Define strategic planning and identify the 4 steps in the planning process.?
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Strategic planning is the process of determining a company's long-term goals and then identifying the best approach for achieving those goals.\n\n\nSteps of the planning process\n1 - Identify the problems\n2 - Determine what alternative solutions exist\n3 - Decide what the best alternative is and prepare the plan \n4 - Put the plan into action, and see how it works and learn from the experience.
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when an organisation is in business it must decide what it is going to do how, and why? This is the planning stage, a study of the external and internal environments (environmental scanning) will show what the core competances of the compnay are and they can set about establishing goals, the goal must be inline with what these are and how they are going to achieve it and must permeate through the whole oganisation so they are aware of what they want.\n\ngoogle search click on advanced and then search in domains ac.uk, should give you some good answers, or try bized.co.uk?\n\nhope it helps
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Ask what the future direction(goals) are of the company and then what strategies they have implemented to achieve their goals.\nAsk about individual products, success and failure or fixable flaws.\nAsk about the supply procedures they have in place and maximum amount of product they can output.
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The success of a business is a matter of planning. \nA business plan enables you work out the viability of your business. \n\nIt also allows you to work out in advance how you will operate your business. \n\n\nPlanning is traditionally considered to be one of the four major functions of management, along with organizing, leading and coordinating/controlling. Simply put, planning is identifying where you want to go, why you want to go there, how you will get there, what you need in order to get there and how you will know if you're there or not. \n\nBusiness plans often conclude with a statement about profitability. \n\nA well made business plan should also help you set up business relationships with others. It will help you communicate the viability of your strategy to financiers, suppliers and government agencies. \n\nAnd once you have commenced, the business plan plots a course for you to follow in operating the business. \n\nObviously, any business can set up and operate without a business plan but it is darn good practice to have one. Managing your business with the assistance of a business plan is more likely to increase profitability and efficiency as well as contribute to the future development of the business. \n\n\n\nThe following are many of the types of plans generated in a business organizations.\n\n1.Strategic Planning (establish organizational goals and how to reach them)strategic planning determines where an organization is going over the next year or more, how it's going to get there and how it'll know if it got there or not. The focus of a strategic plan is usually on the entire organization, while the focus of a business plan is usually on a particular product, service or program.\n2.Business Planning (plan a new business organization, product, business department, etc.)Business planning is often conducted when:\nStarting a new venture (organization, product or service) \nExpanding a current organization, product or service \nBuying a current organization, product or service \nWorking to improve the management of a current organization, product or service .\n3.Project Planning (design and carry out a specific, one-time effort, eg, building, product, etc.)\n4.Program Planning (design and carry out a major, internal or external org'l function)\n5.Management-by-Objectives (comprehensive process to ensure organizational goals being met).\n\nThen there are other types of planning as well like Marketing Planning, Tactical Planning, Internal-control planning etc.
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Here's a list of sample business plans:\nhttp://www.bplans.com/sp/businessplans.cfm\n\nThere isn't a specific one that meets your needs, but there are lots of plans to help you get an idea of what one should include.
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A SWOT Analysis is a strategic planning tool used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture or in any other situation requiring a decision.\n\nMore here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT
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1) Design - You need a plan and a strategy to make a product improve in quality and performance.\n2) Testing and implementation - You need to test the implementation of the product and make sure it is executed without errors.\n3) Project Management - This is a key strategical device. You need good project management for the outcome of the product to be successful.
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educational planning is planning out your courses of education towards a goal/degree/diploma/career
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http://www.bplans.com/sp/businessplans.cfm - you can use the formats on here and keep the words down to 1500 words - not sure you'll find one except someone will do it specifically for you!!
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Since we can't tell at what point you are in your business planning I agree with answer number two.  SCORE is a great place to get started.  I have added a few more websites if you are still looking for direction/ideas/answers.  \n\nGood Luck
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I'm currently in a Curriculum and Instruction class at the graduate level and from what I know, a top-down approach is the starting point for a district's curriculum design.  It must be based on goals/mission/strategic plan of the district derived from analysis of what is needed as a "whole." Of course, state and national standards play a large part in determining this.\n\nOnce the strategic plan is identified, then principals lead at the building level, often forming curriculum committees to determine the details of curriculum for the school.  Each school is unique,  therefore each needs to determine what is truly needed and relevant to their community of learners.  Well developed curriculum takes into account knowledge, skills, abilities, specific outcomes to meet, lesson planning with strategies, activities and resources well-matched to those outcomes and assessments to use as evaluation.\n\nHope this helps.
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an operations plan is the process that is mapped out or writen out to tell others what is going to happen and when.\n\ni.e.\nwhen an idea is hatched and it involves investment and people to deliver the idea, you need to create an operating plan for people and investers to understan what, when,and by whom will ensure it will be done. hope this explains for you cheers mike
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Organization.\n\nBreak down larger parts of a problem (project) into smaller parts and get each of those done in time. Bring the parts back together and you have your whole project finished.
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Strategic planning is simple:\n\n1. Where are we now?\n2. Where do we want to go?\n3. How are we going to get there?\n4. Who has to do what?\n5. How are we doing?\n\nIf the strategic planning process is SIMPLE, as in the five steps above, then everybody will get involved and the company will likely succeed.\n\nIf the strategic planning process is COMPLICATED, then nobody in the organization will understand it (or people will understand it, but they will each have a DIFFERENT understanding!). Then, strategic planning would negatively impact the company.\n\nIn short, if you want your strategy to work, keep it simple!\n\nGood leaders are people who are intellectually and linguistically skilled enough to SIMPLIFY things for their followers.\n\nThink of JFK's "strategic plan" of putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade. It was a simple strategic goal, and that is why it worked.
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strategic solutions simply means you have the capability to think of a strategy (tactic) and implement a solution with fast result, practical, and less cost.\n\nExample:\nYour car broke in the middle of the dessert, at midnight, going to Las Vegas. What would you do that will not cost you so much money and get yourself out of there fast? Give me a strategic solutions.
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Outline of a Marketing Plan\n\nYour written marketing plan need not be lengthy and complicated. You can even make it as simple as possible. It is an internal document where you can be honest and direct when describing your company's weaknesses.\n\nGordon suggests the following outline:\n\n1. Situation Analysis. Your first step is to take a comprehensive look at your company's challenges, its position in the market place, level and intensity of competition, and other factors that may affect your marketing strategies. This is the market research portion of your plan.\n\nChallenges. When you open your business, you are faced with the huge task of letting your target market know that you exist, and willing to serve their needs. You are faced with the challenge of communicating with your target market to get them to become your customers.\n\nPosition in the marketplace. Your promotional strategy should highlight the "unique selling points" of your business.\n\nCompetition. This involves a complete analysis of the businesses already offering your type of goods and services within your geographical area (e.g. county, town, and city). You want to learn how many businesses are already in the marketplace, what they offer, and where they are located. By looking at this data, you can identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of your competitors in the area of price, quality, selection, promotion, services, customer service/personnel support, facilities/atmosphere, and location. \n\n2. Target Audience. One of the most important segments of your market analysis involves identifying the people or businesses that may have a desire to purchase your type of product or service. The key is to know who buys what, how often, from whom, and what they may be looking for. If you are operating in a broad geographical market, you may have several target group - the primary, secondary, and so on. Your marketing plan should concentrate on reaching your primary audience, and allocating smaller budgets for the secondary market.\n\nProfile of primary audience. You should identify the number of potential customers, who they are, how often they buy, who they are currently buying from, how much they spend, and if they are brand or store loyal. This group is the segment of the market that will consume your type of goods and services, and hopefully still in search of a business to patronize. If you are a wedding planner, your main market is the engaged couple planning to get married within a definite time frame.\n\nSecondary audience. Utilizing a rifle approach, your secondary audience is those in the periphery of your main target group. \n\n3. Objectives. Marketing objectives quantify the results you are looking to achieve. By clearly stating these results in advance, you provide performance criteria against which your future results can be compared. Whatever marketing objectives you decide on, they should meet certain criteria. They must be realistic, measurable, and be guided by short, medium and long-term deadlines.\n\nProfit. Profit objectives state the bottom line progress you want your marketing efforts to achieve. You may set the goal of achieving 2 percent profit in your first year, and increasing it by 10 percent every year hereafter.\n\nMarket share. Market share objectives state your desired cut of the total industry sales pie, or at least the local industry. If the total revenue of all the wedding planners in your county is $2 million, how much of that is yours? If you only have 2% of that pie, you may want to increase your share to about 10% after launching your marketing campaign.\n\nSales volume target. Your sales volume affects your cost structure: the higher the sales that you generate, the lower your cost. Specific sales volume levels can give you more bargaining power with your suppliers. Sales volume objectives should clearly state the total goods or services you intend to deliver. Your goal can be to increase your sale
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I assume that the roadmap is refering to something like the deployment schedule of products and/or services. The roadmap would therefore be the tactical execution of the company's objectives.\n\nFor example, if a company's objective is to gain as much market share as possible by doing a rapid introduction of a series of new services and product in the next workyear, the roadmap will be skewed towards a plan where there will be more deployment and marketing of such services and products early in the year and more of consolidation in the later part of the year.