Strategy
“Strategic Management can be defined as the Art and Science of formulating, implementing and evaluation cross-functional decisions that enable an organization to achieve its objectives” [1]
“Strategy is the direction and scope of an organization over the long-term which achieves advantage for the organization t
Through its configuration of resources within a challenging environment to meet the needs of markets and to fulfill stakeholder expectations".[2]
Stages of Strategic Management
The strategic-management process consists of 3 stages that are;
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Strategic Analysis
This is all about the analyzing the strength of businesses' position and understanding the important external factors that may influence that position. The process of Strategic Analysis can be assisted by a number of tools, including:
• PEST ANALYSIS - a technique for understanding the "environment" in which a business operates
• SCENARIO PLANNING - a technique that builds various plausible views of possible futures for a business
• FIVE FORCES ANALYSIS - a technique for identifying the forces which affect the level of competition in an industry
• MARKET SEGMENTATION - a technique which seeks to identify similarities and differences between groups of customers or users
• DIRECTIONAL POLICY MATRIX - a technique which summarizes the competitive strength of a business’s operations in specific markets
• COMPETITOR ANALYSIS - a wide range of techniques and analysis that seeks to summaries a businesses' overall competitive position
• CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTOR ANALYSIS - a technique to identify those areas in which a business must outperform the competition in order to succeed
• SWOT ANALYSIS - a useful summary technique for summarizing the key issues arising from an assessment of a business’s "internal" position and "external" environmental influences.
STRATEGIC CHOICE
This process involves