Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is one of the most used and least understood disciplines in modern business. Praxis' approach to strategic planning is grounded in the meaning of both words, yet we look in part upon this critical business activity as planning strategically.

Strategic planning as an activity is too often devoid of planning or strategy, rather it takes the form of either a mechanistic requirement for justifying activity (and sometimes more importantly the next year's budget) or forms one plank in a response to a crisis in performance.

In any event, many companies develop strategic plans that are reactionary, more tactical in nature, and devoid of actual utility vis-a-vis achieving corporate objectives. Companies that do produce a detailed strategic plan, through a process of rigourous (and realistic) market and competitor assessment; that sets forth their major goals and objectives and includes the range of metrics that will be used to measure success and weight objectives; meet with far more success both tactically and in terms of overall return on investment - profitability. This process allows the company to make decisions - investment decisions - that yield substantial probability of success improvements - a fact the makes every dollar -whether B&P, IR&D or G&A go further and return more.

Strategic planning must, by definition attempt to answer the question of where and what the organization wants to be: 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, 10 years from now. As with all strategies, the tactics for the achievement of the strategic initiatives must be flexible, and the baseline objectives must be achievable. Praxis has performed or supported detailed strategic planning exercises for a broad range of companies and industries using its proven Strategic Planning Approach (SPA).