Strategic Management: Selection, Implementation, and Planning

Strategy Identification and Selection

Strategy identification and selection involves defining the approaches a company will take across various dimensions:

1. Product Market Investment Strategies: (See the Ansoff Matrix)
2. Investment Strategies: Defined by the strategic approach in economic and financial terms (e.g., reducing costs, promotions, price reduction, quality increases).
3. Functional Area Strategies: The development of a business strategy involves specifying strategies for functional areas such as sales, brand management, R&P, manufacturing, supply chain, and finance. It is critical that the various departments are coordinated so they do not work at cross-purposes, as objective alignment can be difficult.

   The role of strategic objectives is to help in this task. This mission generates various ways to achieve sustainable competitive advantage(s) that can be implemented in a huge variety of ways. Differentiation, for example, can be based upon:

   • Product quality
   • Product features
   • Innovation
   • Services provided
   • The brand’s name
4. Assets and Skills: These are the bases of a sustainable competitive advantage (from a long-term point of view), including know-how and learnings such as “best practices.”

Strategic Marketing Management

Strategies must be developed and implemented as part of a management planning and control process. Because markets are continuously changing with inherent turbulence, companies often decide to implement a cyclical planning process that involves all company departments to address several key issues:

• Many decisions are taken outside of cyclical planning (day-to-day working), requiring reactivity due to the fast-changing environment.
• Information loss or lack of updates: requiring a real-time information system rather than just periodic monitoring.
• Lack of flexibility regarding total investments and budgets (controlling the economics and financials required to invest in marketing tools or strategies).
• Need to be proactive and take “controlled risks” to include major opportunities, “quick wins,” and leverage “positive strategic windows” in planning.