What is Strategic Advice
Strategic business advice is typically offered by a professional, experienced, competent person skilled in the art and science of how business strategy works.
It helps business leaders to be better prepared to proactively engage in the strategic planning process. It ensures they can address key issues with a more long-term view.
The strategic business advisor conducts a detailed internal and external evaluation of the commercial environment of a business. A diagnostic review revealing the health of the business. Follow this link If you want to know more about the importance of business strategy.
For clarity, the term strategic relates to identifying the long-term, high level aims and interests for the business. It also sets out the means of achieving them.
Using the findings of the analysis the leadership team can create a detailed strategic business plan.
The strategic business plan cascades down into departmental business plans. In doing so all the various business unit managers and departmental heads align with the vison, mission, and goals for the business.
All areas of the business should be involved in the analysis phase. Including sales, marketing, operations, customer support, HR, IT, and finance. The senior leadership team may however expand or contract the scope of the investigation. They base their decision on their own confidence in their understanding of the business dynamics.
The leadership team needs to think through every detail of the strategic plan needs to ensure it is for purpose. The goal is to minimise the risks to the reputation and finances of the business.
Before settling on the final plan of action, the executives may consider many viable options.
Why take external strategic business advice
We know that business owners’ focus is primarily on the short term. In our experience we see that their strategic business planning is more based on an internal, micro environmental viewpoint, rather than one based on a detailed analysis of the macro-environmental external factors and how they impact on the business.
Their focus is typically on achieving monthly or quarterly targets. For instance, ensuring that they market their existing products or services effectively, the sales team are hitting the numbers and the operational staff are working as a team in line with the business plan.
In the end, the company settles on a strategy that is most likely to deliver favourable results. They then seek to execute the plan in a cost-efficient manner while avoiding undue financial risk.
The benefits of Strategic Business advice
Here are the vital benefits of strategic planning that come from using external strategic business advice:
- It enhances the strategic planning process that in turn creates a better business plan
- It replaces guesswork with logic based on researched data
- It helps in improving the company’s overall performance
- It also improves communication between employers and employees
There are two main options to accessing strategic business advice as follows:
- Do it yourself – Get the senior leadership team plus department heads and brain storm the critical issues that could impact the business. They will get the more obvious issues right, but could miss the areas of which they are unaware
- Hire in support – ideally an external strategic business advisor with the skills, expertise, bandwidth, and the knowledge to mentor the leadership team to arrive at a strategic business overview that is extensive, wide ranging and helps them to future proof the business
To conclude, many companies seek externally generated Strategic business advice to fully develop and then execute the strategic business plan. It demands a significant amount of time, effort, and money. However, a well-thought-out strategic plan de-risks the business, encourages company growth, goal achievement, and employee satisfaction.
There is more here, so much more if you want to get the fullest picture possible – what is business strategy
