Step 4: Establishing Strategies

At this stage of the process, you know why you are in business (your mission), you have assessed the internal and external environments (situation analysis), you have established one or more goals and supporting objectives, and you are ready to decide how to reach your destinations. Strategies are what get you from your starting point to your destinations. Among your strategy choices, the Internet is simply one option.

Strategic management of the type described by the planning process is one of the most important things that any business owner does. The manager who can not lead the business from Point A to Point B will struggle to succeed. In these cases, the manager may lack leadership skills or not have clearly defined their Point B, the objective or goal.

Deciding whether or not an Internet-based strategy will meet your objectives and goals may not be easy. The first step is to have clearly defined business objectives and goals. If you don't know what you want to accomplish, or what your destination is, then you can't decide how to get there. However, if your goal is to increase the number of units of products sold or to better communicate with your customers or the public, then you can evaluate the Internet strategy using those criteria.

You should thoroughly evaluate potential Internet strategies before selecting one. You also must continually assess the strategy after adoption. Pre-selection evaluations are primarily based upon weighing expected costs and benefits. Each strategy that you consider should have benefits that outweigh its costs. Those for which this is not the case should be thrown out immediately. All those that have benefits that outweigh costs should be considered further. Among the remaining group, select the one with the biggest bang for your buck.

Once you select a strategy, you should monitor progress toward achieving your objective. Do this by setting milestones with timeframes. Suppose you operate a custom crop harvesting operation and you have set a goal of increasing the number of clients. Say that you have established a supporting objective of adding 15 new clients each year for the next three years. Furthermore, you have decided that a website is a low-cost Internet strategy to attract and retain clients.

Before launching your website, you should define specific milestones against which to measure progress. Some reasonable milestones include number of hits, number of contacts generated by the website, and number of new clients resulting from the website. Whatever you choose, you should identify a target number and date for achieving the milestone. For example, maybe you need at least five new clients a year resulting from the website. From a management perspective, you should set challenging yet realistic milestones and be prepared to alter or abandon a selected strategy if it does not pay off. Presumably, the dates you have set serve as critical decision points. If you've achieved your milestones, then you probably want to continue the strategy. If you've fallen short for some reason, you should assess why that is and determine whether or not you want to continue the strategy. Although it is difficult, you should try to assess how many sales are generated by your website, assuring that the expenses of building and maintaining the site are warranted.