James J. Peters Veteran Affairs Hospital

James J. Peters Veteran Affairs Hospital

Strategic planning process

Strategic planning of every company comprises of blend of different competitive plans and business tactics which the company adopts to impress the consumers compete to accomplish their organizational goals. Strategic planning is a route towards strategic pattern. It is an organized set up consisting of several steps which recognized the existing position of the company together with its objectives, future predictions, functioning principles, requirements (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), preferential actions and policies, performance plans and evaluation plans. Strategic planning affects the performance of the company in a very constructive manner. Besides these benefits, strategic planning also enables the company to recognize and capture future prospective marketing opportunities and individual benefits like support towards favorable alterations and the opinion that strategic planning maintains the company harmonized with its external environment in order to make it adaptive towards these changes (Gamble 2004, 10).

Porter's Value Chain Analysis Model

Value chain is defined as a process which describes the activities and functions performed by the organizations that are designed in order to produce a product and provide a service. The model of the value chain has two functions which act as an effective method for the consultant in understanding that every firm has a different set of activities and these activities are divvied into two categories: 1) the Primary Activities which are directly related to the products and services of the organizations. Michael Porter has divided these activities into five categories. Firstly, the inbound logistics- which means every activity is concerned with the responsibility of raw material, starting from the handling till the operations are categorized, like storing control and receiving control. Secondly, operations that are connected with the activities which transforms the raw material into finished products and services of the company. Thirdly, the outbound logistics - referred to stores and distribution divisions which help in distributing the products to consumers (Geisler 2010, 258).

Support Activity is the second category of these activities. It transforms all the activities into Primary Activity for increasing effectiveness and efficiency. Michael Porter has divided these activities into five categories that are stated below:

1. Firm infrastructure

2. Human resource management

3. Procurement

4. Technology development

Second activity of the value chain model specifies the strategic position if the firm in three different ways. It starts with highlighting the most essential sections of activities that deal in with the needs ...