The First Three Steps to Accomplish Before Developing Your Enterprise Strategy

Whether you think about it or not, everything you do has a plan. The meal you are cooking for dinner, your plan for the day, how you are going to accomplish simple chores around the house. Your business is no different than anything else. We refer to your business plan as an enterprise strategy. 

It’s difficult and even nearly impossible to accomplish anything when you don’t have an enterprise strategy in place. This strategy is what your business needs to achieve its goals; it also helps to determine where to spend time, resources, and money. 

So how does one develop a strategic plan? Well, it for sure does not come out of the blue. There is lots of information to be gathered before developing this plan. Luckily for you, we’ve got you covered with these three simple steps!

Mission/Vision Statement

If you don’t already have a vision statement, now is the time to create one. A vision statement is where you envision your organization down the road. Vision statements are meant to be inspirational and aspirational and should challenge your employees. When creating your vision statement, you must address any problems, consider where you are headed and if all your goals were achieved, where would you expect to be in 10 or so years down the road. 

Additionally, you must have a mission statement. A mission statement is an explanation of your organization’s existence. It defines your business’s purpose and its intention. A mission statement is similar to a vision statement but is different when it comes to objectives. 

Corporate Values

Each organization is unique because of its corporate values, which guide and direct the organization and its culture. Corporate values are something that is undermined but remains essential for an organization. These core principals guide every decision made and creates a standard for the actions your organization takes in the future. Core values go hand and hand with your vision statement- as it helps shape your brand’s identity.

Having corporate values will help you communicate to clients and potential customers what your organization is all about and how exactly you would like to be identified. Standing behind these values at all time will also help to build your organizations integrity to approach situations with clarity. This will ensure you are making the best decisions for your organization and your team. 

SWOT Analysis

Perhaps you have heard of the term “SWOT” analysis before. It is used to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of an organization. Using this technique to build your strategy will ensure that you have conducted thorough research in your market so your organization can achieve the goals you have created. If done correctly, a SWOT analysis can have a powerful, positive effect on your business. 

Strengths

If you have ever been in an interview, you may have been asked about your strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes you might have an answer, but this is a question many people struggle with.  Why? Because there are a lot of ways to define strengths. Referring to your organization, strengths can be the advantages it has, what you do better than anyone else, what competitors may see as your strengths and the unique or low-cost resources you use compared to your competitors. It’s important to not only consider strengths from an internal point of view but how others see strengths in your organization as well. 

Weaknesses

Admitting your weaknesses is not always easy, but in order to be successful, you must identify what you could improve on, what you should avoid, what factors lose you sales and what others might consider as weaknesses. As mentioned, its not always easy but being realistic will prevent any hurtful truths from being uncovered down the road. 

Opportunities

Marketing opportunities play a huge role in developing a strategy. However, it can be difficult to foresee the future and opportunities that may present themselves in the future. You may want to consider any good opportunities you can currently spot, any trends in the market you are unaware of or changes in technology that may relate to your market.

Threats

 It’s important to evaluate any threats to your organization to avoid conflicts down the road. Threats could be any potential obstacles, negative cash-flow issues, or even changing technology. Your organization should never overlook external factors that could potentially affect the organization. 

Using These Steps to Create A Bigger Picture

There is a lot of information and research that goes into a SWOT analysis, but it is very simple to conduct. However, the SWOT analysis won’t be as powerful as it can be unless you utilize the information you gather.  

Before you develop your organization’s enterprise strategy, you will need to identify your mission/vision statement, corporate values, and conduct a SWOT analysis. From there, you will have more clarity(and confidence) to be able to create a realistic plan that is structured around factual information. Not having a plan should never be an option for your business. Moving forward blind, with no direction will only cause you to encounter bigger issues down the road. 

Not sure where to start with these three steps? No worries! Joseph Studios has a team of strategy experts who will do all the research for you and will work with you and your team to develop a successful enterprise strategy that is tailored to your business. We can assure you that our team delivers data-driven results that will tremendously boost your leads. If you are ready to develop a powerful enterprise strategy, contact us to learn how you can get started with our team!