The Importance of Strategic Planning in Business

AN EVALUATION OF
THE IMPORTANCE OF
STRATEGIC PLANNING
IN BUSINESS

Table of Contents
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................1
An explanation of key business strategy terms...........................................................................1
Explanation of how aims of internal and external stakeholders vary.........................................3
Impact of different stakeholders aims on business operations....................................................3
How businesses use techniques to influence business decision making.....................................3
Explanation of different strategic methods businesses can adopts to attain strategic objectives6
Explanation of effects that different approaches to strategic decision making on business
ability to attain strategic objectives.............................................................................................8
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Strategic planning refers to the process of setting and documenting the direction of the
business enterprise that is useful to examine “where you are and where you are going”. It is a
outline framework that can record mission, vision, values, action plans, long term objectives that
are useful to accomplish the goals and objectives. This term is vital for business organisation
because it provides the direction to measure the goals that can attain for sustaining longer period
of time. This report undertakes Marks and Spencer that is largest retailing multinational company
in UK that deals in food, Clothing, home wares, financial services etc. This report involves key
strategic business terms including stakeholders, internal, external factors, porters five forces
model, swot analysis to examine the company objectives so that plans can give the successful
results in their long term survival (Bryson, 2018).
MAIN BODY
An explanation of key business strategy terms
Business strategy defines the long term strategies that is useful to provide the direction
for attaining huge profit margin and sales. In terms of Marks and Spencer, manager can focus on
elaborating the key business strategy terms that are stakeholder matrix, mission statement,
corporate culture below:
Stakeholder matrix
It defines the number of people who can impact and also get affected due to operations of
business enterprise. It is useful for Marks and Spencer to examine different stakeholders that can
presented below:
Firstly, manager of Marks and Spencer, can prepare a list of stakeholders that are essential for
company. It involves customers, employees, government, suppliers etc.
Secondly, manager of an organisation can rate the stakeholders as per their concerned power and
interest that helps in maintaining the work and properly maintain their participation level
(Pessima and Dietz, 2019).
High power, high interest- This type of stakeholders are vital for Marks and Spencer
due to them organisation can function their operations smoothly. It includes shareholders,
directors etc.
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High Power, Low interest- It includes customers because they contains power of influencing
working of organisation but cannot contain high level of interest in activities of Marks and
Spencer.
Low power, High interest- It includes employees, workers that are highly interested in working
of Marks and Spencer and attain the work on time. As they cannot contain high power in
operations of organisation that mainly involves decision making (Kerzner, 2019).
Low power, Low interest- It includes low power and low interest in company but affect the
operations of Marks and Spencer including rules, regulation etc. That are government, suppliers
etc.
LEVEL OF INTEREST
LEVEL OF POWER HIGH LOW
High Shareholders Customers
Low Employees Suppliers
Lastly, manager of Marks and Spencer can communicate and transfer the information to their
stakeholders as per their needs and requirements so that objectives of business can be attained on
proficient manner.
Mission statement
The mission of Marks and Spencer is to offer the inspirational quality that can attracts the
number of people globally. This helps in building the sustainable enterprise by meeting the
requirements of stakeholders (Byrne and et. al., 2019).
Corporate culture
It refers to beliefs, values that is useful to determine organisations employees and
management interaction that is useful to handle the outside business transactions. In context of
Marks and Spencer, they can adopts the customer driven culture where every employees make
full efforts to develops and improve customer service, researching the market, hiring suitable
candidate and offering training so that employees are to be satisfied within the working
environment so that they attracts the large base of customers to gain profitable results.
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