Business Strategic Planning - Admission/Application Essay Example

Business strategic planning A business strategy plan is an essential tool in beginning or expanding any business. It involves comparing various business alternatives, followed by appropriate or economical business decisions then allocating appropriate resources to meet such decisions. The three basic elements in any business strategic plan is the exact business, the target demand and how to initiate such business and enjoy its advantages. Any business plan will always have more than one alternative but it is the role of the planning team to engage various business yard sticks to pick the best alternative. Some of the yardsticks used the expected returns or input compared to the out output, a phenomenon called cost bearing ratio (CBR). Feasibility of certain alternative could also be attributed by the nature of competition, capital and human resource availability, political, legal and cultural implications among others. After settling on a specific alternative or decision, the planning team comes with organizational structure and these include the vision, mission, goal and objectives of the business. These are meant to motivate all business stakeholders to ensure its success. The team can then conduct a business study to know what is actually on the ground, in terms of demand versus supply and other business environmental issues. A well constructed business strategic plan would act as a budget for establishing a business, meaning it would the team incorporate all the essential factors in a business establishment. It also helps the team gather relevant business information that could be used to assess or audit its success in the future. This discourse is about a business strategic plan to start a computer college in Tripoli, Libya. #1 Organizational structure Business vision is the general image created once the computer school is established. In this case I will settle on “Digital community”. The school would provide opportunity for Libyans to learn computer applications, and join the digital regime. Business mission on the other hand is the purpose of establishing the business and these include, providing cheap computer education, creating job opportunities and to contribute to the general economy of the country. Business values are the bottom line or common beliefs among its stakeholders and I will settle on “Education is the key to development, Computer knowledge is the solution to major modern problems and computer illiteracy is a modern torture” among other values. The following is the summary of the new business or organizational structure. # 2 Problem analysis The next stage is to dubbed situation analysis and this involves analysis the current business situation to determine the feasibility of the plan. It would be a great waste of resources to start the college only to enroll few or no students. This considers the average target of students and their general availability, availability of similar colleges and their general performance with regard to the number of students and average revenue, political and legal issues promoting the and hindering the business and capability of the Libyans to afford such education among other relevant issues. The college will target secondary school graduates who are about to join higher institutions like universities or colleges. The college may also cooperate with existing technical institutions which do not have an IT department. The college may also target the working class on individual entity or partnering with various working institutions to offer employee training programs, more so in IT applications. Tripoli and Libya as a general has over one million high school graduates on a yearly basis. Furthermore, the country has few such colleges and this is indicated by congestions in the existing institutions. Libya is an oil producing country and it has a stable economy to enable its citizens afford such educative programs. SWOT analysis could be used to determine the strengths and the weaknesses as well as threats regarding the establishment of the college (May 57). The strengths include strong national economy, high demand, indicated by congestions in similar colleges, high population, several technical institutions without IT departments, friendly national policies, accessibility, several working class without adequate computer knowledge and availability of working institutions ready or willing to partner with the established computer college. Situational analysis would also mean considering both the internal and external business environment situations to determine the business feasibility. The above points make the external business environment considerations and it could be summarized that the factors calls for need for establishing a new computer college. The business also meets the internal factors for instance, there is adequate capital and manpower to start the college. For a start, the college would consider hiring 5 well experience teacher and 2 employees for finance department one for human resources department and 2 female IT assistances to guide the students. And one well experienced person as Business strategy planning manager. Furthermore, the owner plans to construct the premise within the center of Tripoli, with five storeys and 15 rooms on each storey with a parking space of about 100 cars. # 3 Planning methods Selection of business selection is a core factor contributing to its success. The computer college will be situated in the center of Tripoli town and this will ease its access. The town is joined with a good road network and rail line among other transport mode. The town has more than 150 high schools and higher education institutions, hence good demand. However, being the strategic manager, I propose that there should another alternative should the alternative of Tripoli town fail. It is important to always have more than three alternatives since this is a business yet to be established and baring factors can be sidelined. The business owner may not attain the license to be set up in the center of the capital city from political and social implications. Remember an environmental Impact assessment study and social Evaluation analysis will be conducted to determine whether it is appropriate to have the institution established in the city. There is another element called zoning or urban stratification encouraging some institutions to be established in city outcasts to ease congestion through population distribution. However, Tripoli still stands the best alternative to start the college. Tripoli town has good security, banking institutions and IT based companies to ease the college establishment. Banking institutions play great role in providing debit capital and keeping business’ revenue. The town has well established power network to keep the machine running during lessons. Tripoli has good hardware and established construction firms to ease the five storey building. It would be expensive to hire contractors from outcast. The institution will engage various advertisement methods to increase and maintain the number of its students. Clear quality posters or billboards with the college’s information will be placed in strategic corners of the city and its outcasts. The college will arrange for regular road shows within and out of the city to create awareness. Various IT experts, more so the web developers will be given the task to post the college’s information on its web site and keep the public updated as the college progress. The same team will create the college’s social pages like Facebook and Twitter to keep the public posted. Such information will also post in the local dailies, advertised in local television and radio broadcasting channels to attract more students. Furthermore, the management team may engage interactions with various companies’ managers or leaders and talk of their courses and how they can benefit employees from such companies. This requires good social and professional skills. # 4 Time allocation Establishing the computer college may take approximate of three and a half years all factors held constant. The first six months could be spent seeking major legal certifications and these include construction permit from the city authority, environmental licenses and business permit among others. A business permit may take more time since it will require property rights like logo, copyright and trademark among others. The next twenty four months could be the construction phase. The college will consist of a five storey with ten rooms per storey and a parking lot. Being a modern model of construction, more emphasis may be put and this could take more time, but this depends on the contract between the contractors and the business owner. The next twelve months could be spent furnishing the college and computer networking. The institution could contract more IT experts or firms to complete the work in good time. Then the staff will familiarize themselves with computer network and the general computer college before it can be certified by the relevant authority so that it can begin its operations. However, returns could be realized after an approximate period of two years since it will require time to convince students and working class enroll in the institution. The college will offer Computer fist packages (Application), and maintenance, certificate in networking, diploma in web designs and programming among others. # 5 Business audit Business audit will be conducted on a regular basis to ascertain whether the institution adheres to its strategic plan and whether there is need to make some adjustments. This will be done to increase its revenue. The college management team will contract relevant auditing firm (external audit) or engage its own employee (internal audit) to conduct a survey or study regarding the institution’s expenditure and revenue regime. Books of records among other documents will be helpful in this exercise. PESTEL method of analysis will be employed and this implies the business relation with Political, Environmental, Social and Legal implications and its general productivity. Audit reports will be discussed among relevant stakeholders or authority and the same copies kept for next audits. # 6 Importance of stakeholder analysis A stakeholder is any recognized entity for the running or operation of the institution. These include the students (customers), suppliers, board members (investors) and staff among others. This work will categorically emphasize on the importance of customers’ analysis. Students will be asked to fill quality evaluation forms to ascertain the view as per the quality of services offered by the college. The findings will be used to make necessary adjustments to ensure more students are enrolled in the college, hence increased revenue. The findings will also guide relevant authority in introducing certain business elements or technologies and beat the competitors among other benefits. # 7 Boston product classification methods Boston classification method categorizes products in the market according to their market share (high or low market share) and whether the product’s market is growing or falling among other factors. Juicy Drinks Ltd is facing stiff competition from companies employing advanced technologies to do the squeezing, and furthermore, more customers are complaining of the small seeds in the juice, resulting from the traditional squeezing methods. The juice falls in the cash cow category because it already has a brand name and is distributed in major chains of supermarkets. The only twist is to employ advanced squeezing technologies to improve the quality of juice and attract even more customers. Juice is one of people’s favorite drinks and its demand is readily available. It is also important to mention the fact the company is still making sales despite its production problems and this means small advancement will retain the existing customers and even attract more. However, one may also categorize the juice product under the question mark wagon. Juicy Drinks Ltd is making low revenue, much lower than other companies with modern squeezing machines. The juice makes low market share although it operates in a market with high growth rate. The demand for juice is on increase due to rise in human population, improved economy so that at least every family can afford at least the smallest package among other factors, while on the other hand, the juice is exhibiting low market growth due to its production problems. The business has great potentials should some of the problems fixed. However, the issue of question mark arises due to the difficulty in predicting what might happen even after fixing the production limitations. People may start questioning the new product now that the majority is against chemical additives due to health reasons. Other competitors may also take advantage of the situation and employ business strategies to attract and maintain its customers so that Juicy Drinks Ltd may make a come back but still lack customers. # 8 Hall Faull Downes Ltd is likely to make more profit, now that it is quick in detecting its limitations and fixing it without affecting its ongoing operations. The company engaging in engineering products is a good move since that is where the future is heading. Although a margin of 3% is considered dismal, the company may put more emphasis on changes that brought such increase in income and invest in such strategies even further. However, the company should put more focus on attracting and maintaining its customers, since a drop of 40 to 9 customers is more of business suicide. The company should conduct business survey or stakeholder analysis and ascertain its weakness for appropriate amendments. The company should also check on its customer care services and advice its employees on the importance of good or friendly social relations. The company could also enhance its work place diversity to attract more stakeholders. However, it is not certain whether the company is likely to make a strong come back now that more regional and international companies are venturing in similar business. The global financial crisis is also one of the economic limitations that could hinder the company revival. Work cited May, Gary. Strategic planning: Fundamentals of small business. London: Business expert press, 2010. Print. Read More