Strategic Planning is a Necessary Step in The Planning Framework System

Strategic Planning is a Framework System and is essential in small and large business planning. Successful business owners know that there are four steps in the strategic planning framework to answer the question of how to develop a strategic planning system. Strategic planning is important and equally important is that marketers perform these steps in order.

First, a marketer needs to define the company’s mission. Many companies develop a formal mission statement that is defined as a statement of the organization’s purpose and what it would like to accomplish in the larger environment. In the first step of strategic planning, it is important for a marketer to get a clear understanding as to what a company’s purpose or mission truly is before it goes on to the next step of the strategic plan, setting goals and objectives, otherwise they really wouldn’t know what the goals or objectives should be. A company’s mission statement is a good place to start to get this information.

Once the company’s mission is discovered the second step in the process is to use this mission (or larger goal) to set the companies objectives or goals. In other words, what does the company need to do to fulfill their mission, who is going to get that job done and when are they going to get the job done? The objectives and goals are used as an outline or guide to get to the end result (larger goal). Once the goals and objectives have been set, the company would then move forward to the third step of the strategic plan which is designing the business portfolio.

The business portfolio is the whole collection of businesses and products that make up the company. This particular process involves two steps. 1. Analyzing the current portfolio (the major step in strategic planning) and 2. They must develop strategies for growth and unforeseen company procedures such as downsizing. Although this step is the major step in the strategic planning process, to keep my explanation brief I will simply say that this process is to look at what the company is already doing, what’s working and what is not working, and then use that information to develop strategies that will enhance or improve the processes that are working and change or eliminate the ones that are not. Once this has been accomplished the marketer will move into the final stage of the strategic planning process.

Planning the marketing and other functional strategies completes the strategic planning process. Up to this stage the corporate level has been the driving force. Now, it is more on a department level. By using the developed business portfolio, the different departments of a company such as human resources, finance, IT, accounts payable, to name a few, must work together to bring the plan together and make it work. Each department will have their own set of goals and objectives; however, they will be working together towards fulfilling the company’s mission or major goal. 

This completes the strategic planning process. In order to develop an effective strategic plan the marketer must follow all these stages in the order mentioned because as demonstrated each stage uses information gathered from the previous stage to be developed properly. After all, one would not be able to produce chocolate milk if he or she drank the milk before adding the chocolate!