The Process of Strategic Plan

Introduction:

In order to build successful strategic plan there are sequential steps must be followed. In this assignment we will address each step in details with examples and case studies to make it easier to understand the process.

Objective:

The aim of this assignment is to study the steps of the strategic planning process, analyze how they are related, and showing the importance of each step. In this assignment we are going to clarify how each step can be implemented in real life cases from different companies.

Significance

By the end of this assignment, the reader should have a good background about the process of strategic planning, and have idea about how to generate strategic plan, by understanding the strategic planning process there will be greater chance to establish more potentially successful strategic plan than a person that may establish a random plan.

The strategic planning process:

There are different classification and division for the strategic planning process, but in the end it's all similar in the content but some author prefers to separate some steps to gives more details and some prefer to combine some steps together. According to Bradford the strategic planning can be 5 simple steps as the following:

1- Mission and objectives.

2- Environmental scanning.

3- Strategy formulation

4- Strategy implementation

5- Evaluation and control

1- Mission and objectives: The first step in the strategic planning process is establishing a mission and vision statements. The mission statement describes the purpose and values of the organization and explains why the organization exists, it should contain the main organizational goal, and provide clear direction to the company, it provides the basic framework of the organization strategic plan. (.Butkhart , 1993) . While the vision statement identifies how the organization will be in a point of time in future, the vision statement provides an answer for the question "Where do we want to go?" By keeping vision statement in mind, it reminds you with what you are trying to build. (Bradford, 2000). The organization objective is the target that the firm wants to attain, moreover, the value which represent the company belief. To make the picture more clear let us to take a look to the following example:

 Bapco is the leading oil company in Bahrain their strategic direction according to their website is the following:

* Objective

To collaborate and engage in all aspects of the petroleum and related industries, with the aim of maximizing contribution to the national economy.

* Mission

To manage and operate an integrated oil and gas business, supplying crude