Essay on Strategic Planning

Unit 3, Assignment 1 – Customer Assessment Tools. Search the online Library for a journal article on customer assessment tools. Then, use the Internet to research the various customer assessment tools. Post the information as to the sites and information you found as well as the responses to the following: what tool do you feel is most useful to you, summarize how the tool operates, and what kind of results you should expect.

According to Lindgreen, Palmer, Vanhamme and Wouters, assessing clients is a crucial part of business management, as it enables companies to correspond the customers’ requirements more fully. Happier clients presuppose more business, which leads to better earnings and business development. Many tools for customer appraisal are accessible. The vital part of the task is achieving the insight into what clients like, do not like, wish and require (Lindgreen, Palmer, Vanhamme & Wouters, 2006).

For example, observing clients in the action is an extremely useful method of estimating them, but it may be quite biased (Handler & Hunt, 2003). Rather than quantitative information, observation creates the qualitative information, which is harder to analyze. It is more personal, nonetheless, and the client being assessed may like it more. Instances of observation comprise focus groups and management observation. The managers can also interview clients one-on-one to discover manners that the business could better correspond to their requirements.

A well-designed and performed management observation program works as an efficient performance enhancement and strengthening instrument to accomplish the long-term performance alterations. The management observation is an integral part of an evaluation program. By design, the observation programs force direct management observation of and feedback on work performed whilst supporting the performance information gathering and analysis required understanding the lasting organizational performance modifications. They usually comprise the assessment scorecards, a data collection and analysis application. This procedure defines needed observation subjects, frequencies, and quality principles as well as feedback and documentation protocols and information analysis, trend reporting; all aligned to support accomplishment of organizational values and mission aims.

Unit 3, Assignment 2 – Planning Process. Using the Internet or other resources, research planning processes used by public, nonprofit, or private agencies. Provide Internet links on this discussion board.

Strategic planning is a process, which permits members of the company to own the image and work out the finest method to perform it. It develops the plan that turns the vision in the reality. Public organizations live to distribute proceeds to owners and shareholders; nonprofit groups utilize earnings to follow the mission, but both stop to perform if they work at a loss or fail to accomplish the planned aim. In an age where uncontrolled alteration is the status quo, even new and tiny firms need to regularly re-examine the innovative business plan. In the end, even if the vision remains the same, an altering atmosphere can mean the changing route to carrying it out. According to Bryson, the advantages of strategic planning exceed a consequential plan itself (Bryson, 2004). This process permits members of the firm to identify better with a vision, experience ownership in the aims and gain a feeling of the close collaboration with other people.

Planning processes may be structured or free-flowing, formal or informal, but they often consider these main aspects of the business:

Ӣ Where the company wishes to be in five or ten years;

Ӣ Ways the company performs better than opponents;

Ӣ What key clients require and why;

Ӣ Present and forecasted alterations in a business atmosphere (Bryson, 2004).

Usually, strategic planning comprises gap analysis, where it takes a frank look at the existing state of the company. Then, members develop aims and objectives to tactically close this gap, getting the firm closer to the imagined final state. The more members can be frank concerning the existing state of the company the more advantageous the process.