When we begin working with an organization, one of the first questions we ask its employees is: “What’s your strategy?” More often than not, they don’t fully know. While most organizations’ leadership teams invest considerable time and money in developing a corporate strategy, they often fail to deploy it effectively. Yet, having a robust corporate strategy that is known and understood by everyone in the business, so all departments are aligned and working towards a common goal, is essential for ensuring sustainable business growth.
Why do you need a corporate business strategy?
A corporate strategy details the overarching plan that defines your organization’s direction. It outlines the goals of the business and how you will achieve them, with an emphasis on profitable growth and return on investment. It should address essential questions, including:
- Which markets should we compete in?
- Which products/services should we sell?
- How do we please our customers and stakeholders?
- What resources and capabilities do we need to succeed?
A robust corporate strategy is designed to provide clarity and purpose, aligning every department and person to ensure they are working towards the same common goals of the organization.
Deploying corporate strategy with Integrated Business Planning
Many organizations struggle to execute their corporate strategy effectively within their day-to-day operations. This means employees often find themselves disconnected from, or even unaware of, the company’s goals, leading to different business units working on different plans and strategic targets and opportunities being missed.
Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is a planning process that enables the deployment of corporate strategy by cascading it down the organization by creating supporting strategies at the business unit and functional levels. IBP fosters collaboration, enhances visibility, and ensures all departments are aligned and working towards the organization’s overarching goals. It thereby ensures the corporate strategy is not merely a theoretical framework but a practical guide for daily operations.
What are the benefits of a corporate business strategy?
Having a robust corporate strategy and deploying it effectively with Integrated Business Planning can offer many advantages:
- Enhances strategic alignment – ensures all functions are working towards the organization’s objectives, reducing silos and conflicting priorities.
- Improves decision-making – provides the leadership team with accurate, real-time information to make better-informed choices.
- Increases accountability – provides clarification on individuals’ roles and responsibilities, fostering a culture of ownership.
- Enhances agility – enables organizations to quickly adapt to market changes, mitigating risks and exploiting opportunities.
- Sustainable growth – aligns resources and efforts with actions to meet long-term objectives, driving consistent and profitable growth.
The role of technology in deploying corporate strategy
To accelerate the deployment of corporate strategy using Integrated Business Planning, Oliver Wight Americas recently launched Ollie Accelerator, a technology solution that provides real-time insights, enhances collaboration, and streamlines decision-making. Technology alone cannot deploy strategy, but by integrating data across functions to offer big-picture visibility of performance metrics and strategic alignment, Ollie Accelerator provides leaders with critical business insights for strategy operationalization.
By utilizing Integrated Business Planning and tools like Ollie Accelerator to bridge the gap between strategic plans and everyday operations, organizations can ensure their strategies are not only effective on paper but also actionable, leading to profitable growth and continued success in often challenging market conditions.
For further information on this topic, take a look at our series of white papers on Deploying Strategy with Integrated Business Planning, particularly the final white paper, Frameworks and Tools, which explores the role of Ollie Accelerator.
Alternatively, you can find out more about Ollie Accelerator and how it can speed up the deployment of your corporate strategy here.
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