Business strategies are dynamic and need a regular briefing. There are many types of business strategies that are available in the public domain and these can be accessed easily. However, it requires the acumen of a trained professional to understand how these strategies are created and what impact and influence these would have from an objective perspective. In a corporate domain, professionals often opt for MBA admissions to seek knowledge from a business strategy course.
Let’s understand why every business leader and professional should know about business strategy and the types of challenges that these strategies solve in the short term and long term duration.
What’s a business strategy?
The primary objective of the business is to “create value”. This value could be a product, service, emotion, or revenue. Irrespective of what kind of business you are part of, each has a plan that needs to be carefully designed and evaluated. The strategies would revolve around this plan and the links would be associated with the value, mission, and vision statement of the organization.
So, a business strategy is a concerted action plan and goal roadmap that business leaders devise to differentiate their products and services from the rest of the market, with the sole objective to provide value to the end users or society and in return generate an outcome, which could be revenue (profit) or goodwill (non-profit).
There are three primary categories of business strategy, which are:
- General strategy
- Corporate strategy
- Market competition strategy
Competitive strategy can be sub-divided into these:
- Cost strategy
- Service strategy
- Focus strategy
In the business strategy course, students learn the basic nature of each of these strategies and how different departments and worker groups in the organization organize their activities to achieve their goals in a meaningful manner.
What’s the challenge in business strategy?
Uncertainty is the biggest challenge in the modern era. No amount of planning can guarantee security against uncertainties. The COVID related pandemic and lockdowns are the biggest and most relatable examples you can associate with. There are numerous case studies on the pitfalls of not choosing a business strategy to manage emergencies arising from uncontrolled situations such as government taxation, fiscal policies, war, social conflicts, mass exodus, military coups, demonetization, and pandemics, and so on.
In the last 5 years, we have witnessed remarkable transformation among business leaders and their personalities that redefine their approach to business strategies.
Let’s understand this.
A business has many dimensions and each has its own set of moving parts that require adequate information. There are only 1% of the global business entities that truly acknowledge the importance of each moving part that needs to be carefully understood and analyzed based on academic research.
Financial health and stability
Business teams have to meet their business obligations regularly and inform these to all stakeholders. In business strategy, knowing your numbers can enhance sales visibilities as well as growing business ownerships. Organizations can’t function without revenue generation. There has to be some kind of cash flow from their daily operations. This defines the organization’s health which for some reason known best to the business analysts, is often overlooked.
In business strategy management, understanding the financial statements can impact the bottom line as well as top of line efficiencies.
Customer Experience and services management
Leadership decisions in customer experience are a recent phenomenon. For instance, CRM started as a tool for marketing only. Today, there is CRM software for every business process, including for IT and accounting departments. Owing to the extensive use of data and analytics in customer relationship management, the onus has fallen on the business strategist to identify the best ways to engage with customers and prospects in an omnichannel environment. Most businesses now have websites, and the next best footfall opportunity lies with expanding into immersive content experiences on mobile devices, AR VR headsets, and now, metaverse. Strategic planning for customer experience drives growth at a large scale.
Workforce optimization
In the remote environment, businesses are finding it hard to evaluate what factors make employees and contractual workers happy and engaged. The focus has shifted from rewarding employees with good compensation and bonuses in the pre-COVID stages to now, where employees seek leadership guidance and want to be feel respected and motivated for what they are doing in new normal workplace conditions brought upon by “Hybrid” and “Work from Home” conditions. It is this challenge that senior business analysts and strategists solve by adopting new business strategies that focus on recruiting good talent, retaining the existing workforce, and terminating the ones that have been found to be disengaged.
Conclusion
Creating a good business strategy depends on how well MBA schools are training the candidates in full time and executive courses. With abundant training, timely assessment, and project guidance, you can become a resourceful strategist.
