Strategic Planning Articles

Business » Strategic Planning | By Suzanne Holman @ Tuesday, 24th April 2007 @ 3:27 PM

After completing the Vision and Mission Statement portions of a Business Plan, the next step is to come up with strong strategies that will make the business successful. Along with setting the direction of the creation and maintenance of your business, strategic planning establishes a guide for evaluating the important business decisions that must be made. With a clear set of strategies it is much easier to keep a business on track. These strategies are sometimes thought of as &quo... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Suzanne Holman @ Thursday, 19th April 2007 @ 6:05 PM

"My mission? Not only do I not know if I want to accept it, I don't even know what it is!" Does that sound familiar? Your mission doesn't have to fit into a lot of the molds you may have imagined. Have you dismissed the idea of having a mission as something for more significant or complicated endeavors? Your mission doesn't have to be huge or to save the world in order to be worth having. It definitely doesn't have to be somethi... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By David Fishman @ Friday, 13th April 2007 @ 12:34 PM

One morning you might wake up and like a ton of bricks a great idea for creating and starting your online business comes to mind, and you hadn't a doubt in your mind that you could turn it into a huge success. Start with the end in mind. Are you planning to start a new business? If you find a viable business you like, document your intentions, intended deal structure and what exact information you need to start your purchase due diligence. Many small businesses start with a b... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Johnny Albertson @ Thursday, 12th April 2007 @ 9:02 PM

Every business begins with a small seed of an idea, a great invention, or a dream of a new and improved product. While making a profit is surely a concern for any entrepreneur, offering a quality product is also at the forefront of every business. As the business plan grows, a greater vision for the type of desired customers develops. By fully understanding those customers, a business has the opportunity to achieve success. Your Target Market Create a profile for your average customer.... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Dave Kauppi @ Thursday, 12th April 2007 @ 12:37 AM

Most business owners sell only one business in their lifetime. It is complex, emotional and pressure packed. Given this backdrop, the odds of a great outcome are, well, not that great. One of the most important functions of an M& A Advisor is to prepare the client for the bumpy road ahead. The worst outcome is to go through the exhaustive process of marketing the business, corporate visits, and due diligence, only to have the deal crater in month eight because of some ruffled feathers or ... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Suzanne Holman @ Tuesday, 10th April 2007 @ 6:34 PM

In order to write a vision for your business, the first step is identifying who you really are and what is important to you. Not what you DO or have been doing, but who you ARE. You may be doing things that are really not in alignment with what is important to you in your business. It's critical to identify any of those discrepancies to redirect your efforts toward a successful venture. List all the things that you don't want to see in your business. A great way ... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Brad Semp @ Thursday, 5th April 2007 @ 3:47 PM

Have you ever thought about how your mind stores and organizes all of the things that you know? Most people have not and quite frankly the majority of people could care less to think about this question. However, there are reasons why you and other business owners should care very much about this question for your business' sake. Cognitive science seeks to understand and develop a model of how the human mind stores and processes information. The field of artificial intellige... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Wayne Messick @ Thursday, 5th April 2007 @ 2:20 PM

For businesses strategic planning is a concept, a mind set and a process. It is looking down the road at what's around the bend. When everyone around your place is focusing on what's coming you will all recognize it in time to take advantage of it. As things appear on the horizon each of you will be asking the question, what's important about that from your various perspectives. You will be able to articulate the important elements of foreseeable future possibilities so yo... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Jennifer Lavoie @ Monday, 2nd April 2007 @ 7:08 PM

We live in a society driven by instant gratification. Why wait for tomorrow when we can have it now. Buy now, pay later. Earn millions today. Get rich quick. Lose weight without eating less. You can't watch television or surf the net without coming across massive amount of this kind of advertising. It should signal buyer beware but instead more and more people are flocking towards these promises of get it now and get it fast. Author Robert Kiyosaki talks about... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Suzanne Holman @ Thursday, 22nd March 2007 @ 7:30 PM

Business planning is an adventure? I doubt that many people would describe it that way. Creating a business plan is not a favorite for many entrepreneurs. Business plans have gotten the reputation of being complicated, boring, and useless. Part of the reason for this is probably because of the requirement to have a business plan when applying for a loan. In that case, the plan is written more for the lending institution than it is for the business owner. Most likely, once... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Melih Oztalay @ Tuesday, 20th March 2007 @ 5:25 PM

Once time was money. Now it is more valuable than money. A McKinsey study reports that, on average, companies lose 33% of after-tax profit when they ship products six months late, as compared with losses of 3.5% when they overspend 50% on product development. More and more, advanced manufacturers are learning that the time required to develop a new product has more influence on its success than its costs. Little wonder, then, that senior managers are working hard to reduce their new pr... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Melih Oztalay @ Tuesday, 20th March 2007 @ 12:31 PM

As commercial processes commoditize in a developed economy, they are outsourced or transferred offshore or both, leaving onshore companies with unrelenting pressure to come up with the next wave of innovation. Failure to innovate equals failure to differentiate equals failure to garner the profits and revenues needed to attract capital investment. It behooves us all to use our brains to get out in front of this Darwinian process. For starters, we need to appreciate how broad the domain ... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By karl glantschnig @ Tuesday, 20th March 2007 @ 7:33 AM

Is there validity to comparing in-house work and outsourced work? Of course there is but the more pertinent question is how you make these comparisons. Those who are involved in the Internet niche marketing industry realize a large portion of their success is related to their ability to constantly evaluate their niche markets and determine what is working and what is not working. They examine and test aesthetical details such as font size and colors along with more technical elements suc... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Justin Woolich @ Tuesday, 20th March 2007 @ 5:51 AM

As business owners and managers we are quite often caught up in the day to day work of running our businesses, dealing with clients, managing staff, developing new products and more often than not fixing problems. After all of this work is done there is no time left (or more importantly no energy left) to spend on what I consider to be the most important work that we face as business owners and managers, business development. It is no wonder that the average business struggles to reach t... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Justin Woolich @ Tuesday, 20th March 2007 @ 5:47 AM

Or are you not planning for growth at all? Or worse yet, do you even know how your business is performing and what the key growth drivers are for your business? An essential part of growing and developing your business revolves around the concept of identifying then tracking and measuring the key indicators in your business. Once you have established what it is you would like to achieve, and you track how you are performing, you will begin achieving your goals. You will also find... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Justin Woolich @ Tuesday, 20th March 2007 @ 5:38 AM

Your company's organizational strategy is centred around the development and communication of your organization chart. The organization chart takes the form of a graphical representation of the positions in your company. The top position in the company (i.e. CEO or General Manager) is placed at the top of the organization chart. The various layers of management and supporting Positions are then arranged under the relevant management Positions right down to the lowest levels of the organizat... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By T J Madigan @ Tuesday, 20th March 2007 @ 3:18 AM

With a mission to support the countrys economic development, the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) aims to further its citizens integration into the global market. They are targeting to prepare highly- competent and continentally- oriented individuals who will be working in its own environment but still adapting to the driving forces of the outside world. China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) was established on November 8, 1994 in Shanghai. It is specificall... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By Melih Oztalay @ Thursday, 22nd February 2007 @ 1:41 PM

The Roman god Janus had two sets of eyes - one pair focusing on what lay behind, the other on what lay ahead. General Managers and corporate executives should be able to relate. They, too, must constantly look backward, attending to the products and processes of the past, while also gazing forward, preparing for the innovations that will define the future. This mental balancing act can be one of the toughest of all managerial challenges - it requires executives to explore new opportunit... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By T J Madigan @ Tuesday, 13th February 2007 @ 8:08 PM

Are you having trouble getting a committee in your company to create a branding strategy for you? Do you find it a complicated task to come up with effective branding tactics? Does your existing branding campaign fall short of your expectations? Are you at a loss on what to do next? Why not consider getting corporate branding services? There are many consultants and firms offering such services for companies like yours that are in a quandary on the right approach of their corporate bra... more...

Business » Strategic Planning | By John Pawlett @ Thursday, 25th January 2007 @ 2:00 PM

I thought I would clear up some misconceptions about marketing. What Marketing Can Do For You and What Marketing Can't Do For You. We'll start with the positive. Over the years, I've had dealings with some business owners who have a rather skewed perception of marketing. They think you throw a few ads out there, get a couple of press releases printed and voila! You're a big success. Oh, if it only were that easy. (Although if it were, I probably wouldn't ha... more...