Business Strategy

Nova Moda is a medium sized business, it has just opened a new outlet in Tower road Sliema, though in its first week of opening, its store traffic and sales were low.

It has been identified, that Mr. Smith (Owner, and managing director) had no business plan, neither a clear vision upon were he would like to position his business on the market. His only motivation was that a friend of his, opened a similar venture in Valletta, and was doing quite well.

Through out this report, Mr. Smith may find the true meaning and process of strategic planning, an explanation of the role and the setting of objectives in the planning process, and the strengths and weaknesses of the classical/rational, incremental and emergent approaches to strategy.

Strategic Planning

A manager within an organisation may have various functions to meet. A few are:

* Meetings,

* Delegation,

* Control,

* Decision making,

* Leading,

* Planning,

* Organising activities.

In other words, a manager:

* Plans activities to reach strategies,

* Organizes resources to reach strategies,

* Motivates employees to work towards a strategy, and

* Controls activities to make sure that strategies are met.

Planning

Planning is an important factor for an organisation. By planning, one may identify:

* What to do?

* How to do it?

* When to do it?

* Who is to do it?

Though planning one may: set a vision of direction for the future, it may also help the organisation in decision making, it may help to allocate resources, and allocate resources effectively and efficiently, it eliminates the risks of uncertainty, it controls (planning serves in order to remain focused) and it helps the organisation to obtain a higher profit.

Planning is considered as an important factor for an organisation, even small organisations such as Nova Moda needs planning. A few advantages of planning are:

 Resources may be allocated efficiently and effectively.

 Higher profits may be obtained through planning.

 It helps the decision making process to set clear objectives.

 Shows a clear image of the future of the organisation.

A few disadvantages are:

 It is extremely time consuming

 It may be costly.

 Future planning may be lopsided, thus causing bad predictions.

When comparing the advantages and disadvantages of planning, it is a known fact that planning is extremely expensive, and time consuming, but at the end of the day, through planning the organisation, especially Nova Moda would gain much more, then just implementing and not planning, at least through planning what is being implemented, has been studied and Nova Moda would know the circumstances and would avoid any loop holes.

There are various types of plans which are found in an organisation. These are prepared by the different levels of management.

Plans may vary in content, and also in the time period that they cover. Every plan of an organisation most importantly must be able to fit one another.

In an organisation, a hierarchy of management is important, this is illustrated below:

Top

Management

Middle Management

Lower Level management

EMPLOYEES

The top management plans out the master budget, the middle management does the functional plan, and the lower level management does the operational plan.

Whereas a Hierarchy of plans would be set out as below:

Mission

Statement

Objectives

Strategy

Policies

Procedures and Rules

Programmes/ Action Plans

Budgets

The Mission Statement, Objectives and the strategies, have a strategic longer term planning process, this is normally dealt with by the top management, whereas, the Policies, procedures and rules, programmes / action plans, and the budgets, have a function, operational plan, which are dealt with the middle and lower level management.

Mission statement

A mission statement is an aim at what the organisation is set out to do. A mission statement is a public statement by the business setting out in general terms what the business does, what it aims to achieve, its values and standards.

A mission statement should include:

* The line of business,

* The purpose,

* The course of action, and

* The scope of the operations.

* Market

* Geographic operations

A few examples of local mission statements are:

Brandstatter

"WE, at Brandstatter - Malta enjoy challenging ourselves to excel at satisfying customers through a commitment