Business “Strategy” is nothing more than designating priorities for the many choices facing your business. It is a way of optimizing your choices to select those that best meet your objectives. A clear strategy is an indispensable guide to make day-to-day business choices with. The absence of a clear strategy is sometimes known as “winging it”.
If only creating strategy was simpler.
The difficulty in setting business strategies is that it can be quite complex. Establishing clear measureable objectives, selecting appropriate markets, matching products and services to those markets, and then selecting distribution channels, sales tactics and aftermarket servicing, is a difficult task to do in a consistent and coordinated way. It’s all the more difficult to then assess the relative risk of the choices being made to your overall business operation.
KLynn strategy services rely on not one method, but many. We use a variety of proven analysis and scoring methods to produce coherent and meaningful business strategies. The strategy development process is interactive with the client and is distilled into six steps:
(1) Clearly articulating stakeholder objectives in a way that can be routinely and quantitatively measured. The essence of this step was expressed best by Lord Kelvin in the 1800's when he said “You can’t manage, what you can’t measure.” There can be no strategy in the absence of objectives.
(2) Selection and prioritization of key markets. This sounds more intuitive than it is. In effect, KLynn will help you identify all your possible markets and then rank their relevance to your objectives on the basis of growth potential, size, competitive landscape, barriers to entry, and fit to your existing capabilities and infrastructure.
(3) Product and services choices and priorities are then confronted in the context of the selected markets and stakeholder objectives. Existing offerings are mapped these choices and the result is a clear picture of both your needed offerings and what products or services must be developed or developer further.
(4) Distribution and other go-to-market choices follow. What are the best methods of bringing your products and services to your selected markets in order to meet your objectives? Again, channel choices are addressed against costs, existing infrastructure, capacity, and effectiveness.
(5) Although it may seem counter-intuitive, sales and servicing priorities are addressed last. This includes pricing, discounting, brand valuing, marketing communications, and aftermarket servicing. In effect, while there are numerous choices involved in this aspect of business strategy, most are “tactics” and depend highly on the choices made previously.
(6) The final step is to reduce the strategies into a set of working initiatives – action plans that will form the basis for implementing the resulting strategies.
The benefits of the KLynn strategy development approach are many. It always results in a clear view of what must be done to meet objectives - what will move the company toward them, and what is mere distraction. Often, the interactive process used is also an excellent way to ensure that senior staff is “on the same page”. Lastly, a KLynn strategy mandate is an excellent prelude to any business plan development.
