The importance of strategic planning in the development of Bangladesh Banking Services (June’13)

Q. Discuss the importance of strategic planning in the development of Bangladesh Banking Services (June’13).

Importance of strategic planning in the development of Bangladesh Banking Services: Strategic planning is the most important key for solving strategic tasks; it is the process of developing, controlling and maintaining a strategic balance between organizational goals and resources in the market environment. A strategic plan is a set of activities that are geared towards an organizations growth and success. Strategic management refers to the art of business planning at the highest possible level implemented by the company's leader or leaders and is focused on building a solid underlying foundation for a company.

Simply put, a strategic plan is the formalized road map that describes how your company executes the chosen strategy. A plan spells out where an organization is going over the next year or more and how it’s going to get there. Typically, the plan is organization-wide or focused on a major function, such as a division or a department.

A strategic plan is a management tool that serves the purpose of helping an organization do a better job, because a plan focuses the energy, resources, and time of everyone in the organization in the same direction.

If you’re thinking, “Hey, I’ve got this great book on business plans, so I’ll just use that to form my strategic plan,” be aware that strategic plans and business plans aren’t the same concepts.

A strategic plan is a management tool that C-level managers need to master and is for established businesses and business owners who are serious about growth. It also does the following:

1. Helps build your competitive advantage
2. Communicates your strategy to staff
3. Prioritizes your financial needs
4. Provides focus and direction to move from plan to action

A business plan, on the other hand, is a planning tool for new businesses, projects, or entrepreneurs who are serious about starting a business. A business plan

1. Helps define the purpose of your business
2. Helps plan human resources and operational needs
3. Is critical if you’re seeking funding
4. Assesses business opportunities
5. Provides structure to ideas

Key components of strategic planning:

Vision: Outlines what the organization wants to be, or how it wants the world in which it operates to be (an "idealized" view of the world). It is a long-term view and concentrates on the future. It can be emotive and is a source of inspiration.

For example, a charity working with the poor might have a vision statement which reads "A World without Poverty."

Mission: Defines the fundamental purpose of an organization or an enterprise, succinctly describing why it exists and what it does to achieve its vision.

For example, the charity above might have a mission statement as "providing jobs for the homeless and unemployed".

Values: Beliefs that are shared among the stakeholders of an organization. Values drive an organization's culture and priorities and provide a framework in which decisions are made. For example, "Knowledge and skills are the keys to success" or "give man bread and feed him for a day, but teach him to farm and feed him for life". These example maxims may set the priorities of self-sufficiency over shelter.

Strategy: Strategy, narrowly defined, means "the art of the general" -a combination of the ends (goals) for which the firm is striving and the means (policies) by which it is seeking to get there. A strategy is sometimes called a roadmap - which is the path chosen to plow towards the end vision. The most important part of implementing the strategy is ensuring the company is going in the right direction - defined as towards the end vision.

So, we can say that strategic planning in the development of need for any organization not only Bangladesh Banking Services.

References:  http://en.wikipedia.org

http://www.dummies.com

http://www.techrepublic.com