Essay Instructions: Strategic Plan, Part 1: Conceptualizing a Business
The strategic business plan will assist an organization in defining its vision and mission. This provides the organization a sense of purpose and direction. The strategic plan will also assist the organization in developing a short-term strategy, which is compatible with the organization long-term goals. The strategic business plan can also assist with identify the organization?s strengths and weaknesses. An organization?s strategic business plan can aid in its long-term success, establishing, and achieving goals with minimal amounts of risk. Examples are the use of resources, structures, people, and technology. The strategic business plan also can be used as a toll with identify potential risks, threats to the organization, and identifying potential good opportunities.
Strategic Plan, Part One
My selected small business would be a combination dessert cafe and bookstore. The name of the dessert cafe and bookstore would be Sweet Reads. The cafe will feature exclusive and homemade desserts. The bookstore would also offer new and used books to buy or lease. There is also a dessert and book donation program. This would help keep inventory prices down. The opening location of the store and cafe is in the downtown area of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Sweet Reads location is a high trafficked street, in the heart of the main shopping area. The surrounding areas consist of eclectic clothing and shoe stores, fine restaurants, bars, and companies that are geared toward the various nationalities of people. Downtown Philadelphia is the home of various businesses, Temple, and Drexel?s college annex. The area consists of a large mass of individuals going to work, school, and area businesses and hospitals.
Sweet Reads will offer college students the option to buy text at a 10% discount with a buy back offer with a 5% restocking fee. The student can also lease the used books. There are only two bookstores in the area Barnes and Noble and a local used books store. These two stores may not be conducive to every consumer?s taste. Sweet Reads has a very relaxing, comfortable, clean, and friendly environment. Sweet Reads has a fully operational bookstore for consumers that are not students with similar buying options. This bookstore and the caf? area will offer various baked goods, some made locally. The baker will have the option of the cakes purchased by the store or credit to exchange for books, based on the sale of the bake goods. The consumer can purchase or lease books and relax in the caf? area to read and have tasteful snack or a cup of coffee. The bookstore and caf? offers free Internet services, a children reading section and will host book signing and reading with special options for local authors.
Creating a Vision Statement
The vision of Sweet Read is to provide excellence in service from exceptional employees. Sweet Read is committed to:
? Responding to consumers? needs efficiently and exceeding their expectations.
? Providing competitive pricing
? Providing the highest level of on-the- job training to the staff
This will earn Sweet Read a reputation of consumer satisfaction and loyalty.
To sell products or services, an organization will need vision. The vision is a picture of the organization in the present or will be.
The vision statement shows where the organization would like to go and what it will be like when it get there. When an organization develops a vision, it should consider the strategic focus and answer some of the following questions. What is the organizations marketplace competitive advantage? What will make this organization unique or marketable? How will this organization add value to its consumers? What are the organizations values?
Develop the strategic objectives for your business in the format of a balanced scorecard. The strategic objectives are measures of attaining your vision and mission. As you develop them consider the
vision, mission, and values for your business and the outcomes of
your SWOTT analysis. Consider the following four quadrants of the
balanced scorecard when developing your strategic objectives:
? Shareholder Value or Financial Perspective, includes strategic
objectives in areas such as:
o Market share
o Revenues and costs
o Profitability
o Competitive position
? Customer Value Perspective, includes strategic objectives in
areas such as:
o Customer retention or turnover
o Customer satisfaction
o Customer value
? Process or Internal Operations Perspective, includes strategic
objectives in areas such as:
o Measure of process performance
o Productivity or productivity improvement
o Operations metrics
? Learning and Growth (Employee) Perspective, includes strategic
objectives in areas such as:
o Employee satisfaction
o Employee turnover or retention
o Level of organizational capability
o Nature of organizational culture or climate
o Technological innovation
Develop at least three strategic objectives for each of the following
four balanced scorecard areas identified above (Financial,
Customer, Process, Learning and Growth). Your objectives should
be selected, in part, based on an evaluation of a number of potential
alternatives to the issues and/or opportunities identified in the
SWOTT Analysis paper and table you completed in Week Three.
Base your solutions on a ranking of alternative solutions that
includes an identification of potential risks and mitigation plans, and
a stakeholder analysis that includes mitigation and contingency
strategies. You should also incorporate the ethical implications of
your solutions into your selection.
? For each strategic objective, develop a metric and target using a
balanced scorecard format. (For example, a strategic objective
in the shareholder or Financial Perspective is to increase market
share. A metric to actually measure this strategic objective
of market share increase is, "The percentage of increase in
market share." The target is the specific number to be achieved
in a particular time period. The target for the metric of "Increase
market share" could be "Increase market share by 2% for each
of the next 3 years" of an increase of 2% per year for 3 years.)
