1.      Developing a business concept and forming a vision of where the organization needs to be headed

2.      Converting the company’s mission into specific performance objectives

3.      Crafting a strategy to achieve the target performance

4.      Implementing the strategy efficiently and effectively

5.      Evaluating performance and reviewing the situation

Korey’s Model has proposed an integrated model of strategic management as well. This model incorporates planning and control functions, and describes short-range, medium, long-range planning. Interestingly, this model consists some aspects which are different from other models. For instances, development of education philosophy, planning studies, and feasibility studies. It consists of three phases:

1.      Preliminary analysis phase

2.      Strategic planning phase

3.      Strategic management phase

Sources: Ryszard Barnat, 2006

Whitcomb (2016) sees strategic planning as the process by which the guiding members of an organization envision its future and develop the necessary procedures and operations to achieve that future.

Much of the literature on strategic planning focuses on the idea of a system or a process for planning. Authors commonly agree that this is as a very deliberate process that culminates in an explicit plan. 

Drucker, one of the key proponents of this idea, suggests that the strategic planning should start with the mission of the organization. Kate Hinton agrees that while mission statement is technically not a part of the strategic plan, it provides a foundation for the strategic plan as everything contained in it must be aligned with the mission. (Hinton 2012).

Traditional strategic planning process components commonly cited in strategic planning literature e.g. Vinzant and Vinzant (1996), are:

Ø  goal setting

Ø  environmental scanning

Ø  employee participation

Ø  strategy formulation

Ø  allocation of resources and

Ø  implementation tactics.

 

According to Nadler (1994), for many organizations the true value of strategic planning lies in the process, not the plan. “Most plans have a tremendously fast rate of depreciation. By the time they’re printed and bound they’ve become obsolete. The value of planning is largely in the shared learning, the shared frame of reference, the shared context for those small decisions that get made over time.” Indeed, changes that influence a strategic plan may occur daily, and new ideas may surface once the plan is complete. A successful strategic plan enables providers to establish a consistent, articulated direction for the future. But it is also a living document that must be monitored and revised to meet anticipated and unanticipated needs of the organization and the market, whether changes occur in managed care, integrated delivery, healthcare reform, systems development, technological advances, or other arenas.

It is commonly agreed that strategic planning attempts to match an organization’s strengths with the opportunities that exist in the changing environment. Similarly, matching of the organization’s weaknesses with external threats can help organizations to anticipate future challenges and to develop strategies to protect against these challenges.

STRATEGIC THINKING NOT JUST STRATEGIC PLANNING

Strategic management is a process within the entrepreneurial venture and its liked to triangle and comes with the key elements: 

-          strategy

-          structure

-          resources

This strategic triangle mentioned in the strategic theories that suggest the need to maintain a good relationship between strategic direction and the organization’s structure (Chandler, 1962). Strategy do need to think about the position of the firm and the company product within the targeted marketing that required to use the creative to innovate the competitive advantage through differentiation (Porter, 1980). For resources to be a source of competitive advantage they should be of commercial value, not available to competitors, not easily substituted by customers and difficult for competitors to easily copy (Barney, 1986).

 

 

 

In conclusion, strategic planning help entrepreneurs to envision their business future over next three to five years and reduce the risk of doing business and also achieve company potential.

 

According to Digman (1986), strategic management is a continuous process that involves attempts to match or fit the organization with its changing environment in the most advantageous way possible. The basic steps of the strategic management can be examined through the use of strategic management model. 

Based on strategic planning model developed by Peter Wright, Charles Pringle and Mark Kroll (1994), strategic planning consists of few stages: 

The model begins with an analysis of environmental opportunities and threats. The organization is affected by environmental forces; but the organization can also have an impact upon its environment. The organization's mission and goals are linked to the environment by a dual arrow. This means that the mission and goals are set in the context of environmental opportunities and threats. The next arrow depicts the idea that strategy formulation sets strategy implementation in motion. Specifically, strategy is implemented through the organization's structure, its leadership, and its culture. Then, the final downward arrow indicates that the actual strategic performance of the organization is evaluated. The control stage is demonstrated by the feedback line that connects strategic control to the other parts of the model.

Strategic planning process is a systematic or emerged way of performing strategic planning in the organization through initial assessment, thorough analysis, strategy formulation, its implementation and evaluation

 

There are many components of the process which are spread throughout strategic planning stages. 

The starting point of the process is initial assessment of an organization. At this phase entrepreneur must clearly identify the organization’s vision and mission statements.

When the organization identifies its vision and mission it must assess its current situation in the market. This includes evaluating an organization’s external and internal environments and analyzing its competitors.

Successful situation analysis is followed by creation of long-term objectives. Long-term objectives indicate goals that could improve the company’s competitive position in the long run. 

Even the best strategic plans must be implemented and only well executed strategies create competitive advantage for the organization.

Implementation must be monitored to be successful. Due to constantly changing external and internal conditions entrepreneurs must continuously review both environments as new strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats may arise. If new circumstances affect the company, entrepreneurs must take corrective actions as soon as possible.

 

Next is the persistence. Persistency is another vital trait that is needed to become a great entrepreneur. Inevitably, any entrepreneur will encounter bumps in the road. For example, chances of losing big customers, good employees will leave company, and some may become competitors, the government will change regulations, usually making things more complex. However to succeed, an entrepreneur will have to be willing to persist through difficult times. Nothing can take the place of persistence and entrepreneurs can’t succeed without it.

Lastly, entrepreneurs must always be committed to work. Running a business is filled with challenges, and positive entrepreneurs are always prepared to make all sacrifices for honoring the commitments they have made. However, if entrepreneurs have the initiatives, willingness to persist, and work very hard, they will greatly improve their odds of success. Initiatives, persistence and hard work, these are the keys to success in business, but they are three important attributes no matter what the future endeavour is.

Retrieved from  http://www.publishyourarticles.net/knowledge-hub/entrepreneurship/15-important-entrepreneurial-traits-or-competencies/4459/

There are many steps in Strategic Management Process :

1: Develop a vision and translate it into a mission statement. Vision is an expression of what an entrepreneur stands for and believes in. A clearly defined vision is provides direction, determines decisions and motivates people. Addresses question “What business are we in?”. The mission is a written expression of how the company will reflect the owner’s values, beliefs, and vision. The company’s mission depicts its character, identity, and scope of operation in enough detail to distinguish the company in the marketplace.

2: Define core competencies and target market and identify desired market position. Company must define its set of core competencies that enable it to serve customers better than rivals. Core Competencies is a unique set of capabilities a company develops in key operational areas that allow it to vault past competitors.

3: Assess strengths and weaknesses. Strengths is the positive internal factors that contribute to accomplishing the mission, goals, and objectives. Weaknesses are the negative internal factors that inhibit the accomplishment of the mission, goals, and objectives.

4: Scan environment for opportunities and threats. An opportunity is the positive external factors the company can employ to accomplish its mission, goals, and objectives. Threats are the negative external factors that inhibit the firm’s ability to accomplish its mission, goals, and objectives.

5: Identify key success factors. Key success factors are the relationships between a controllable variable and a critical factor that influence a company’s ability to compete in the market. The keys to unlocking the secrets of competing successfully in a particular market segment.

6: Analyze competition. Analyzing key competitors allows an entrepreneur to avoid surprises from existing competitors’ new strategies and tactics. Identify potential new competitors and the threats they pose.  Improve reaction time to competitors’ actions. Anticipate rivals’ next strategic moves. 

 

Firms often do not realize that setting a long term goal, and making strategic choices for that goal, will not give immediate positive results. Being able to execute short term plans while aligning with long term goals may be difficult, but is necessary to give the firm a vision which allows focus and unity amongst the employees. A firm which only chases short term returns may be able to make profit for a while, but will have a difficult time attempting to grow. Being able to set frequent milestones and to guide actions towards a long term goal can be an effective way to manage short term tasks. This allows short term goals to be put in the context of the larger picture, while allowing for the tackling of each individual instance to be molded for specific circumstances. It is a good idea for a company and its employees to know their 1 - 5 year plans to unify the goals and allow transparency on how the company is reaching its milestones.

 

Besides that, strategic planning is about positioning your business as effectively as possible in the marketplace. So you need to make sure that you conduct as thorough as possible an analysis of both your business and your market. Analysis that can be conducted are SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats) and STEEPLE (social, technology, economic, environmental, political, legal and ethics). Once entrepreneurs had set their ideas, plans, and all their relevant analysis, they have to make sure to be implemented and this implementation process requires planning.The key to implementation of the objectives identified in the strategic plan is to assign goals and responsibilities with budgets and deadlines to responsible owners - key employees or department heads, for example.

Monitoring implementation is the key. Using key performance indicators (KPIs) and setting targets and deadlines is a good way of controlling the process of introducing strategic change. Your business plan is another important tool in the implementation process. The business plan is typically a short-term and more concrete document than the strategic plan and it tends to focus more closely on operational considerations such as sales and cash flow trends. If you can ensure that your strategic plan informs your business plan, you will go a long way to ensuring its implementation. Remember that strategic planning can involve making both organizational and cultural changes to the way your business operates.

 

 

There are 5 thrusts are :

1.       Differentiation

This can be achieved by distinguishing company’s own product/services from competitors or reducing the differentiation advantage of rivals

2.       Cost

Reduce firm’s cost, supplier’s cost, or customer’s costs or by raising the costs of your competitors

3.       Innovation

Introduce a product/process change that results in a fundamental transformation in the way business is conducted in the industry

4.       Growth 

Advantage is gain by volume or geographical expansion, backward or forward integration, product line or entry diversification

5.       Alliance

Forge marketing agreements, forming joint ventures or making acquisitions related to the 4 above thrusts

These strategic thrusts focuses on the three strategic targets :

1.       Supplier targets

2.       Customer targets

3.       Competitor targets l

The theory of strategic thrusts allows a framework (attaced) to be developed in identifying opportunities in organisation with information system to gain competitive edge.

Reference :
Rackoff,N., Wiseman, C., and Ullrich, W. (1985), Information Systems for Competitive Advantage : Implementation of a Planning Process , MIS Quarterly, Vol 9(4), pp 285-294. retrieved from : http://www.jstor.org/stable/249229?seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents

Strategic planning is long-term planning that focus on overall organization's profit in expectation of 3-5 years and decide way to achieving organizational goal. In other words, Strategic planning is a long term planning process which organization will determine mission and objective with resources owned to achieve mission fixed (Muhammad, 2003).

Pearce and Robinson (2000) said that strategic management contain nine critical duties as following: 
1. Draft organization mission which encompasses objective statement, philosophy and purpose.

2. Analyze capacity and internal standard organization
3. Evaluate organization external environment in competitiveness context and general context

4. Analyze choice that there is adjust it with source and external environment available
5. Identify choice that is best and coordinate choice with organization mission

6. Set objective long-term and key strategy to achieve it based on choice that has been made.

7. Draft objective and annual strategy that in line with objective and long-term strategy.

8. Implementing strategic choice through control and allocation of resources that balance according to requirement of duty, personnel, structure, technology and share system that are suitable. 
9. Evaluating the success strategic process and use it as input to decide in the future.

As a conclusion, strategic planning are help a lot to entrepreneurs to achieve the company objective and goal in long term and sustain the business. 

According to Miller and Dess (1996), strategy is a set of plans or decision mad in an effort to help to achieve their objective. Whereas, strategic management defined as the continuous planning, monitoring, analysis and assessment of all that is necessary for an organization to meet its goals and objectives.Based on my opinion, strategic management  process that critical for entrepreneurs are :
1. Develop a vision  and translate it into a mission statement. 
2. Define core competencies and target market and identity desired market position,
3. Assess strengths and weaknesses.
4. Scan environment for opportunities and treats.
5. Identity key success factors.
6. Analyze competition. 
7. Create goals and objectives. 
8. Formulate strategies. 
9. Translate plans into actions. 
10. Establish accurate controls.

Additionally, there are various type of strategic management's modal critical for entrepreneur. For an example, the strategic position, strategic choices and strategic into action are important for all entrepreneurs. Thus, strategic management is still involving and will continue to undergo change. Therefore, understanding and following and complete process of strategic management can be helpful to practicing entrepreneur to gain objectives. 

There are six theories that mention by David in their strategic management theories, such as the profit-maximizing and competition-based theory. This theories mentioned about the objectives of an organization is to maximize their profit in a long term and developing sustainable competitive advantage over their competitors. Next is the resource-based theory, which stated that, for an organization to be competitive, the important thing is their internal resources rather than evaluating their environmental opportunities and threats. 

Thirdly is the survival-based theory, which stated that the organization must have kept adapting to the changes in the market in order to remain competitive. Other than that, the human resource-based theory is one of the important theories as well. This theory emphasize on the importance of human behaviour in an organizations. 

Next is the agency theory, stressed on the importance to maintain a good relationship between the shareholders in organizations. Last but not least is the contingency theory which mentioned about the importance of an organization to apply the main strategic management theories, which is implementation and evaluation to assist an organization in decision-making.

 

Three critical steps must be accomplished prior to developing a strategic plan: 

• visioning

• assessment

• the development and implementation of a planning process. 

 

In each of these areas, they will need to review and build on what is already in place, vision and mission statements, agency, and/or state, wide assessments, and input from ongoing groups of internal and external stakeholders already engaged in planning. 

 

To develop the plan, they must establish priorities by considering the needs, strengths, and resources of your organization. Three key questions must be answered:  

• What do we want to accomplish? 

• What will we do to get there? 

• How will we know if we are making progress? 

 

Once they have a draft document, circulate it for input, revise and finalize.   

 

The following steps ensure that plans are used to guide the work of the organization: 

• Communicating or "marketing" the plan 

• Managing the implementation of the plan

• Supervising the actual work

• Monitoring and reporting progress on the plan. 

 

This stage starts the cycle over again, allowing the plan to be continuously updated. This will keep it current and meaningful to the organization. On an ongoing basis the organization should:  

• Conduct assessments of its performance by gathering and analyzing information

• Convene the planning group to review performance and reassess goals, outcomes, strategies, and action steps and to make recommendations for changes

• Revise the plan. To the extent that the plan is updated, it will stay current and meaningful to the organization.

 

 

 

In addition, according to other researchers, they said that Strategic management is the process and approach of specifying an organization’s objectives, developing policies and plans to achieve and attain these objectives, and allocating resources so as to implement the policies and plan (Raduan et al., 2009). Thus, based on the study, common strategic management theories noted and applicable are:

 

The profit-maximizing and competition-based theory - business organization main objective is to maximize long term profit and developing sustainable competitive advantage over competitive rivals in the external market place.  

Resource-based theory - stems from the principle that the source of firms competitive advantage lies in their internal resources, as opposed to their positioning in the external environment. It is a view of the firm predicts that certain types of resources owned and controlled by firms have the potential and promise to generate competitive advantage and eventually superior firm performance.

Survival-based theory - concept that organization need to continuously adapt to its competitive environment in order to survive. 

Human resource-based  theory - emphasizes the importance of the human element in the strategy development of organizations.

Agency theory - stresses the underlying important relationship between the shareholders or owners and the agents or managers in ensuring the success of the organizations.

Contingency theory - draws the idea that there is no one or single best way or approach to manage organizations. 

 

In conclusion, the entrepreneurs should then develop managerial strategy based on the situation and condition they are experiencing. In short, during the process of strategy formulation, implementation and evaluation, these main strategic management theories will be applicable to management of an entrepreneurs as tools to assist them in making strategic and guided managerial decision.

 

 

 

 

 

 

          It is very important for an organization to do strategic planning in order to ensure the flow of the business goes smooth. It can also ensure the entrepreneurs run the business on the correct platform and in the right path.

The Strategic Management Process includes three stages, which are Formulation, Implementation and also Evaluation. 

1.       Strategy Formulation

In strategy formulation, entrepreneur have to develop Vision and Mission for their company and also examine the company internal strengths and weaknesses, external threats and opportunities. Strategy-formulation help entrepreneur to specific company’s products, markets, resources, and technologies over an extended period of time. Strategies determine long-term competitive advantages.

 

2.       Strategy Implementation 

Implementation requires a firm to establish annual objectives, devise policies, motivate employees, and allocate resources so that formulated strategies can be carry out. This include develop a strategy-supportive culture, creating an effective organizational structure, redirecting marketing efforts, preparing budgets, developing and utilizing information systems, and linking employee compensation to organizational performance.

 

3.       Strategy Evaluation

There are 3 fundamental activities in strategy evaluation which are reviewing external and internal factors that are constantly changing; Measure performance and lastly Taking corrective actions. Top management need to know when particular strategies are not working well as this is the only way to obtain information and next doing correction. 

company performance. Strategic management emphasizes the need of establishment

and maintenance of competitive advantage in the frames of a certain environmental

context. Entrepreneurship promotes the search for competitive advantage through

innovation in products, processes and market.

According to  (Barringer & Ireland, 2010) there are  four phases entrepreneurship process  include identifying and evaluating and opportunity, developing a business plan, ascertaining resource needs, and managing the resulting enterprise.

 

1. Opportunity identification.

 An opportunity by definition is a favorable set of circumstances which creates a need for a new product, business, or service .Opportunity identification is the process by which the entrepreneur comes up with a prospective idea for a new venture. Identifying the opportunity is not simple. Dhenak, 2010 sated   that identification takes research, exploration, and evaluation of current needs, demands, and trends from consumers and others. 

 

According to (Harjai, 2012)  business plan development is an integral piece for submitting a proposal for an entrepreneurial or entrepreneurial business The organization or entrepreneur develops a description of the future direction of the business. A good business plan must be in place that displays a distinct opportunity. The process in business plan formulation can be the most time-consuming stage for the individual entrepreneur or organization.

3. Determining and allocating resources.
According to (Dhenak, 2010) ascertaining resource needs is a requirement to opportunity and business plan implementation. Assessing the risks in association with insufficient or inappropriate resources must be set apart from useful one.

 

 according to (Harjai, 2012)  once resources are secure with the entrepreneurial process business plan implementation can take place. Managing the company means examining operational issues that will occur when implementation begins and throughout the entire business plan cycle The management process involves implementing structure and business style while determining variables for success.

 

Strategic Entrepreneurship can taking entrepreneurial actions using a strategic perspective, engaging in simultaneous opportunity seeking and competitive advantage seeking behaviors.It can be designing and implementing entrepreneurial strategies to create wealth.

Entrepreneurs do not use strategic planning for many reasons because: scarcity of time, lack of knowledge about how to plan, lack of expertise in the planning process and lack of trust in others.

Below are the strategies management process. 

1. Where the organization is headed, so as to provide long-term direction, defining what kind of enterprise the company is trying to become and infuse the organization with a sense of purposeful action.

2. Converting the strategic vision into specific performance outcomes for the company to achieve.

3. Achieving the desired outcomes.

4. Implementing and executing efficiently and effectively.

5. Vision, long-term direction, objectives, strategy, or execution in the light of actual experience, changing conditions, new ideas, and new opportunities.