What does strategic planning mean to SMBs?

BANGALORE, INDIA: "A goal without a plan is just a wish" - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

We have moved on from Entrepreneurs to small-midsized business enterprises, this has been an important and great evolution in the recent years. This journey of transformation has embarked their businesses. The arena of SMBs is quite of competitive with the large enterprises these days.

But at times, the SMBs cannot remain comfortable in their niches, for their unsustainable business track. There seems to be a shortage of simplicity in strategic and business planning today. These processes can only be effective if they are simple enough to be understood, owned and used by the key people in your organization.

Yes, the majority of the SMBs do not plan and the reasons why are still not well understood. The strategy literature dictates that enterprises "must actively plan for the future" to compete effectively and survive. The business owners are lacking 'the long-term vision as to where their company is headed'.

SMBs land at risk and their survival becomes difficult due to the neglect of strategic planning. Consequently, the business may not achieve full performance and growth potential. But then if the considerable research is been done on identifying the 'barriers', this may encourage strategic planning in SMBs.

What exactly is Strategic planning?

Business is all about planning intelligent strategies and wisely implementing them. Even small business are no exception, since the ultimate aim of a small business is to grow into a large business. Strategic planning, in simple words, it's plan which formulates few policies as a long term goal for the company. Without a strategy plan, a business has no direction. The chances of succeeding in a business that has no strategy plan, diminish significantly.

The key components of the Strategic planning comprises of:

a) Vision

b) Mission

c) Values

d) Key objectives

e) Strategy

Strategic planning is concerned with the setting of long-term organizational goals, the development and implementation of plans to achieve these goals. It forms an an integral part of the business and can take a long way in your business when it is sketched intelligently.

Sun Tzu's says "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

Mr. Vijayant Rai, Director, India & SAARC, CA Technologies says, "It is critical for every business to undertake Strategic Planning at an opportune moment for the growth of the business. Without a strategy, the business has no direction. Strategic planning involves setting up a strategy that your business is going to follow over a defined time period. It can be for a specific part of the business, like planning a marketing strategy, or for the business as a whole. It gives the business the ability to compete with the best in the field."

To identify the issue and understand why majority of the SMBs do not engage in strategic planning is very much important. To get through it deeper, a research can always dig and identify the barriers to planning.

Mr. Anand Naik, MD, Sales, Symantec said "Strategic planning involves smart allocation of available resources and intelligent investments to maximize business growth. For Indian SMBs, planning an IT infrastructure that supports and adds value to the business has become very important. SMBs need to take a holistic approach to security and data protection. First, they must identify their most important assets and look at means to ensure they are secured and available at all times, increasingly on many types of devices such as smartphones and tablets. SMBs must evaluate the impact of strategic IT trends such as cloud computing, virtualization and mobility on key areas such as information security and backup. Rather than waiting for a disaster, they should be prepared to ensure that their infrastructure and information are protected from internal and external threats."

SMBs in the process, need to plan with a strategy to obtain the expected returns and cope with the future, with greater confidence and security. The conclusion is that you must plan to succeed. Some stories easily says about the direct correlation between planning and the success of the company.