User:María Emilia Serrano/Strategy Making Process

Strategy-Making Process
Strategy is the outcome of a formal planning process. Establishing goals and objectives can be a tough-task that is why making process facilities the way managers handle the issues. How to manage strategies is the most important role in the process of strategy making because without a planning and a process managers do not have an organization to conduct the business. A strategy-making process is not just a mechanism where people set rules to be followed but it is the foundation of a whole set of procedures  that  helps a company to develop the opportunities on a company field. Strategy- Making can create a difference overall because it is always represented whit two parts: formulation vs implementation. It is important for a company to create skills such as leadership, negotiation, persuading, decision -making, etc. A company that only knows how to formulate strategies but does not know to implement them, it will never accomplish its mission and goals. This is the main reason why formulation and implementation are linked.

There is a five-step process to plan the strategies:
 * 1) Goal - setting
 * 2) Analysis
 * 3) Strategy formulation
 * 4) Strategy implementation
 * 5) Evaluation and Control

Goal-setting
In goal-setting is necessary to select the company´s mission and major corporative goals. The main point of this step is to truly know the vision and mission for the business. Here is very important to identify three key points: First, define short- and long-term objectives: the first one setting to be accomplish in less than one year and the later to be accomplish in a period if one to two maximum three years. All the terms need to be realistic and match the values of the vision. It is also important to know that in this step is necessary that the managers of the company prioritize the terms to do what is more constructive for the company in the main when it is a start-up company. Second, it is necessary to know how and with witch strategies all the terms will be accomplish. Finally, give each employee a task with which they can succeed.

Mission: why does the company exist? What made us to create this company? The mission always represents the motivation of the people to create this business. Why them have agree to settle responsibilities and strategies to accomplish goals. Some people think that the mission describes the essence of the business. Why even if there are a lot of competition have been decided to create a new company? Is there missing something in the market? Or do members of the company know that they can make it better? That kind of questions are important to answer when creating the mission of a company.

Vision:  Communicates the company´s goals. No matter the size of the company, the vision of it will always describes the aspirations the company has. Where the members of the company seem in 5 or 10 years. A vision statement can be one sentence or a short paragraph. The vision gives the company shape and direction and it is based on the core ideas of the company.

Values: the values of a company state how managers and employees should conduct themselves, how they should do business and what kind of organization they should build to help the company. In this way, the company will achieve its mission completely. Why having values? It is very important to establish values because those are the base of the company. Those are also related with the mission and the vision, for example one of the company´s value is leadership, and the company establish as a goal to be leaders on the market in two years by setting some strategies.

Analysis
Here the organization´s external competitive environment should be analyzed overall with a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) to know that the company should improve. A SWOT analysis is very useful in a company because helps every member of the company. Also, it is necessary a marketing research where the company can know the competitions is going their business and what costumers prefer.

Strategy formulation
Here it is necessary to evaluate internal environment of the organization to identify strengths and weaknesses. Here is very important to review the information that we already have overall about weaknesses and strengths. Recognize what sources the company has and how they will help reducing the weaknesses of the company. Identify any areas of which the business must seek external resources. This point is very important because without knowing the resources of the company there will be lack of information. The mission and the vision of the company are helpful to stablish strategy formulation.

Strategy implementation
This is the action stage of the strategy-making process. In this step is very important to find solutions to the strengths and weaknesses that were found to take advantage and create external opportunities and stop external threats. If the strategy does not fit in the business the parameters should be focus on accomplish the goals and fix the problems.

Evaluation and Control
In this step managers implement the strategies and evaluate how they are going. It is necessary to review internal and external issues and making corrective acitions if it is required. Then, if there is any problem that haven´t been solve, it is necessary to know witch strategy must be apply. Then parametres used here need to measure the actual results versus the plan.