Strategic planning is the ability to analyze an organization to determine the competitive nature of the market, and as a manager to use the information to determine a plan that will be profitable to your organization. For example, my business is the beverages and food, when my sales decreased I analyzed my local competitors products, displays, advertising, and special offers to identify what my plan would be to appeal to my customers. and created a plan to increase food sales that included "fun food Fridays", active sampling of food and beverages, employee's theme day every Friday, and saw we 15% increase in food and beverage sales.
Artifact: I chose this group project that my team and I worked on, It's from OGL 355 and we chose MI6 to do a SWOT analysis paper using Porters five forces which include 1. Competitive rivalry, 2. Bargaining power of suppliers, 3. bargaining power of customers, 4. Threat of new entrants, 5. threat of substitute products or services.
Reflection: Over the last few years my approach to understanding my business has evolved and led to successful moments as well as moments of learning. I used to just focus on my numbers and how I could increase them to make my boss happy. After learning how critical Strategic planning is to the success of a retail business it all makes sense to me. Analyzing and understanding external forces that fight against my success and the internal drivers of my business supports my preparation of an informed store plan of action which includes goals that will lead to the numbers.