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Whether you are playing a game of chess or running a business, you need an effective strategy to succeed. Even a layman knows that. What most people do not know is how to develop such a successful strategy. If you are a chess enthusiast, you should start studying the various game plans. However, if you want to learn about planning a business strategy, you have come to the right place, especially if you are a business student.
You need a proper strategy for almost every aspect of business operations – be it setting new business priorities, outlining the plans for growth, or planning a new product launch. While it may seem like a mammoth task to develop a strategy for every crucial area of a business, you can plan an effective business strategy if you simply follow the tips mentioned below:
1. Identify your Vision
A vision is an abstract concept that signifies what you want to see in the future. Before you start brainstorming for the business strategy, it is important that you identify what your vision is for the business. You need to include aspirations of what type of company you want your organization to be and also define what success for your company means as clearly as possible.
2. Define your competitive Advantage
In essence, your business strategy should focus on delivering unique value to the customers. It is unfortunate that in most industries, the companies have more or less the same strategy. To make your MBA dissertation stand out, it is important that you think outside the box to identify ways that can help give a business a competitive edge in its service offering, delivery system, pricing model, and more.
3. Identify your Targets
It goes without saying that your business strategy should be built while keeping the target audience in mind. If you do not define your targets, you may end up developing unclear messaging, which can cause misalignment between sales and marketing. So, before you work on your strategy, it is important that you clearly define the niches and specialties.
While this measure will allow your business to focus its resources on the right areas, it will also enable you to create an integrated sales and marketing approach. When the targets are tight, you can execute the sales and marketing plans more effectively.
4. Make systematic Growth your Priority
Your business strategy should also focus on growth, as it is the only way through which a company can afford to invest in things like technology, workforce, and new equipment. The strategic plan should identify in which segments your company will grow and in what proportion. This measure ensures that the product mix yields a certain net margin result.
Once you arrive at such conclusions, you will know how much your company can afford in terms of CAPEX, overhead expenses, and more.
5. Complete a SWOT Analysis of your Business
A SWOT analysis allows you to critically evaluate your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. To identify the strengths, look into the areas such as your staff, market position, customer base, financial resources, products, profitability, sales channels, etc. While identifying the weaknesses of your business, explore the areas such as competitive vulnerability, your stuff, margins, market position, financial resources, missing products, customer complaints, missing sales channels, etc.
In order to find out the opportunities, look for the probabilities of entering complementary markets, raising funds, forming alliances, launching new products, pursuing M&A activity, exploiting customer weaknesses, etc. While exploring the threats, you should consider looking in the areas such as the economy, loss of efficient employees, lack of financial resources, disintermediation, limited cash flow, falling prices, etc. Consider this SWOT analysis as an “internal” evaluation of the business.
6. Make informed Decisions
While the SWOT analysis offers you great insights into various aspects of your business, you should always try to make use of those insights while making certain decisions. In fact, good data is essential in the process of forming a good business strategy. Also, don’t just limit yourself to the data obtained from the SWOT analysis. Look for useful information outside your organization.
If your business relies on the smooth operation of the nearby port, getting the public records of the nearby port can help you quantify the actual number of shipments of merchandise by your potential customers.
7. Plan for the longer Term while Evolving
The market trends are continuously changing, which compels businesses to plan for shorter periods. However, it is not smart to think only quarter to quarter, as it keeps you from looking at what lies ahead. Thus, it will be better for you to create processes that treat your strategy as an annual cycle instead of a static event developed for one-time use only.
Moreover, you should be evaluating the long-term external forces and start adapting depending on the latest information you gather. It will help you to evolve your business as per the change in the market and allow you to pivot.
8. Seek everyone’s Contribution
In order to continuously evolve, companies need to include different people in their strategy-building process. More inclusion leads to more transparency, which often helps eliminate the flaws in the strategy. However, it is a critical job to find out whom to include in the strategy-formation process. It will be better to add people to the team you can trust and those you believe can think strategically.
Final Thoughts
It is important to understand that business strategies can make or break your business. So, it is important that you perform each of these aforementioned measures with caution. It is always helpful to have experienced people in the team. However, you also need to take high risks at times if you are looking for higher returns.
Author bio: Amelie Gruber is a senior marketing manager at a reputed eCommerce company in the United Kingdom. He is also a part of the team of experts at MyAssignmenthelp.com, where she offers global assignment help to students on their requests.