case with fresh produce - so
that for example, many supermarkets operate their own
bakeries.
2.Communications links. Transport is an important factor
supporting access to markets. Modern companies also need to
locate where they have access to excellent information
technology links.
3.Closeness to raw materials. Locating close to the raw
material supplies can reduce where raw materials are heavy
and large quantities are used up in production costs. This is
particularly true for industries like steel, which uses large
quantities of iron ore in the production process.
4.Availability of appropriately skilled employees. Some
industries rely heavily on a highly skilled workforce. In contrast,
other industries that require cheap labour will seek locations
where there are a lot of people looking for work that are
prepared to accept low wages.
5.Opportunity for waste disposal. Waste is an important side
effect of modern industrial processes. Firms that produce a lot
of toxic material (e.g. some chemical plants) will seek to locate
where there are facilities available for recycling and safe
disposal of their products.
6.Availability of power supplies. Energy supplies can typically
be found in most parts of the UK - e.g. electricity pylons and
cables. Large firms are able to negotiate bulk discounts when
they purchase power from energy retailing companies. Being
able to negotiate a good deal in a particular location might be
influential as a locational factor.
7.Availability of land is increasingly important today. Land is
becoming increasingly scarce particularly in urban locations,
forcing rental prices up. Property prices are particularly high in
major city areas such as Central London and Birmingham.
Companies like Land Securities are developing new sites that
are suitable for modern businesses to locate to.
8.Government incentives are important in reducing costs of
locating in certain areas. These incentives are in effect
subsidies provided by European Regional Funds (from the
European Union) and by the UK government.
A footloose business - is the term used to describe a business
that is not tied down by particular locating factors. It can more
or less set up anywhere.
Industrial inertia - describes a situation where a business sets
up in a particular location and then the original factors that led
it to locate there become no longer significant - but the firm
does not move.