The advancement of digital, communicational technologies and social networks has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize markets, and the ways of relating of human beings. A high percentage of human communications are carried out today through tools that use the Internet.
The use of the internet as a means of carrying out all kinds of commercial, sports, social, labor and educational transactions has become popular to the point that it is inconceivable and it is impossible to live together without the internet. The world is interconnected and the commercial movement in the world depends on this great invention. Today, whoever does not advertise through the internet, media and social networks simply does not exist.
This technology-driven market revolution increasingly demands faster, more timely response times, better product and service quality, innovation and creativity to consistently meet the needs of current and new customers.
Faced with these challenges, businesses must continually adapt their structure, processes and technologies to adjust and face these challenges, take advantage of the opportunities that the environment at a given moment offers, and to mitigate or eliminate the threats that come. A wrong or untimely decision can mean the loss of credibility affecting the corporate image, loss of customers, low sales and low profitability.
But how can better decisions be made in these volatile markets? Information is power, companies must continuously do market intelligence and for this it requires that their personnel are properly trained, qualified and motivated, their structure, organizational culture, strategy, processes and technologies are integrated and aligned to access quality information, timely and accurate that allows decisions to be made with the least degree of uncertainty.
But what opportunities to take advantage of and which threats to mitigate with the limited financial resources available?
Which of the opportunities provides the greatest positive impact on the business?
Undoubtedly, these questions represent a headache for many managers and directors of companies. Resources are scarce, they must be optimized and disposed of in the most efficient and effective way.
Strategic Planning is a powerful tool that significantly helps in the systematic planning of all the strategies, initiatives, projects and actions that must be executed to achieve business objectives, take advantage of opportunities, mitigate threats, improve competencies, positioning in markets and the quality of products and services.
But Strategic Planning to be effective and helpful requires good diagnoses of the current situation, good quality information on the behavior of markets, the needs and preferences of buyers and customers, information on the competition, their products and services, strategies and their possible movements.
In practice, Strategic Planning faces internal challenges that form the basis for good strategic planning. These are as we have already mentioned:
- Good quality of information. In this sense, the information must be planned, the needs of information must be identified for each process of the value chain, who generates it, who owns it, maintains it, who uses it and who uses it. This in turn allows, through a gap analysis, to determine the gaps and plan the information technologies required to close the gaps and appropriately support the information needs of the processes. Customer-oriented organizational culture. The staff must be trained and motivated to provide quality service, "moments of truth", unforgettable positive customer experiences. This organizational culture must energize the vision of the company.Alignment of the Structure, Strategy, Processes, Technology, and Organizational Culture. If all these elements are aligned, the information will flow naturally in a source and in a cascade, in both directions, and in turn the Plan will be fed back, the objectives and strategic initiatives will strengthen the different organizational levels and processes of the value chain to Each level formulates, measures and controls its own indicators aligned with the corporate ones, and defines the projects and actions that will contribute to the achievement of the initiatives and business objectives. Participation of all levels of the company in the process of Strategic PlanningTo the extent that all levels and organizations of the company participate in the elaboration of the plan, to the same extent there will be greater commitment to achieve its objectives. Integrate individual interests with collective and organizational interests to break down the barriers and resistance that prevent the generation of commitment by staff.
Strategic Planning also faces external challenges as a consequence of the dynamics of global markets, its volatility, its constant change as a consequence of the incorporation of new technologies that affect its behavior. These challenges include:
- The dynamics of the markets force that the Planning is carried out for a short to medium term period, several planning cycles are carried out and requires that the plan be reviewed frequently in shorter periods. As a consequence, companies must dispose and store large volumes of information, and must invest in sophisticated information and automation technologies to process and generate the precise information required
In the Strategic Planning of a city, municipality, state or country the challenges are even more complicated, among them we can mention:
- The political actors change in each period and often the successor political actors do not give continuity to the plan. Incorporate the participation of all sectors of society in the elaboration of the plan exercise. The specific weight of the proposals by sector is not the The interests of the sectors of society are often opposed. The income to finance the projects sometimes comes from the central government, or from debt.
Strategic Planning continues to be in force despite the challenges it must face, it continues to be a powerful tool to systematically organize and plan the future of organizations, it provides a sense of direction and objective to each movement, action and project, and contributes to the optimal use of resources.
