Strategic Planning: Vital for Achieving Business Goals - Essay Sample

Introduction

Strategic planning refers to a firm's process of setting goals or targets and then deciding on the way to allocate resources in the best way to achieve the set strategy. It is a core function of any business that wants to achieve the most significant reason for its establishment; profit. A strategy is set depending on the visions of the organization, and then resource allocation is carried out keenly not to deviate from such vision. In other words, the vision of the enterprise and the results such as output, profits, and benefits depend on the targets set, strategies, put in place and the decisions made on how to achieve the result through the allocation of resources (Booth, 2016). Strategic planning is, therefore, necessary for the conversion of resources such as inputs into output for viable outcomes if the business in question has to remain functional, expanding, and competitive enough. Information, perception, and expectations are some components of strategic planning. For instance, strategic management uses the information available about the market and from that information, it develops a perception about the possible future prices, demand and other market variables then based on such, it devises a way to achieve its goals. This paper looks into a non-profit organization's strategic planning efforts by the World Health Organization.

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The main ideas surrounding strategic planning, according to the author are; that without a strategic plan, there would be no correspondence between the resources of the firm, the production process, and the final output. The author argues that the firm might end up spending more than the realized benefits. There is a need to organize on how the available funds of the firm have to be used to deliver the best to the community without waste (World Health Organization, 2015). The financial strategy would, therefore, help track the finances of the firm to the last expenditure hence avoiding wastage. The concern that the author raises is that without a strategic plan, the resources cannot be allocated for maximum benefits since goals and objectives will not match the available financial resources.

The firm has goals and objectives, but then it required a strategy regarding the allocation of its funds to every target. This way, the forecasted benefits will match the results by the use of the available resources to the company. The author adds that all there is to the firm is to have proper financial management or else no strategy will be executed accordingly, and that affects the accomplishment of goals and realization of the set objectives. The S.W.O.T analysis approach, for instance, will only be achieved if the financial resources will be allocated well to fit such targets as to how to deal with the possible threats and weaknesses and how to maximize the opportunities and the strengths of the organization.

The organization adopted a strategic planning process by analyzing its forecasted results and then comparing the value with the achieved results. The organization then looked into the loopholes and saw the necessity to address the challenges. It decided to come up with an official strategic plan covering a given period so that it would be in a position to track results over a specific period and mend any mistakes for higher future performance. As a global organization, the firm had to focus on different activities within the countries it occupies and in each country, different groups set in place to facilitate various operations. For instance, it sets a steering group, global resource group, country teams, and regional resource groups (World Health Organization, 2015). With such a plan in place, the financial investment would earn higher benefits of the communities served by the World Health Organization.

The organization's goals and objectives could not have been achieved without a strategic plan given that a strategy had to be devised and a necessary action taken to wisely allocate staff, equipment, and most importantly financial support to keep every operation going. Absence of a strategic plan would have meant that the desired goals and the actual results would not align to the same financial and outcome value. The most important goal is to keep nations healthy by giving crucial information related to disease and epidemics while at the same time giving financial aid to address some epidemic cases in different countries, this could not be achieved without a proper plan.

A strategic plan can be eliminated if it is probably deemed to fail due to reasons like overly complex plans, inaccurate financial estimates, inadequate data and information on which the plan can be executed and lack of sufficient definition of team roles (Bryson, 1988). More importantly, if the available resources cannot support the financial budget, it becomes difficult for the implementation of a strategic plan.

The firm maintained various performance measurement standards for accurate assessment of its plan. It maintained a set metrics to track such as evaluating expenditure against the allocated values and more significant the results and outcomes relative to the financial, human, and infrastructural support deployed in every country. These measures helped the organization tell when it was performing and when it was not.

As I have assessed, the organization has several financial commitments which, however, have been addressed through proper strategic planning, which has enabled a focused budget, a planned delivery, and desirable results. The organization is a representative of so many other firms out there who is sometimes overwhelmed by their financial budgets. What such organizations need to have is a strategy that can tie their resources to their performance targets. That way, they will realize the desired levels by maintaining a scalable budget. The strategic efforts by this organization are a good representation of the widely spread efforts of other organizations in both the private sector, the public sector, as well as non-profit organizations. They do a lot of planning just to make sure they achieve their goals and objectives. They, however, have to try and match their resources to the plan so that results are achieved as desired.

The Author of the article asserts that for a non-profit organization such as the World Health Organization, strategic planning is viable if and only if the achieved results and outcomes of the process are in alignment with the welfare of the community served. In other words, the community's well-being should be at the maximum attainment as a result of the implementation of a strategic plan. That way, the plan will be termed viable.

References

Bryson, J. M. (1988). A strategic planning process for public and non-profit organizations. Long range planning, 21(1), 73-81.

Booth, D. (2016). Strategy Journeys: A Guide to Effective Strategic Planning. Routledge.World Health Organization. (2012). EvipNet 2012-2015 strategic plan: towards a world in which the best available research evidence informs health policy-making (No. WHO/KMS/ENH/12.1). World Health Organization. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/evidence/OMSEVIPNetStratPlan.pdf