Strategic planning software is a category of software that covers a wide range of strategic topics, methodologies, modeling and reporting.
Types.
Loosely speaking, the software can be categorized into the following types:
Initial vision.
The initial concept behind strategic planning software was the product of two different trends.
First, in the 1980s, the increasing availability of personal computers lowered the barriers to software development and made computers increasingly available to more managers. But it's worth remembering that even in 1987, selling strategic planning software often required selling a manager a computer and training them how to use productivity software (i.e. word processing, spreadsheets, graphics, outlining, etc.) Laptops were initially nonexistent and the state of art in portability was a sewing machine sized luggable computer. Previously, report creation often required hand writing or dictation which was then typed up by a secretary or word processing pool.
Second, in the early days of strategic planning concepts were few. Concepts typically included decentralization (e.g. formation of strategic business units or SBUs), relatively simplistic portfolio analysis (e.g. BCG dogs/stars/cash cow/"?" categorization), and were frequently capital and operating budgeting oriented. As a result, strategic planning software was relatively simple to create via word processing templates, graphical outputs and budgeting models.
In this approach the vision was to create a computer application that aids in a strategic planning process. The user was to be guided through the steps of the planning process. The process of guidance existed at several potential levels: (1) the furnishing of templates with categories of information that ought to be created, which implicitly suggests analysis, (2) help systems that educate users about definitions, processes, concepts, managerial models, (3) more workflow oriented interactions where inputs are manipulated, summarized or aggregated by the software. Software of this type may use questionnaires, categorical judgments, financial or market modeling and in rare cases rule based expert systems.
As a general rule, off the shelf applications are rarely successful except for relatively unskilled entrepreneurs lacking a formal business education, which perhaps accounts for the software's lack of commercial success. The most commonly used strategic planning tools and techniques tend to be relatively simple and the models used have a high level of abstraction requiring diligent interpretation and modification by participants. Systems that promise answers, e.g. rule based systems often create more value from the questioning process than from the actual answer produced in the same way that planning as an activity educates users and this education is often more important than the actual plan itself.
SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) is a good example of a heuristic that is useful but also easy to misapply. Cascading of action plans makes intuitive sense but is frequently done in such a way as to demotivate employees. Because of the difficulty of combining strategic planning, strategic management, portfolio management, information technology strategy's congruence with business strategy, implementation monitoring, scenarios and contingency planning, risk analysis, balanced scorecard specifically and dashboards generally, the strategy process tends to be difficult to deal with comprehensively in a single software package. In large companies, the constant tends to be that the financial function ends up with significant influence over the process because of the requirement to report to the Board of Directors and manage capital and operating budgets.
Agile planning.
One of the current trends in strategic planning is the adoption of agile or lean methodologies. By their very nature, agile frameworks tend to be strong on emphasizing employee accountability and less interested in documentation. The emergence of agile in technology areas parallels the transformation of strategic "planning" to strategic "management". Excessive documentation becomes an obstacle to revision as new information is gained about competitors, customers, distributors and suppliers. Agile's importance is driven by the faster rate of technology innovation, the lower cost of developing applications, the increase in the number of companies and individuals with similar capabilities, and faster learning from markets.
An excellent example of an extremely well specified agile framework is Scrum. Scrum falls into the category of a framework for autonomous work teams. Scrum approaches are now expanding outside of its initial application area in software development to other areas of business. However, Scrum tends to limit itself to prioritization rather than more traditional strategic planning processes. Unlike traditional strategic planning which was frequently tied to the annual budgeting process, Scrum is more iterative. Scrum projects have daily, iterative phase or "sprint" planning, and release planning which represents something akin to multi-generational product or strategy plan.
Traditionally, strategic planning was done 3–6 months prior to the beginning of the budget year, which ensured that decision making lagged market trends. Strategic management where the strategic planning process was pushed down in the organization has tended to follow this approach, the new variable being the accountability for both plan development and execution. Agile and more project oriented approaches work well in start-ups that lack the bureaucracy of larger companies, but they too always run into the issue of updating operating and capital budgets, along with risk profiles.
References.
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