Environmental Scan
The environmental scan outlines the organization’s blueprint for the expanded provision of high quality, accessible, and sustainable services that will guarantee customer satisfaction. The organization acknowledges that corporate planning is a very important component of capacity building in long-term business activities. Therefore, the strategic plan introduces the element of vision and futuristic approach to the long-term objectives of the company. Indeed, strategizing has become part and parcel of corporate planning, thanks to the acceleration of the fundamental aspects of the internal and external business environments. The strategic plan presents incisive analysis of organization’s approach to improving services as well as growth and expansion targets for the next five years. It further spells out the company’s long term priorities in the improvement of its core services to both current and future customers. Above all, the strategic plan is identical to the missions, values, and objectives of the organization and it will be prepared and communicated with reference to all the company’s stakeholders. The stakeholders of the company include the management team, employees, customers, suppliers, stockholders, and the government.
Each of the stakeholder group will be involved in particular aspects of the strategic plan. The management team of the organization will be responsible for preparing and communicating the fundamental aspects of the strategic plan. Organizational employees will be responsible for executing the different phases of the strategic plan as per the stipulations outlined by the management team. Customer involvement will determine the organization’s benchmarks for future product delivery while supplier involvement will determine the availability of the materials and services required to achieve the new benchmarks. As the owners of the organization, stockholders’ involvement will mainly be concerned with the approval of the strategic plan during the organization’s Annual General Meeting. The government’s stakeholder role will involve laws and regulations that govern the organization’s industry of specialization. The successful implementation of organizational strategies is dependent on the prevailing and future government regulations and any functional lapses in the regulatory front may lead to failure in achieving the overall objectives a strategic plan.
SWOT Assessment
Strengths and weaknesses are two elements of the grid that are internal to the organization. In terms of strengths, the organization has an experienced management team and skillful employees that will be instrumental in the implementation of the strategic plan. The management team has the capabilities of harnessing the long-term potential of the existing organizational resources that will ensure the smooth transition of the strategic plan. This will be achieved through the implementation of a human resources management strategy that will be geared towards the provision of guiding framework for staff management, welfare and development, as well as comprehensive internal control and risk management measures that serve to ensure the smooth running of all the departments and sub-departments in the organization. Weaknesses include the existing operational infrastructure and output capacity of the organization as well as the management of change process in the organization. These are areas that will be improved so as to ensure smooth sailing of the core objectives of the strategic plan.
Opportunities and weaknesses fall along the continuum of the external organizational environment. Opportunities manifest in the form of market growth and enhanced operating efficiency. Indeed, the operating efficiency perspective is what informs the philosophy behind the company’s strategic planning because it defines the formulation of corporate objectives, development of plans for achieving the set corporate objectives and the allocation of resources for plan implementation. Threats include competitors, information technology (IT) transformations, and unforeseen enactment of government regulations. The threats by competitors may take the form of introduction of new products or emergence of new entrants in the target markets. The fast pace of IT transformations may render some of the organization’s IT-oriented strategic plans irrelevant in a future date. The unforeseen enactment of government regulations, on the other hand, may stifle the roll out of components of a strategic plan that will likely be affected by the new regulations. Strategic planning, therefore, demands the acknowledgement of possible setbacks in the implementation and achievement of projected objectives by the organizational management.
Core Competencies
Core competencies are the organizational pillars that define the success of its strategic pursuits. The core competencies of the organization’s strategic plan lie on the perpetual capabilities of its human resources and its abilities to forge enduring cooperation with all its stakeholders. Indeed, the value of any strategic models lie in their ability to fully achieve effective and objective representation of the environment but also their viability in focusing minds and helping people to take particular actions from informed perspectives. As such, the successful incorporation of the core competencies into the strategic plan will involve continuous pursuit of knowledge, emphasized perception of the organization as community of people. To this end, stakeholder partnerships and industry life cycles will be tailored to suit the strategic needs in the company. This way, the organization will be able to put in place a sustainable business model but also guarantee the perpetuation of its mission, vision, and objectives.