Friday, September 16, 2011

Accenture Training: Strategy Development in an Competitive ...

To create a rigorous corporate strategy, companies must perform strategy development that starts with a agreed upon understanding of its current situation and identified strategic barriers to growth. The next steps include defining what the future state vision of the organization is and then delving into strategically planning how to achieve that state. In order to understand your strategic challenges, you must begin with a complete, end-to-end understanding of your business situation. Proper strategy development involves more than a focus on maximizing profitability. strategy development is concerned with value creation, strategy is about selectivity, and strategy development is about flexibility.

Business strategy includes the topics of corporate strategy, marketing strategy, sales strategy, among other areas. Sales strategy includes distribution strategy, direct sales strategy, and business development. Within growth strategy, we include both natural growth and inorganic growth, namely M&A. Marketing strategy and sales strategy are usually coupled together, but are distinct in actuality. Business strategy development is often defined with the context of a bi-annual strategic planning environment, typically held in a 3-5 day off site location with management and key stakeholders, both inside and outside the business. Marketing strategy includes brand strategy, product launch strategy, and digital strategy.

The strategic thinking of contemporary businesses has been built upon a platform of military strategists since the beginning of organized warfare. Sun Tzu wrote the Art of War, which has been adopted into a business strategy book. In his book Art of War, Sun Tsu wrote about several fundamental factors in military strategy and each of these factors can be directly translated to terms of business strategy. Sun Tzus beliefs about the variable of land topography, if we were to take that into the context of companies competing today, translates to markets, industry structures, market positions, and industry forces. Sun Tzu hinted at indirect corporate strategies when he said winning without fighting is the acme of skill on the battlefield.

Strategy development has evolved through 5 key phases over the years. A lot of competitive strategy is also hinged on ideas in the 1970s, where the focus was around thinking strategically to beat competition and the business frameworks of alternative strategies, portfolio analysis, and the BCG Growth Share Matrix were developed. Today, the strategic development theme is on integrating strategic planning and execution with a stress on the primary notions of core competencies, strategy planning and execution, and balance scorecard analysis. Changes to strategic mindset represent an ever evolving, new thought leaders, and emergence of disruptive technologies and trends. Strategy development started with a focus on financial planning in the 1950s, moving to long-term business planning in the 1960s, to strategic planning in the 1970s and ultimately to a focus on strategic management in the present day.

Today, there are two primary schools of thought around strategic management. In organizational configuration, the organization engages in behaviors based on adoption to contexts. Mintzberg also advocates a transformation of business practices, where management recognizes the need and has the ability to conduct complete business transformation. Mintzberg opts for an organization, bottom-ups strategy to drive strategy development that adheres to organizational configuration.

Bower emphasizes the strategic planning and budgeting process is at the heart of the strategy development process. In the RAP business framework, when we look at market context, we are analyzing the demands of the primary customer base,and technological development. Strategic intent is defined as the perceived and communicated official strategy. RAP based strategy planning and budgeting is a bottoms up approach to finding and picking of core business opportunities. This framework is called the Resource Allocation Process RAP framework. Organizational context is comprised of governance and the org structure, basis of performance metrics and rewards, and the managers core beliefs and cognitive mindset. Capital market context is also analyzed, which includes demands and influences of sources of capital, including financial institutions.
Strategy Development

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