Is now the time to do a strategic review of your business?
Many businesses revisit their strategy annually. Others do a strategic review when they see sales figures falling or new costs soaring. Factors that should trigger at least a partial review of your business or product strategy include: when customer needs change, impacts from political changes, the many new environmental action plans, the technology available (like AI or 5G), the regulatory requirements (like GDPR) or the knock-on economic effects.
Our 5 stage methodology
At DADD, we sometimes coin our name to mean Delivering Ambitious Diverse Developments because we can shake up the way you think about your business.
Our 5 stage methodology reviews your current strategy, drives new thinking and works with you to develop a full set of plans to make it happen.
Stage 1. Taking Stock.
- Market analysis of macro-economic trends, your current customer base and prospective ones, key competition and PESTEL analysis.
- Internal audit of capabilities to understand strengths and weaknesses along with lessons learned from previous business propositions.
- Idea generation workshop. For many attending, this can be an exciting brainstorming stage to uncover the opportunities and threats both from primary and secondary sources. Read more about our Innovation Workshops.
- Customer reviews. Gathering insights from online review sources, forums and/or focus groups.
- Buying criteria. Creating a scored list of desired features for each market segment.
- SWOT. A summary matrix of the typical Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats.
Stage 2. Review High-level Themes and Objectives
- Mission and Vision. Are the current ones valid following Stage 1? If not, what should it be?
- Summarise refreshed target markets desired, competitive advantages needed, beliefs. backed by evidence, review of organisation’s values considering customer, process, people and finance
Stage 3. Target Key Products and Markets
- Agreeing the product and market segmentation for existing products, similarly for new ones, into a refreshed product-market matrix. Sometimes we do this as a 7Ps Marketing review.
- Review options and communicate high level to the functional team leads, so they are bought in and can raise blindspots.
- Recommend corporate changes to achieve new strategic objectives.
Stages 4. Planning
- Revise scorecard, functional and team objectives
- Budget plans for operational and capital spend including any reorg costs.
- Project replanning with revised milestones and deliverables.
- Creation or revision of the risk register with mitigations for major risks and contingency planning.
Stage 5. Engage and Empower
- Final strategic plan
- Stakeholders sign-off. This includes meetings with stakeholders to present plan.
- Communications plan. Key messages to broader teams.
- Media strategy. Q&As, press releases, marketing updates on website.
- Team. Congratulate the team for efforts, get leaders to cascade update of personal development plans.
At this point, we can help with leadership coaching if required.
Ready to rethink?
If you think you need to review your strategy and find new direction for your company or product portfolio, get in touch for a chat.
Trust DADD for your strategic rethink
Our founder, Chris Dadd, has a reputation for doing this in many companies in consulting roles. One of our team Andy Letting has been helping with customer acquisition and is a respected marketing lecturer. Mark Blayney Stuart, reguarly ghost writes for major brands and was voted number 1 Business Journalist of the year in Wales – before he joined the DADD team as a freelancer he was a leader in the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
