A strategic plan usually refers to the overall direction you wish your business to take over the longer term. Consequently, a long-range plan and a strategic plan are often used synonymously. Within that overall strategy a business will have shorter term financial goals, marketing goals, production goals, and human resource goals that will each need some type of plan if they are to be achieved.

Just because a strategic plan is longer term does not mean it is never changed, however. One of the most serious mistakes businesses make is not revising their strategic plan regularly. The environment the business is operating in is changing constantly. The plan must be revisited at regular intervals to reflect the impact on the business of these external factors.

There are some universal principles that are true across all types of planning. Before tackling more specific planning models, it is wise to gain an understanding of the basic principles of general planning.

Hi
Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. Various business analysis techniques can be used in strategic planning, including SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats ), PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological), STEER analysis (Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological, and Regulatory factors), and EPISTEL (Environment, Political, Informatic, Social, Technological, Economic and Legal).

Strategic planning is the formal consideration of an organization's future course. All strategic planning deals with at least one of three key questions:

1. "What do we do?"
2. "For whom do we do it?"
3. "How do we excel?"

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