CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Companies now operate in vastly competitive and non linear environment, the value of business lies increasingly in its ability to capture information and generate new idea. According to (Kotler 2009), “an idea that is no dangerous is hardly worth calling an idea”. The same can be said of strategic plan. A great plan provokes. It takes chances. This eventually attracts customers and the market to ones brand. Therefore there is a need for effective strategy planning in an organization. In today’s competitive environment, every company has a plan, but firstly, we need to understand the concept of strategic planning.

Strategy is an overall approach and plan so strategy planning is an overall planning that facilitates the good management of a process. Strategy planning takes you outsides the day-to-day activities of your organization or project. It provides you with the big picture of what you are doing and where you are going.

Strategy gives you clarity about what you actually want to achieve and how to go achieving it, rather than a plan of action for day-to day operations.

Strategic planning consists of a set of underlying processes that are intended to create or manipulate a situation to create a more favorable outcome for a company. In business, strategic planning provides overall direction for specific unit such as financial focuses, projects, human resources and marketing.

Strategic planning can be defined as a broad managerial process of developing a vision, mission statement, goals and objectives with which to serve an influential guide to employees using the top bottom management approach (Warmer 2000).

Berry (2001) strategic planning is a tool for finding the best future for your organization and the best path to reach that destination.

Strategic planning can be defined as a process of using systematic criteria and rigorous investigation to formulate, implement and control strategy and formally document organizational expectations.

Strategic planning is an off-short of strategic management and is nowadays referred to as corporate planning.

Strategy management refers to the formulation and implementation of plans and the carrying out of activities. In short, it implies a set of activities relation to the formulation and implementation of strategies to achieve organizational objective