Strategy execution and evaluation phases

You already know that strategic management does not end after the strategic and annual planning phases. Executing your annual plan also requires you to focus on critical areas such as:

Financial management

Without an effective financial model for the business which helps you optimise profitability and delivers accurate and up-to-date information to support decision-making, you can't execute your plans in a coherent manner.

Operational productivity

Delivering on what’s in your strategies and plans also depends on having effective operational and supporting processes in place. These cover everything from front office operations to purchasing.

You must constantly strive to maximise efficiency in all your processes - by doing so you will improve overall business performance and ultimately move towards achieving your strategic goals. You can learn more about maximising your operational efficiency by reading our Key Business Processes Online Guide.

Management and employee performance

It will be the people in your business – the managers and employees – that make your plans happen. That's why you need to ensure that not only are they clear as to what's expected of them, but that they have the skills necessary to do what's required to a high standard.

You'll find plenty of guidance on developing the skills of your managers and employees in our Employee Management Online Guide.

Sales and marketing

Promoting your business is clearly an important success factor. The key challenge here is to maximise the return on your marketing expenditure by adopting an integrated approach that's based on solid research and defined target markets.

Customer relationships

It goes without saying that unless you deliver a high quality experience and build meaningful relationships with your customers, you'll struggle to succeed, regardless of what your short and long-term goals might be.

Make it happen

Without optimising business performance across all these areas, you can't fully execute your plans to the extent that they'll lead to enhanced performance and ultimately to the realisation of strategic goals.

Once executed, you can only determine how effective your strategies and plans are by measuring progress, analysing the implications of the results you get and taking action to continuously improve.

Continuous improvement is a feature of all excellent companies and it's only possible within a culture where there's genuine concern, dedication and a willingness among managers and employees to constantly get better at what they do. Everyone in your business will have a role to play in the process, but you must naturally take the lead here.

Measure your progress

• Measuring implementation: ensuring that the actions agreed in your annual plan are actually executed within the agreed timeframe through regular review during the year. In other words, did you actually take the action necessary to achieve the results you want?

• Measuring impact: defining key financial and non-financial performance measures, which give you a holistic view of how your business is doing. This may also necessitate putting systems in place to gather the relevant data. Give this area a lot of thought, so that you'll have the information you need, when you need it at later stages.