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Most companies have unique strategies that are designed to build wealth by matching their strengths with available resources. Strategic managers plan products and services to meet current and anticipated market trends. The strategic implementation process involves putting these plans into action. Implementation processes are as varied as strategic plans, but certain strategic business techniques are repeated in many individual business strategies. To choose the best strategy implementation process, determine your business’ short-term and long-term goals, prioritize those goals, and identify certain measurable criteria that will help determine how successful your strategy is.
A short-term strategic implementation process supports the long-term strategy. For example, a company might have a long-term strategy that calls for a 30% revenue increase over five years and a short-term strategy that calls for a 0.5% sales increase each month for the next three months. Short-term implementation requires a lot of communication and physical coordination of the employees working on the tasks. Each completed task moves the business toward realizing strategic goals.
Every strategic implementation process must have objectives with measurable activities and results. Examples of measurable results include total sales, customer satisfaction ratings, productivity, and expense reduction. Business managers use these measures to assess and monitor team members and to ensure that departments and teams stay on track while working toward strategic goals.
Many business strategists choose to use prioritization as part of the strategic implementation process. Strategists rank short-term tasks according to what the company values and what is most important to the overall strategic goal. Companies trying to increase sales will have different priorities than companies trying to cut costs, even though both companies may have the same tasks in their set of short-term goals.
In business, the term “waterfall” refers to the process of linking short-term goals with long-term goals. This is the turning point in the strategic implementation process, where the business and environment begin to resemble what was outlined in the strategic plan. The process is called a cascade because the measurable goals are fused together to create a set of integrated long-term goals. In choosing how to implement a strategic plan, many executives also determine when and how to recognize cascading milestones.
Functional tactics are the routine activities that create a physical reality from the ideas written in a strategic plan. Finance, marketing, production, human resources and operations execute functional tactics that must be managed taking into account the priorities of the strategic implementation process. Strategists evaluate the company’s chain of activities to determine which employees must execute specific functional tactics related to implementing the strategic plan.