Business or Corporate Strategy

Just do it or think about it?

Usually, digital projects can only be implemented successfully if experienced specialists from different disciplines understand their craft. Digital processes or digital transformation only work if your business have a clear strategy. The implementation of a digital strategy often fails due to a lack of time resources, no existing budget, a lack of IT infrastructure, IT specialists or IT security.

Every business executive wants their company to be successful. Profitability satisfaction are laudable goals, but in general they cannot be achieved without a strong business plan.

So, leaders must develop their abilities and establish precise corporate objectives by developing a plan that adds value to the company, consumers, suppliers, and workers if they are to be successful. Here's an explanation of business strategy and why it's crucial to the success of your company.

However, if you are able to self-fund your business and you want to keep things flexible and fluid, you have no obligation to create a business plan. Just do it!         
 

What's a Business or Corporate Strategy

Business or Corporate strategies involves the strategic steps taken by a company to create value for all participants, as well as gain an edge over its competitors in the market. There are dozens well-known frameworks for different business strategies which we will not go into detail in this article because they go beyond the scope.

According to Business Strategy development, an effective strategy can you built around this key questions:

• What is the essential challenge that our strategy addresses?
• How will we prepare our customers lives better?
• How will we archive our goals?
• What is our level of passion?
• What are our preferences for action?          
             
   

Strategy Implementation

Implementing a strategy is all about putting your strategic plan into action. Whether you want to increase sales with a marketing plan, introduce new software to increase efficiency, your plan is only as valuable as its implementation.

While having a strategic plan is great, but if you don't have the resources and support within your organization to implement the plan, it won't bring about any real change in your business.

Below we describe any key steps in strategy execution, including some potential pitfalls and how best to avoid them.

Develop a real vision

Of course, vision is an abstract expression that means different things to different people. In principle, a vision is a snapshot of the future. It should state the goals of what type of business you want to be and, as opposed to a mission statement, clearly state what success will look like in relation to customers, markets etc.

Define your competitive advantages

Essentially, developing a business idea is figuring out how a company can offer unique value to its customers. In almost every market, companies are stuck in a sea of sameness. A well thought out business strategy considers how to differentiate your services, products and prices from the competition.

Define target groups

A major obstacle to a strategic business plan is insufficient targeting. Without concrete information about target groups, companies suffer from unclear messages and thus a misalignment between sales and marketing. By defining niches and areas of specialization, companies can concentrate their resources. Of course, some companies are generalists who offer services and products in all markets.

However, clear target markets give a company the opportunity to develop an integrated sales and marketing approach, where marketing enables sales productivity. Aside from that, sales and marketing plans are implemented more effectively when goals are tight.

Focus on permanent growth

Only through growth companies can invest in well-trained employees, technology and assets. Therefore, the strategic business plan must determine in which segments the company can grow and in what proportion the services or products lead to a specific net margin result.

Make right decisions

Leave yourself some space to reflect on your business mistakes and successes and imagine your buiness one year into the future. Write down your goals but identify at least any alternatives. Figure out what you don’t know and step away from the situation you’re trying to make a decision about. Getting someone else’s feedback can expand your perspective and reduce your own biases and uncover possibilities you didn’t consider. Look at the long-term and short-term consequences, analyze data and identify your values and stay true to them.

Strategic business plan in the long term

Due to digital innovation and transformation, planning horizons are much shorter than they used to be. However, it's ill-advised to only think quarter-to-quarter and potentially rob the company of its ability to think outside the box. Top companies develop processes designed to treat strategy as an annual cycle rather than a one-off, static event.

Flexible strategy development

Depending on the industry, companies usually think in the medium to long term. Nevertheless, it makes sense to be flexible in order to be able to make short-term corrections in the strategy. A crucial part of business strategy development is, for example, the analysis of external factors. Companies should always take this into account and regularly adjust the existing business strategy on the basis of new information, preferably quarterly.

Involve strategic thinkers

Deciding who to involve in strategy development is a critical factor. We encourage entrepreneurs to involve creative people they can trust, who are locomotives, not wagons, and who can think strategically.

How to write a business strategy

A successful business strategy should begin with formalizing a plan around the core elements: business goals, target audience and strategic management. With the following action items, you can start creating business strategy that aligns with your organization's goals.

• Take your company's mission statements and visions into account
• Identify core values of your company
• Conduct SWOT analysis
• Outline tactics to achieve goals
• Create a resource allocation plan
• Check results for their effectiveness
• Faster processes to keep a team focused on the goal

Implementing a strategic business plan requires a lot of discipline, it is the responsibility of senior executives and should also include good corporate governance with a third way approach.

Why 90% of Startups fail

Here are some reasons why 90% of startups fail: Weak leadership, Being in the wrong market, a lack of research, partnership friction, ineffective marketing, Failure to build a good team, Intense competition, Money running out, Inability to scale or not being an expert in the industry.

A successful business strategy should primarily make sense for something and if that can solve a problem, that's a good start. Ideally, with more than one unique USP to stand out positively from the crowd and represents added value in the value chain.

In a world where every day turns in a different direction, you really can't plan anything. Therefore, every entrepreneur should also show a portion of pragmatism and flexibility.