Business strategy professionals and department leaders must know how to use business frameworks to achieve business goals and support their work. These professionals can use strategic frameworks to set realistic business goals and strategies. You can enhance your professional abilities and ensure success by learning more about using strategic frameworks in business. There are many different frameworks for strategy. There’s one for every scenario which can overwhelm someone new in the field.
We have selected the most popular business strategy frameworks to help you choose the best one for your needs.
What is a Strategy Framework?
A strategy Framework is a method of structuring an initiative to help stakeholders achieve their primary goals. Management uses a variety of strategy frameworks, from simple models to complex ones. The organization will be more vital. This Framework helps you to stay focused on goals.
Some organizations implement a single strategy, while others use multiple methods simultaneously.
Top Strategy Frameworks For Businesses
When selecting a framework, you should consider the type of organization, goals, strengths, and weaknesses. You can choose from the following strategic frameworks to guide your business.
1. Balanced Scorecard
A balanced Scorecard (BSC) outlines the goals and objectives of your team or organization and what everyone needs to do to achieve them. It helps to understand objectives, connect and prioritize day-to-day tasks, and monitor progress using established metrics. This Framework will help you identify:
- Objectives: The goal that you are trying to achieve. Be viewed as the industry standard in customer service quality.
- Measures: How will you define success? Average customer feedback score B+
- Initiatives Programs created to achieve goals (i.e., Launch a new ticketing system for your customer service cases
- Action Items: Individual Steps One person or a small group will take. Rico will investigate ticketing software.
2. Blue Ocean Strategy
Blue Ocean Strategy is an approach to identifying untapped and new markets. It involves creating demand in an uncontested market, or a “blue sea,” instead of competing in crowded markets, or “red waters,” where there is fierce competition. This Framework involves identifying factors customers in a specific industry value and creating a market space that delivers these factors innovatively and uniquely. It can be a new service or product or redefining a current product to better suit customer needs. Blue Ocean Strategy’s ultimate goal is to create an uncontested market with high growth and profitability potential. The Framework can help in many situations, such as entering a new market, differentiating yourself from competitors, or creating new products.
3. SWOT
The SWOT analysis may not be new, but it can help you create a solid business strategy by identifying your strengths and weaknesses and the threats and opportunities your organization could face. The SWOT Analysis is the basis for many of the strategic plans.
- Strengths: Building an ability-driven strategy and recognizing your strengths comes from analyzing them. Innovation and growth will be built on building upon your strengths. Find opportunities to play on your strengths. Could you do what you are good at and do it well? In a market with many competitors, you must refrain from competing with your competitor’s strengths. This will increase the risk of you losing money and using more resources.
- Weaknesses: Identifying your weaknesses is important because you want to avoid implementing strategies in weak organization areas. You may also have weaknesses that seriously affect the long-term success of your company. Identifying and addressing your critical weaknesses is the best approach. You would be better off investing your resources in a strategy based on strengths than trying to fix weaknesses.
- Opportunities: These are the areas where you can see opportunities for your organization’s success. These opportunities may be internal or outside. Opportunities are used to determine your strategy, such as where you play and where you believe you can win.
- Threats: These forces (internal or external) will hold back your organization. Identifying risks, also known as uncertainty, can be done later on in the process of strategic planning.
4. PEST Analysis
When drafting a strategic plan, you can’t only consider the internal situation. You also have to consider what is happening outside. A PEST analysis helps you to take a holistic view of the environment in which your company operates. This Framework asks you to determine the impact of each factor on your company. Here are some (of many) examples.
- Political: Does your industry have many regulations that govern how it can communicate with its customers?
- Economic: Do customers in your industry watch their wallets?
- Cultural: Does the customer expect a faster response?
- Technological: Do you have outdated customer ticketing software in place?
5. Gap Planning
Gap Planning can also be referred to by the terms “Need-Gap Assessment,” “Need Assessment,” or “Strategic-Planning Gap.” It compares where an organization stands now with where it wants to go and shows how to close that gap. It is used primarily to identify specific deficiencies within an organization. You may hear of a “change plan” or “shift map” in your gap planning research. These are similar to gap plans because they consider the gap between where you are and where you would like to be on various axes.
Conclusion
Strategic frameworks outline corporate goals and objectives used to develop marketing strategies. They are a guide to success that must be updated and addressed regularly. Regular evaluation of strategic frameworks is necessary. It’s not a “set-it-and-forget-it” approach.
