Strategic Business Plan Example
Outline – I will provide you with the required plan format in advance for completion of your strategic business plan. Students often choose to build their plan around a new entrepreneurial business opportunity they want to launch or to take advantage of a business opportunity or resolve a strategic problem within their work environment
• Title page and table of contents, course, name and date, name of company, name of instructor
• The objective of the Strategic Business Plan is to develop a business strategy that incorporates the key learning objectives covered in the course and is focused on a individual strategic business issue of importance to you. Students often develop strategic business plans to launch a new business venture they have been thinking about or to resolve a strategic problem or take advantage of a strategic opportunity at their place of work.
• Write your plan using a business writing format similar to what you see in the text that can include paragraph format, bullet points and/ or charts, tables, diagrams, references
Plan Sections
A strategic plan format guide will be provided in advance for you to use in building your strategic business plan
• Executive Summary-
o Write a paragraph describing the business situation/ problem that you are addressing in the plan and basic outline of how you intend to resolve it. The executive summary represents an important checkpoint that you will refer to as you construct the plan. All elements of the plan should be supportive of the executive summary. You may want to do a rough outline of the executive summary as you start the plan to identify the “big picture” and then rewrite a finished version once you have completed the plan. Remember to answer the three tests of winning strategy in your executive summary:
• Strategic fit
• Competitive advantage
• Identify the problem and the solution “what problem am I solving and how”
• Measurable performance objectives (financial, strategic and/or operational) “will the business have a sustainable competitive advantage as a result of the plan”
• Strategic Vision-
o What is your vision statement for the business? This should give the reader a sense of the “desired state” of the business once the plan has been successfully implemented and answer the question “How am I creating long term shareholder value”
o Describe your strategic and financial business objectives. Consider the examples given on page 28 Table 2.2 of the text. Develop objectives that are relevant to your business issues. Strategic/financial objectives should be both short term (1-3 years) and long term (1-5 years).
• Business Objectives
o Identify strategic, financial and/or operational objectives. These objectives must have a time frame and be measurable, (achieve X by Y time frame)
• External Environmental Analysis
o Construct an external environmental analysis and describe the factors that you feel will impact your business environment. These may include technical, financial, operational, human resource, regulatory, legislative issues or others
• Industry and Competitive Environmental Analysis-
o Assess the competitive environment. Use Porter’s Five Forces Model to describe the competitive situation you are facing. Consider the seven industry analysis questions that apply to your business situation when constructing your industry and competitive analysis
• Internal Environmental Analysis – Competitive Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats-
o Construct a SWOT analysis. Translate the output from your SWOT analysis to construct your business strategy
• Business Strategy
o Using the output from your SWOT analysis state the business strategy(s) that respond to your environmental analysis, leverage your strengths and opportunities, offset your weaknesses and external threats and are realistic as solutions to the stated business objectives. Refer to the five generic competitive strategies discussed on pages 118 Figure 5.1.
• Implementation Plan-
o Describe, in detail in chart format, the steps you will take in implementing your business plan strategy.
• Who will do it
• How will it be implemented
• Your implementation time frame
• How you will incentivize strategy execution and performance
• Standards in place to ensure ethical implementation
• How will you use information tools to monitor implementation progress against plan objectives?
• A process to make real time changes to your plan as necessary
o Construct your Implementation Plan in chart format with prioritized actions down the left margin and a time line with deliverables on the top margin
• Strategy Expansion Plan-
o Consider what strategy you would use to expand your business plan assuming success of the core plan and strategic value of expansion to other geographic locations or other business units of the company
o Consider the different strategic expansion options described in Chapter 7 of the textbook
o A secondary form of business expansion is diversification into related and unrelated business areas. If this option offers strategic growth, then describe how you would use it in your plan
• Implementation and Monitoring Plan
o Monitor your Implementation plan activities as this support achievement of your business strategy
o Monitor achievement of your Business Objectives as this support achievement of your Vision Statement
o Monitoring can be done either qualitatively (numerical measurements) or qualitatively (surveys, focus groups)
* Remember, a winning strategy addresses:
• Strategic fit
• Sustainable competitive advantage
• Measurable performance