Strategic planning: the basics | Business Gateway

2. The purpose of strategic planning

The purpose of strategic planning is to set overall goals for your business and to develop a plan to achieve them. It involves stepping back from your day-to-day operations and asking where your business is headed and what its priorities should be.

Strategic planning and growing businesses

Taking the decision to grow a business means embracing the risks that come with growth. Spending time on identifying exactly where you want to take your business – and how you will get there – should help you manage those risks and take charge of the growth process.

As your business becomes larger and more complex, strategy formulation will need to become more sophisticated. To do this, you might want to start collecting and analysing a wider range of information about your business – both about how it operates and about how conditions are developing in your current and potential markets.

The difference between strategic planning and writing a business plan

The process of strategic planning is about determining the direction in which you want to take your business. By contrast, the purpose of the business plan is to provide the detailed route map that will take you in your desired direction.

Effective strategy development requires a shift in focus from day-to-day concerns to your broader and longer-term business options.