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A board of sticky notes, representing the importance of strategic planning

For any business, strategy planning can be a successful way of plotting out the direction of your company. Strategy planning, or strategic planning, is a plan by which you lay out your vision for your business. This includes the overall goal of your business and the methods you use to pursue your strategy. An integral part of the start of a business is strategic planning. When you implement a strategic plan into your business, it can be incredibly helpful in determining your goals. Also, knowing what works well and analyzing as you go can be very effective. 

What Data You Need For Strategic Planning 

While there are different ways to conduct strategic planning, you first must gather the necessary information needed. Strategic planning revolves around the goals of your company and the steps to take to achieve them. The goals should be specific and timely to an issue present in the company. You need data on the resources of your company, knowledge about your industry, and expectations of your company. Equally important is having an understanding of your organization’s values, strengths, and weaknesses. This list encompasses the internal and external conditions of your company and is key to the process of strategic planning.

The best way to gather data on your company’s internal conditions is to conduct interviews with key figures. These figures can range from key executives and department heads. These interviews should shed light on the performance of your company and the efficiency of your business processes. In addition, address the culture of your company along with any occurring issues. Besides interviews, data about your use of resources can also be provided by business resource plans. Along with insight into your company, interviews with the key figures in your company provide data on external conditions. 

External conditions can include your industry’s trends, your competitors, obstacles taken, and how the company stands out.  In addition to interviews, business intelligence documentation, business analysis documentation, and general research into your industry can provide you with the necessary information for strategic planning. All this data about your company will give you a clearer understanding of what metrics your companies need to meet.  

Putting Your Strategic Plan Together

With all the data collected, you can begin creating strategic planning documents for your business. Strategic planning documentation analyzes the internal and external conditions of your company to help carry out a successful plan. To begin, analyze your data to find any particular opportunities in your marketplace. Also, figure out what is stopping you from achieving them.

One way to do so is through SWOT analysis among others (PEST analysis, Scenario Planning, Growth-Share matrix). SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and it works by taking all the information about the internal and external conditions of your company and categorizing them based on where they fall under the SWOT terms. 

After you have established which framework you will use to analyze your company data, you can move forward. Looking at the opportunities presented through your analysis, you should be able to prioritize which steps your company needs to focus on to achieve your overall goals. These steps are based on where the most opportunities lie for your company based on your strengths, or what weaknesses you can address to improve performance. Also, looking at the downfalls of your analysis data helps to prevent issues from happening in the future.

The steps you take depend on increasing revenue, comparing companies to your competitors, achieving your goals, and measuring your goals. An example of steps you can take to address this includes revamping your website to attract more customers, updating your training materials to improve employee performance, or whether to expand your business into another marketplace.

What Role Technical Writers Can Have

Once you have your goals laid out and planned out the steps that are needed to achieve them, the next step is to formulate a plan. This is the most important, and most difficult part, of strategic planning. The plan you institute should be shared throughout each department and mapped out so you communicate what changes are being made. Your plan should also lay out what objectives you need to achieve, along with some way to measure whether the steps you are taking are creating concrete success.

To properly create a plan that can work for your business, expertise is recommended. This is where technical writers come into play. Having to conduct interviews, analyze multiple sets of data about your company, and then formulate an actionable plan requires both time and expertise.

So, by hiring an outside consultant like one of EDC’s technical writers, you can guarantee success through strategic planning. With a new technical writer on staff, you can prioritize your business first, while a technical writer provides their services. This way you will be able to maintain your current business success without any disruptions while a technical writer works on providing you with new strategies to further optimize your company.

Conclusion

Strategic planning can help you with implementing a clear direction for your business. Whether your company is a startup or is already an established business, strategic planning documentation can play a key role in your business. With strategic planning, you will have a much easier time determining what goals you need to achieve. Also, it tracks how well you are doing within the company you are working for.  To achieve optimal strategic planning results, having an expert on staff will help. Since a technical writer deals with both documentation services and business intelligence and analysis, EDC’s technical writers can provide you with all the strategic planning documentation you need.

How EDC Can Help You?

Whether you need a team of consultants to produce a complete line of documentation or a single technical writer for a brief project, Essential Data’s Engagement Manager will lead the project from start to finish. At Essential Data Corporation, the quality of our work is guaranteed. Contact us today to get started. (800) 221-0093 or sales@edc.us

Written by Stanley Chu