Description: This course has been designed to introduce a variety of aspects of international business. Globalization and growing international trade amongst many different countries have brought new challenges and opportunities for many new economies and established economies.

This course features dynamic and engaging video with audio narration, infographics and short quizzes to test your knowledge

Background: Strategic business planning is important because it provides clarity, direction and focus for the organization and therefore, allows organisations to be proactive rather than reactive. It improves the organisation’s management process and decision-making processes by enhancing allocative, operational, information and dynamic efficiency, including achieving sustainable competitive advantage. Other benefits include an increase in market share, profitability and business longevity. The following sections discuss the relevant theories and concepts relating to strategic business planning, including key concepts of the Unified Theory of Business Strategy and how the Levant program can help you to complete a strategic business plan successfully. The course outline is summarized in this figure.

Strategic Business Planning involves the process of determining policies and procedures (and budgeting for them) in order to accomplish goals and objectives of the organization, which is normally closely related to the organization’s mission and vision. A strategy can be defined as an integrated and coordinated set of commitments and actions designed to exploit core competencies and gain a competitive advantage. In the context of Strategic Business Planning, it can be defined as the process of focusing on the businesses mid to long-term goals. It is important to remember that a strategic business plan is different than a business plan—it is “strategic” in the sense that it is about positioning the business as effectively as possible in the marketplace. While a Business Plan is the process of determining an organisations objectives, strategies and projected actions to promote its survival and development within a given time period.

Turban outlined that there are three levels of strategic planning: 1) top management activities which set priorities, focus energy and human and technology resources, strengthen operations, and ensure that employees and business partners work toward common goals. 2) middle-level managers design business processes, procedures, and policies to implement strategic plans and 3) operational-level managers and supervisors work closely with the workforce and customers and play a more interpersonal role than any of the other levels of management.

Yakovlera outlined that the traditional business planning includes an executive summary, mission and vision statements and the formulation of objectives. It also includes the marketing plan, which contains marketing analysis tools like 4Pcs, SWOT analysis, Porter’s five forces and customer decision - making process theory. As well as this, it displays the Management & Organizational Plan, Operational Plan and Financial Plan. Finally, each plan within the whole process presents the action plan, which explains the implementation process. It is important to remember that business planning deals with setting short-to midterm goals and planning the steps/phases for achieving those goals and is vital to note that a strategic plan is a living document that is reviewed and changed as the environmental conditions change.

Strategic business planning incorporates a broad range of expertise and areas of knowledge. That is why in most companies or advisory firms such planning is compiled by a group of members and is generally a team exercise. Samimi emphasised that strategic business plan requires detailed knowledge of marketing, extensive knowledge of operational and resource planning, as well as an in-depth understanding of financial modelling, accounting and a range of other corporate strategic matters.

Therefore, care should be taken to ensure this exercise is not prohibitively exhaustive for two reasons:
1. Those involved in compiling the report will render themselves tired.
2. The report itself cannot be referred to because it will be too detailed and perhaps not of use.

Description: This course has been designed to introduce a variety of aspects of international business. Globalization and growing international trade amongst many different countries have brought new challenges and opportunities for many new economies and established economies.

This course features dynamic and engaging video with audio narration, infographics and short quizzes to test your knowledge. 

Background: Mission and vision statements form part of the organisations strategic business plan. It is important for any organization to develop a vision, mission and values as it determines the strategic direction and the organisational strategic processes and enhances the chances of success. Vision and mission statements describe and communicate the organisation’s purpose and intention to internal and external stakeholders. Entrepreneur’s need to recognise that by identifying and understanding the interaction between values, mission and vision an organisation can successfully identify, design and implement a successful strategic business plan that enhances the chances of achieving a sustainable competitive advantage.

Vision & Mission Statements
Hanson et al. defines a vision as a summary of an organisation’s ultimate goals; essentially, what it would like to achieve and what it would like to be known for the future. It is important to remember that vision statements reflect an organisations values and inspirations and are intended to capture the heart and mind of each employee. A strategic vision is a roadmap of a company’s future, it provides specifics about ‘where we are going’ in terms of technology and customer focus, the geographic and product markets to be pursued, the capabilities it plans to develop, and the kind of company the management is trying to create. A mission is the organisations business s cope which defines the organisation’s fundamental purpose, it basically why it exists – “who we are and what we do”. It tends to be more specific, indicating the industry that the business intends to create, revolutionise, or compete in, and who it will serve. A mission also assists the organisation move towards its vision, goals and objectives.

Taken together, the vision and mission help organisations to formulate their business strategies. It is important to note that an organisations vision tends to be fixed, while its mission can change given uncertain economic, regulatory, environmental and market conditions. Values can be defined as the beliefs that are shared among the stakeholders of an organisation. Values drive an organisation’s culture and priorities.

Organisations summarise goals and objectives into a mission or vision statements:
• Mission Statement: outlines the purpose of the organisation. It concentrates on the present by describing why it is important to achieve the vision. It defines the customer and critical processes. It informs you of the desired level of performance.
• Vision statement: outlines what the organisation wants to be. It describes the future identity. It is a source of inspiration. It provides clear decision-making criteria.
For example, here are some examples from top companies:
• Apple: to support the company’s success in the computer technology, consumer electronics, and online digital services industries.
• Tesla: to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy
• American Express: our mission is helping others accomplish theirs
• Uber: we ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion
• Google: to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful
• McDonald’s: to be our customers’ favourite place and way to eat and drink

Description: This course has been designed to introduce a variety of aspects of international business. Globalization and growing international trade amongst many different countries have brought new challenges and opportunities for many new economies and established economies.

This course features dynamic and engaging video with audio narration, infographics and short quizzes to test your knowledge.

Background: As discussed in the previous section, the vision and mission statements help an organisation to establish its goals, and this is the first step in the process of formulating a strategy. Strategy formulation is the process by which an organisation chooses the optimal strategic course of action that enhances the chances of achieving its goals and objectives. This process is important because it designs the framework for the organisation’s processes and procedures to achieve the targeted results in light of the organisation’s situation and prospects. Mintzberg highlighted that:
“Strategy formation is judgmental designing, intuitive visioning, and emergent learning; it is about transformation as well as perpetuation; it must involve individual cognition and social interaction, cooperation as well as conflict; it has to include analysing before and programming after as well as negotiating during; and all of this must be in response to what can be a demanding environment. Just try and leave any of this out and see what happens”

The Strategic Business Planning process is an integrated approach. This figure outlines the strategic business planning components, including: Formulation; Implementation; and Evaluation. The following sections will discuss the steps in strategy formulation.

Description: This course has been designed to introduce a variety of aspects of international business. Globalization and growing international trade amongst many different countries have brought new challenges and opportunities for many new economies and established economies.

This course features dynamic and engaging video with audio narration, infographics and short quizzes to test your knowledge. 

Background: Once a strategy has been formulated, processes and procedures need to be devised to ensure it is properly implemented. The strategy is about how an organisation will achieve its goals; the implementation process is about how the strategy will be enacted. Strategic implementation is the next step for successful executions. Sergio emphasised that even a ‘masterfully formulated strategy becomes useless if not well implemented’. The Implementation is the key determinant of success or failure that is deeply connected to the formulation process, and the functioning and structure of the organization. Hanson et al. outlined that successful implementation requires:
• A management team with a dedication to the company’s strategy, vision and mission.
• Building and maintaining stakeholder relationships.
• Sufficient resources, including human resources, directed to relevant tasks and projects.
• A formal reporting method to track the implementation steps of the strategy.
• Maintaining flexibility to allow for the strategic direction and activities to be modified where is demanded by the marketplace.

Business theories and frameworks help guide strategic formulation, implementation, and execution. Samimi highlighted that implementation typically deals with spot indicators. Spot indicators show how the business is doing now, as opposed to lead indicators that indicate where the business or market might be heading. Implementation associated with spot indicators such as units per day produced or labour used are rate indicators that transform a lead indicator into a lag indicator.

The implementation process also involves acquiring the requisite resources, developing the process, training, process testing, documentation, and integration with (and/or conversion from) legacy processes. The following sections will outline the information necessary to identify the firm’s external prospects and internal resources (Gap Comparison), the firm’s routine actions (processes, procedures & communication), and the firm’s general operations and planning.

Description: This course has been designed to introduce a variety of aspects of international business. Globalization and growing international trade amongst many different countries have brought new challenges and opportunities for many new economies and established economies. 

This course features dynamic and engaging video with audio narration, infographics and short quizzes to test your knowledge

Background: A strategy determines the organisation’s success or failure and therefore, the importance of the evaluation process, which highlights that by measuring performance you can later develop strategies improves it. Strategy evaluation is the process of determining the efficiency and effectiveness of the strategic plan in achieving the organisation’s goals and objectives. In other words, how well the strategy works. Tilles explained that a valid strategy will yield growth, profit, or whatever other objectives the firm has established, however, that an inappropriate strategy will only fail to yield benefits or even worse result in disaster. The following is a list of question to consider when evaluating a strategy:
• Will your strategy, if properly implemented, assist your organisation in achieving its goals based on your vision and mission?
• Is your strategy being properly implemented? Do you have an effective reporting system in place to check this?
• Is your strategy improving your organisation’s competitiveness in the marketplace? Is it responding reflexively to changes in the marketplace?
• Is your strategy sustainable based on your available resources?
• Does your strategy involve workable timelines to ensure the strategy is not only implemented properly, but within the required time frame?
• What kind of payoff did you expect from your strategy? Are you on track to receiving it?
Strategy evaluation is very important, Weston highlighted that a key approach to strategic planning is continuous monitoring of the external environments. The environments should encompass both domestic and international dimensions and include analysis of economic, technological, political, social, and legal factors. Different organizations will give different emphasis and weights to each of the categories.

As discussed previously, the strategic management process consists of three stages:

Strategy Formulation,

Strategy Implementation, and

Strategy Evaluation.

The following sections will discuss: Strategy evaluation for the Financial Plan, Capital Structure & Valuation; Revised Vision & Mission Statements (Confirmed Targets & Goals); and Strategy Evaluation & Feedback