Course: Marketing
Due Date: Monday 14th November 2011

(1) What is the benefit of Planning?
(2) Describe the steps in strategic Planning.

To begin with what is planning? Planning is the Selection of short- and long-term objectives and the drawing up of tactical and strategic plans to achieve those objectives. In planning, managers outline the steps to be taken in moving the organization toward its objectives. After deciding on a set of strategies to be followed, the organization needs more specific plans, such as locations, methods of financing, hours of operations, and so on. As these plans are made, they will be communicated throughout the organization.
When implemented, the plans will serve to coordinate, or meld together, the efforts of all parts of the organization toward the company's objectives.
There are many ways to state the benefits of planning or anticipatory decision making.
1. Planning helps decision makers by providing guidelines and goals for future decisions.
2. Planning helps manager exercises more control in a situation establish goals "proactively" and consider contingencies.
3. Planning can help quantify goals and establish a means of measuring success.
4. Planning can help insure that a coherent set of actions are implemented that are consistent with the values and priorities of the decision maker.
5. Planning helps allocate limited resources like staff, materials, and time in an orderly and systematic manner.
6. Planning helps in reducing uncertainties of future as it involves anticipation of future events.
7. Planning creates a healthy attitude towards work environment which helps in boosting employees moral and efficiency.
8. Planning is basically a decision making function which involves creative thinking and imagination that ultimately leads to innovation of methods and operations for growth and prosperity of the enterprise.
9. Planning provides competitive edge to the organization over others which do not have effective planning. This is because of the fact that planning may involve changing in work methods, quality, quantity designs, extension of work, redefining of goals.

Strategic Planning is a management tool that helps an organization focus its energy, to ensure that members of the organization are working toward the same goals, to assess and adjust the organization's direction in response to a changing environment. In short, strategic planning is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it, with a focus on the future.

The steps in Strategic Planning are:
Step One - Getting Ready
To get ready for strategic planning, an organization must first assess if it is ready. Issues must be addressed in assessing readiness; the determination essentially comes down to whether an organization's leaders are truly committed to the effort, and whether they are able to devote the necessary attention to the "big picture".
An organization that determines it is indeed ready to begin strategic planning must perform five tasks to pave the way for an organized process:
• identify specific issues or choices that the planning process should address
• clarify roles (who does what in the process)
• create a Planning Committee
• develop an organizational profile
• identify the information that must be collected to help make sound decisions.
Step Two - Articulating Mission and Vision
A mission statement must communicates the essence of an organization to the reader. An organization's ability to articulate its mission indicates its focus and purposefulness. A mission statement typically describes an organization in terms of its:
• Purpose - why the organization exists, and what it seeks to accomplish
• Business - the main method or activity through which the organization tries it fulfill this purpose
• Values - the principles or beliefs that guide an organization's members as they pursue the organization's purpose
Whereas the mission statement summarizes the what, how, and why of an organization's work, a vision statement presents an image of what success will look like.
With mission and vision statements in hand, an organization has taken an important step towards creating a shared, coherent idea of what it is strategically planning for.
At the end of Step Two, a draft mission statement and a draft vision statement is developed.

Step Three - Assessing the Situation
Once an organization has committed to why it exists and what it does, it must take a clear-eyed look at its current situation.
The products of Step Three include: a data base of quality information that can be used to make decisions; and a list of critical issues which demand a response from the organization - the most important issues the organization needs to deal with.
Step Four - Developing Strategies, Goals, and Objectives
Once an organization's mission has been affirmed and its critical issues identified, it is time to figure out what to do about them: the broad approaches to be taken (strategies), and the general and specific results to be sought (the goals and objectives). Strategies, goals, and objectives may come from individual inspiration, group discussion, formal decision-making techniques, and so on - but the bottom line is that, in the end, the leadership agrees on how to address the critical issues.
The product of Step Four is an outline of the organization's strategic directions - the general strategies, long-range goals, and specific objectives of its response to critical issues.
Step Five - Completing the Written Plan
The mission has been articulated, the critical issues identified, and the goals and strategies agreed upon. This step essentially involves putting all that down on paper. Usually one member of the Planning Committee, the executive director, or even a planning consultant will draft a final planning document and submit it for review to all key decision makers. This is also the time to consult with senior staff to determine whether the document can be translated into operating plans and to ensure that the plan answers key questions about priorities and directions in sufficient detail to serve as a guide. Revisions should not be dragged out for months, but action should be taken to answer any important questions that are raised at this step. It would certainly be a mistake to bury conflict at this step just to wrap up the process more quickly, because the conflict, if serious, will inevitably undermine the potency of the strategic directions chosen by the planning committee.