Formulation Phase: Vision, Mission, Environmental Scanning, Objective and Strategy

Strategy Formulation is an analytical process of selection of the best suitable course of action to meet the organizational objectives and vision. It is one of the steps of the strategic management process. The strategic plan allows an organization to examine its resources, provides a financial plan and establishes the most appropriate action plan for increasing profits.

It is examined through SWOT analysis. SWOT is an acronym for strength, weakness, opportunity and threat. The strategic plan should be informed to all the employees so that they know the company’s objectives, mission and vision. It provides direction and focus to the employees.

Steps of Strategy Formulation

The steps of strategy formulation include the following:

1. Establishing Organizational Objectives: This involves establishing long-term goals of an organization. Strategic decisions can be taken once the organizational objectives are determined.
2. Analysis of Organizational Environment: This involves SWOT analysis, meaning identifying the company’s strengths and weaknesses and keeping vigilance over competitors’ actions to understand opportunities and threats.

Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors which the company has control over. Opportunities and threats, on the other hand, are external factors over which the company has no control. A successful organization builds on its strengths, overcomes its weakness, identifies new opportunities and protects against external threats.

3. Forming quantitative goals: Defining targets so as to meet the company’s short-term and long-term objectives. Example, 30% increase in revenue this year of a company.
4. Objectives in context with divisional plans: This involves setting up targets for every department so that they work in coherence with the organization as a whole.
5. Performance Analysis: This is done to estimate the degree of variation between the actual and the standard performance of an organization.
6. Selection of Strategy: This is the final step of strategy formulation. It involves evaluation of the alternatives and selection of the best strategy amongst them to be the strategy of the organization.

Strategy formulation process is an integral part of strategic management, as it helps in framing effective strategies for the organization, to survive and grow in the dynamic business environment.

Levels of strategy formulation

There are three levels of strategy formulation used in an organization:

• Corporate level strategy: This level outlines what you want to achieve: growth, stability, acquisition or retrenchment. It focuses on what business you are going to enter the market.
• Business level strategy: This level answers the question of how you are going to compete. It plays a role in those organization which have smaller units of business and each is considered as the strategic business unit (SBU).
• Functional level strategy: This level concentrates on how an organization is going to grow. It defines daily actions including allocation of resources to deliver corporate and business level strategies.

Hence, all organisations have competitors, and it is the strategy that enables one business to become more successful and established than the other.

Environmental Analysis is described as the process which examines all the components, internal or external, that has an influence on the performance of the organization. The internal components indicate the strengths and weakness of the business entity whereas the external components represent the opportunities and threats outside the organization.

To perform environmental analysis, a constant stream of relevant information is required to find out the best course of action. Strategic Planners use the information gathered from the environmental analysis for forecasting trends for future in advance. The information can also be used to assess operating environment and set up organizational goals.

It ascertains whether the goals defined by the organization are achievable or not, with the present strategies. If is not possible to reach those goals with the existing strategies, then new strategies are devised or old ones are modified accordingly.

Advantages of Environmental Analysis

The internal insights provided by the environmental analysis are used to assess employee’s performance, customer satisfaction, maintenance cost, etc. to take corrective action wherever required. Further, the external metrics help in responding to the environment in a positive manner and also aligning the strategies according to the objectives of the organization.

Environmental analysis helps in the detection of threats at an early stage, that assist the organization in developing strategies for its survival. Add to that, it identifies opportunities, such as prospective customers, new product, segment and technology, to occupy a maximum share of the market than its competitors.

Steps Involved in Environmental Analysis

1. Identifying: First of all, the factors which influence the business entity are to be identified, to improve its position in the market. The identification is performed at various levels, i.e. company level, market level, national level and global level.
2. Scanning: Scanning implies the process of critically examining the factors that highly influence the business, as all the factors identified in the previous step effects the entity with the same intensity. Once the important factors are identified, strategies can be made for its improvement.
3. Analysing: In this step, a careful analysis of all the environmental factors is made to determine their effect on different business levels and on the business as a whole. Different tools available for the analysis include benchmarking, Delphi technique and scenario building.
4. Forecasting: After identification, examination and analysis, lastly the impact of the variables is to be forecasted.

Environmental analysis is an ongoing process and follows a holistic approach, that continuously scans the forces effecting the business environment and covers 360 degrees of the horizon, rather than a specificsegment.