Strategic Planning

Classmate 1:

To thrive in business you must make a strategy and then be prepared to alter that plan as necessary. The competitive success of a firm depends on many crucial forecasting variables. In order to keep up with the competition, you need to include those elements in your business plan.

Knowing Customer Needs

Businesses succeed when they introduce goods and services to the market that perfectly and fully meet customers’ present needs, wants, or issues. The supplier of these services must charge a price that the client considers reasonable in light of the advantages received. Choosing the current most important consumer demands is a component of planning. Additionally, you must ascertain whether the business can fulfill these demands or effectively resolve the client’s issue (Hill, 2020).

Identifying markets with high growth potential

Markets that are growing rapidly, with a lot of new customers entering the market and actively looking for what the company is offering, have a greater chance of having competitive success. Companies must steal customers from their competitors in stagnant or declining markets. Taking a competitor’s customers can be extremely challenging if they have earned high levels of loyalty. The most promising markets can be identified through business planning by identifying the fastest growing or largest markets.

Knowing the strengths and flaws of rivals

Business strategies are similar to football coaches’ game plans. Contemporary rivals are outlined along with their threats and countermeasures. A strategy outlines what tactics are the most effective, much like a football coach choosing plays he believes will be successful. Moreover, the article discusses how to help the company attract consumers by utilizing its assets. You are more likely to outwit your competitors if you take the time to thoroughly examine their advantages and disadvantages (Hill, 2020).

Classmate 2:

Competitive advantage is derived from the ability to create a positive competitive differentiating (non-price) and value-enhancing feature or service and from developing and maintaining the organization’s ability to execute its strategy (Choshin & Ghaffari, 2017). In fact, strategic success lies in executing the strategy. This may be viewed as a two-stage or two-pronged success: • the ability to achieve a positive competitive differentiation and value-enhancement, and • the ability to execute the strategy so as to minimize the risk of strategic failure. Key to all success is the organization’s ability to develop its “mindset,” internal capabilities and external environment so as to make it effective in achieving its strategy. An effective strategy, in turn, leads to more capable people and organizations. Strategy in terms of the strategic planning process is, as a result of this, viewed as the planning of interdependent and interrelated (competing) outcomes. A key to strategy is the interdependency of activities. If one activity leads to the success or failure of another activity, then one should, when looking at the strategy, view it as a whole, from the top, and view all of its activities as interdependent. There is always a need for flexibility in strategic planning and implementation. It is better to have a limited strategy and implement it as it is rather than one that is all-encompassing and never implemented. When considering the term competitive advantage, it is important to have this as a view that is not necessarily from the external context but also within. When one considers the external context, one needs to be aware of how one can distinguish itself from the other companies within the industry, and how the other companies and the customers in the industry view the strategy. In the economic system, the company that is most effective will prosper while those that are less so will decline. The company’s survival strategy is determined by its ability to attract customers and create a unique value proposition (Luthra et al., 2015).