P. Seshasai, MTS, Business Division, C-DAC Chennai puts forth his views on strategic planning and its role in the IT Industry

Strategic planning in general terms is defined as a “managerial process of developing and maintaining a viable fit between an organization’s objectives, resources and its changing market opportunities”. Inadequate Strategic Planning, is the very reason why the IT Industry, which is supposed to be the play ground of youngsters, still depends on professionals in the middle and top managerial positions to take the organization ahead. An organization’s indications of being in the pink of health is apparent only when strategic planning takes over the role of the ‘heart’ and refines the flow of blood within, where the blood flow is the business process and practice adopted by an organization.

Lets us examine how effective Strategic Planning could bring in this change.

Is it necessary for every organization to implement SCM (Supply Chain Management) or CRM (Customer Relationship Management) in true terms of an ERP function? No…we do have classic examples in our industry where the processes defined over the years by managers with vision are producing finer results than, what SCM and CRM can do to an organization.

To execute a typical system integration project, an implementation team depends mainly on the rapport they have with suppliers and customers. When I refer to customers, it is not just the external customers, but internal customers who are our own peers, bosses and subordinates. Getting things done within an organization can some times be more challenging than getting what you want from your external customers. In a typical Indian scenario where there are very few B2B model e-commerce implementations, everything revolves around the people and the process.

People at the top management level are basically those who define the strategies for the organizational growth. The stages of Strategic Planning are:

l Analyse market opportunities
l Research & select target markets
l Design market strategy
l Planning marketing programs
l Organising and implementation of marketing trends All these steps require the efforts of internal customers. Identifying the appropriate markets, products / solutions to be addressed is primarily done, based on the core competency and the strengths of the organization and opportunities that the market offers. Once these are identified and the action begins to unfold, it is the processes within the organization and the response from the internal customers, which will set the pace of the growth.

An organization might have different SBUs (Strategic Business Units) or divisions if it has diverse activities and in this scenario the transparency of operation and cooperation between each unit and division determines the over all health of the organization to the external world. If individual groups are strong but if the organization cannot deliver solutions with joint efforts of its groups, then the customers require a front ending team as a powerful portal to integrate these islands of excellence.

The root cause of these problems is the attitude of the people (internal customers) and rigidity of the processes adopted. Creation of well defined roles and transparency will help reduce these attitude problems apart from regular motivation and nurturing exercises by the management. When people begin to identify their personal goals with the goals of the organization then the processes will automatically become less rigid and the system functions to deliver better productivity.

Thus, when there is a strategic fit between an organization’s expertise and the opportunities offered by markets, there would be prospects for better growth. These strategies have to percolate from the top management to the junior most member in the organisation, so that whatever a member does will have relevance to the goals set and the results aimed. The goals of the individual members should be in tune with the organisation’s goals for the members to contribute their maximum towards the success of the organisation and Strategic Planning is the means to achieve the desired results.

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