Describe strategic planning techniques used to formulate alternative strategies designed to achieve stated business goals.

Assignment 5: business plan – final due week 10 and worth 150 points

Business uses strategic planning as a tool to align their plans with organizational goals. Some of the most common techniques used in this regard are SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis, which helps identify potential risks/opportunities; environmental scanning which gives organizations insights into macro-economic trends; scenario planning for brainstorming different possible futures or benchmarking for assessing competitors’ performance.

Once the steps are taken, managers can utilize this data to create alternative strategies that will help them achieve their objectives. If an organization wants to enter a market, they can choose to adopt an aggressive approach by pricing their products lower to quickly gain market share or a conservative strategy like targeting niche segments with less competition and better margins.

To conclude, strategic planning involves gathering data about internal capabilities as well external trends and keeping an eye on the current competition. So that organisations can develop realistic plans to help them achieve their goals going forward.