The strategic management process means defining the organization’s strategy. It is also defined as the process by which managers make a choice of a set of strategies for the organization that will enable it to achieve better performance.
Strategic management is a continuous process that appraises the business and industries in which the organization is involved; appraises its competitors; and fixes goals to meet all the present and future competitor’s and then reassesses each strategy.
Strategic management process has following four steps:
- Environmental Scanning– Environmental scanning refers to a process of collecting, scrutinizing and providing information for strategic purposes. It helps in analysing the internal and external factors influencing an organization. After executing the environmental analysis process, management should evaluate it on a continuous basis and strive to improve it.
- Strategy Formulation– Strategy formulation is the process of deciding best course of action for accomplishing organizational objectives and hence achieving organizational purpose. After conducting environment scanning, managers formulate corporate, business and functional strategies.
- Strategy Implementation– Strategy implementation implies making the strategy work as intended or putting the organization’s chosen strategy into action. Strategy implementation includes designing the organization’s structure, distributing resources, developing decision making process, and managing human resources.
- Strategy Evaluation– Strategy evaluation is the final step of strategy management process. The key strategy evaluation activities are: appraising internal and external factors that are the root of present strategies, measuring performance, and taking remedial / corrective actions. Evaluation makes sure that the organizational strategy as well as its implementation meets the organizational objectives.
These components are steps that are carried, in chronological order, when creating a new strategic management plan. Present businesses that have already created a strategic management plan will revert to these steps as per the situation’s requirement, so as to make essential changes.
Components of Strategic Management Process
Strategic management is an ongoing process. Therefore, it must be realized that each component interacts with the other components and that this interaction often happens in chorus.
Steps in Strategy Formulation Process
Strategy formulation refers to the process of choosing the most appropriate course of action for the realization of organizational goals and objectives and thereby achieving the organizational vision. The process of strategy formulation basically involves six main steps. Though these steps do not follow a rigid chronological order, however they are very rational and can be easily followed in this order.
- Setting Organizations’ objectives – The key component of any strategy statement is to set the long-term objectives of the organization. It is known that strategy is generally a medium for realization of organizational objectives. Objectives stress the state of being there whereas Strategy stresses upon the process of reaching there. Strategy includes both the fixation of objectives as well the medium to be used to realize those objectives. Thus, strategy is a wider term which believes in the manner of deployment of resources so as to achieve the objectives. While fixing the organizational objectives, it is essential that the factors which influence the selection of objectives must be analysed before the selection of objectives. Once the objectives and the factors influencing strategic decisions have been determined, it is easy to take strategic decisions.
- Evaluating the Organizational Environment – The next step is to evaluate the general economic and industrial environment in which the organization operates. This includes a review of the organizations competitive position. It is essential to conduct a qualitative and quantitative review of an organizations existing product line. The purpose of such a review is to make sure that the factors important for competitive success in the market can be discovered so that the management can identify their own strengths and weaknesses as well as their competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. After identifying its strengths and weaknesses, an organization must keep a track of competitors’ moves and actions so as to discover probable opportunities of threats to its market or supply sources.
- Setting Quantitative Targets – In this step, an organization must practically fix the quantitative target values for some of the organizational objectives. The idea behind this is to compare with long term customers, so as to evaluate the contribution that might be made by various product zones or operating departments.
- Aiming in context with the divisional plans – In this step, the contributions made by each department or division or product category within the organization is identified and accordingly strategic planning is done for each sub-unit. This requires a careful analysis of macroeconomic trends.
- Performance Analysis – Performance analysis includes discovering and analysing the gap between the planned or desired performance. A critical evaluation of the organizations past performance, present condition and the desired future conditions must be done by the organization. This critical evaluation identifies the degree of gap that persists between the actual reality and the long-term aspirations of the organization. An attempt is made by the organization to estimate its probable future condition if the current trends persist.
- Choice of Strategy – This is the ultimate step in Strategy Formulation. The best course of action is actually chosen after considering organizational goals, organizational strengths, potential and limitations as well as the external opportunities.
Self-Check Activity
- Explain the steps in Strategic management process.
- Explain the steps in Strategic formulation process.