Strategic Planning - Essay Example

The six-step decision-making process is hugely helpful in recognizing the need for making a decision and selecting the best course of action for achieving desired goals (Jones & George, 2010). The decision process involves: recognizing the need for decisions; generating alternatives; assessing alternatives choosing among alternatives simple chose, and learning from feedback. I have found these steps of making decisions very useful both at my workplace and in my personal life.

            Recently at my workplace, management was having problems with its field staff. The people in the field could not provide satisfactory services to the customers because of a lack of coordination with the warehouse and the office. Getting information about the availability of spare parts for servicing the products at the customers’ place was delaying the work. As a sales and marketing manager, I called a meeting to resolve the issue. Decisions had to be made for improving the services and marketing. We looked at different options of communication devices that would be cost-effective and at the same time, highly efficient and which could provide constant and fast communication across different departments like inventory, administration, sales, etc. From the various alternatives, we decided to provide the field workers with smartphones that could be connected to the warehouses to find out the availability of required accessories that might be needed at the service location. The smartphones were thought to be the best option as they would greatly facilitate online connectivity with the various departments including experts who could advise field staff when they come across differing situations.

            Implementation of the decisions made was immediately started. It took two months to get the approval from the management committee and buy the necessary things like phone and getting internet installed etc. Once the initial training of field staff in using the smartphones was completed, we all waited eagerly for the feck. Though there were initial hiccups when the field workers were unable to connect to the right person in the office, it was soon sorted out. Their lag time in services were comparably reduced and after sales services were streamlined to meet new challenges. Most importantly, it considerably reduced the inventory and helped the different departments to coordinate with higher efficiency.

            The success of the decisions regarding the use of smartphones clearly showed that effective decisions greatly help companies to maintain their market position and gain leverage against their rivals. In the current times, technology is an important facilitator of advancing and meeting our goals. Smartphones had enhanced communication that had not only resulted in higher customer satisfaction but had also saved extra time and effort of other experts. In the long run, it was very cost-effective. The decision-making process has also served as motivation for others to adopt and get feedback so that decisions can be improved and improvised.