Question

Evaluate strategic options in process planning, including whether or not to outsource.

Answer 1

Management planning is the process of assessing an organization's goals and creating a realistic detailed plan of action for meeting those goals. The basic steps in the management planning process involve creating a road map that outlines each task the company must accomplish to meet its overall objectives.

Environmental scanning of the forces of change, global as well as local ;

Market analysis, total as well as served market;

Competition analysis;

Upon this stage, the job as a designated business planner in such an exercise is to sift through all the information gathered - to get through all the noise to get to the signals, as they say - so as to generate useful insights for strategic as well as tactical decision making.

Usually at this stage, there will be a long and often protracted series of rigorous discussions, at various management levels, with the view to ascertain the validity of the information gathered, and also to identify information gaps if any.

There will also be a lot of cross- matching or cross-referencing with other independent sources of information.

To be truly responsive to the organization's mission, vision, and goals (financial and otherwise), a strategic plan should be developed based upon those three things alone, with nothing else to interfere: mission,vision, and goals .