Strategy is an
essential tool when it comes to realizing business goals and objectives.
Without strategy, it is very likely for the business to get on the wrong
track. Even so, many of the world’s
strategists and executives consider long and winding strategy development
efforts as a sheer waste of time; despite the fact that they should be the ones
championing its cause.
This is because
of the fact that most strategies fail to achieve their goals. Only 31% of surveyed corporate strategists
were able to admit that their strategies met their five-year goals. For the
ten-year goals, this number fell to a meager 13%. The reason lies in the way
strategic planning is done. Most companies tend to think long-term but develop
what are short-term strategy plans. Companies which do have long-term strategy
planning processes in place tend to be among the top rung of the industry. Investing
in strategic management courses for employees often complements the success of
organizations.
When preparing
for a strategy planning process, the leadership and strategic management teams must keep the ongoing
and future trends at the center of their planning process. For example,
customer centric strategies must be the top priority for companies dealing
directly with the retail customers in the coming years. Customer experience is
pegged to be the highest brand differentiation as per the Customers
2020 Report.
If companies are
able to retain just 10% of their customers, their brand value shoots up by 30%.
That is a staggering statistic. Customer retention then must be one of the key
strategies that companies must focus on. Most leaders or strategists who fail
to achieve this is because they are unaware of the relevant information that
will help them create such a strategy.
In age of
internet and technology, there is information overload. Culling the right
information and analysing it for proper insights is easy and tough at the same
time. It’s easy because it is available but tough because it is difficult to
locate in the sea of information. For this purpose, strategists must take help
of data scientists and experts who can devise methods to collect and collate
relevant data.
With the
relevant data available, the same can be converted into insights and relevant
apps or programs for the customers. These may include offers, promotions,
loyalty benefits etc. The second key focus of strategists should be on customer
service. Customer service is the most important customer retention strategy.
Customers love to be taken care of. As strategists it is important to know
customer preferences and create customer service strategies aligned with those
preferences. The strategists already know their jobs, they just need to shift
focus to create winning strategies.
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