Analyzing And Evaluating Organizational Strategic Plan: A Healthcare NHS Trust Essay.

Using an organisational strategic plan list and evaluate the component parts. Consider if the plan has sufficient coverage of the organisation’s activities within the component parts.

Identify the current strategic aims and objectives and evaluate if they are SMART. Describe a minimum of six factors that can affect the strategic plan. Analyse the impact these factors may have on the plan.

Identify the current strategic aims and objectives

Undertake an evaluation of the component parts of a strategic plan, including the objectives

Analyse the factors affecting the strategic plan

Identify ten stakeholders connected with the organisation and evaluate their expectations. Undertake stakeholder mapping to analyse the power and influence they have upon the organisational strategy. 

Evaluate the expectations of all stakeholders and their influence upon the organisational strategy

Apply three strategic analysis tools to audit the progress towards its strategic aims and objectives. Produce an evaluation of the organisational strategic position.

Justify the position by using supporting analysis to consider factors such as profit, core competences, reputation and outputs.

Apply a range of strategic analysis tools to audit progress towards strategic aims and objectives

Produce a structured evaluation of the organisational strategic position

Select two strategic aims and objectives and develop a minimum of four alternative strategic options to meet them. For each option consider factors regarding their suitability to successfully meet the strategic aims and objectives. Justify the strategic option that best meets the revised strategic position.

Develop a range of alternative strategic options to meet strategic aims and objectives

Justify the strategic option that meets the revised strategic position

Component parts of the strategic plan

The organization strategy plans and performance will be based on the international and national policies concerning health matters and occupation by the Healthcare NHS Trust Company. The company has a network where they regularly do consultations with their members. This has enabled them create a good rapport with members as they have focused on achieving the organization objectives and performance. This has also enabled them to achieve good working relationships with Public Health England, NHS employers, the faculty of occupational medicine and the national school of occupational medicine.

Strategic objectives are the indicators of what is important and critical that an organization need to accomplish within a given period of time (Grant 2016, p.54). They are like goals an organization is aspiring to meet. Some of the current strategic objectives of the company include;

Sharing of information, best practice and expertise across the entire region and members of NHS Trust.  This is for the purpose of development of capabilities and capacity of NHS Trust organization. This also gives them an opportunity to maintain a good reputation and secure accreditation. This will not only create a wide connection but also seek support from different international bodies. This will give them a chance to support the quality of clinical services and the excellence of the business.

Co-ordination of service delivery to meet the customers’ needs and demands. This focuses more on meeting the consumer’s needs based on the current technology and what other organizations are providing. When services are coordinated, the output is of high quality and good services. This will increase the consumer's trust towards the organization (Wackernagel 2002, p.566). This will also enable the organization to receive informal and formal opportunities. Amalgamation increases the efficiency and effectiveness of the Healthcare NHS trust.

 Promote better clinical services and good business practice in the delivery of services to NHS staff. This is based on a range of evidence and feedback provided by customers together with the staffs. The practitioners are well committed to providing the best quality of health services to the customers. There is also a number of innovation that has been going on, under the registry department such electronic medical record, to ease their work of service delivery to the patients. This will allow comparison so that they NHS trust members can compare themselves with others offering the same services thereafter they can raise their standards.

The following are other strategic objectives of the Healthcare NHS Trust.

• Quality– Quality delivery is their main objective since they are results oriented. Their aim is to deliver high-quality products and services, effective and safe which meets the needs of the customers.
• Collaboration and Innovation– to provide innovatively and collaborated care which is well integrated and closer to the community, promote good health and well-being of the community members.
• Sustainability– to exactly provide best services to their client so that they can see the value of their money. This will gives the organization financial viability and economic stability.
• People– Healthcare NHS Trust to be a highly effective organization which is highly empowered, competent staff and skilled oriented.

Evaluation of the current strategic aims and objectives

The overall objectives of the company are considered to be SMART for they follow all they are realistic, measurable, and time-bound and can be achievable through the appropriate strategic plans put in place.

The strategic plan of any organization has its desired position and where they want to be in future or after a given period of time. Broadly the strategic plan has got three important section, namely; Strategy formulation, Strategy Implementation and Strategy Evaluation. This section has the following components s parts.

The organization should formulate their mission and vision as part of their objectives and strategical aim. The vision statement should answer the question of what the organization wants to become after a given number of years. The mission statement answer the question of what is the organization’s business. The Vision statement of the organization articulates what they will achieve in future and mission statement contains what the organization will be dealing with.

In external audit is like analysis of what can affect the organization in future. It’s like a way of determining the external factors that will affect the organization and they should be avoided. It identifies the key variables which can be explored. The organization like Healthcare NHS trust should behave effectively and defensively but take advantage of such external factors. And they include Economic forces, Technological forces, competitive forces and social, cultural demographic environment.

This focuses on the weaknesses and the strength of the organization since no organization is equally weak or strong. They are analyzed upon capitalizing on the internal strength of the organization and overcoming the weaknesses of the organization.

These are set by defining the timeframes and timelines of every objective and estimated completion time. It covers the general growth of the organization together with market share and profit maximization on sales (Seidman 2013, p.524). Without such objectives, the organization will otherwise aimless and drift towards an unknown end.

This section focuses on evaluating the alternatives of the strategic plan without changing the main objective but finding different ways of achieving such objectives. They determine the alternative cause of action that could be undertaken. The organization's mission, strategies and objectives form the core in this section as they provide a basis for generation and evaluation of feasibility on alternatives.

This section integrates and translates strategic objective into action which is result oriented. A framework for the course of action is developed on how the set objectives will be executed. This will translate objective from strategist to functional managers

Factors affecting the strategic plan

The action plan is formulated and developed to execute the set objectives and aims of the organization (Goodwin 2001, p.16). This promotes the organizational development financially and innovatively. There are basic activities which are done under this section, and they include determining the bases of the strategies, comparison of expected results and the actual result and finally promoting and taking corrective action to ensure the execution is done according to the set plans.

Leadership. Leadership plays a key role as it involve interacting with subordinate directly and giving instructions and orders which is not beyond their capabilities. God leadership skills enables an organization to achieve its goals and objectives within a short period of time, since it has great influence on the subordinate staffs (DuFour 2009, p.520). For examples when duties are allocated well and time span given on when to complete it, good leadership environment will provide a conducive atmosphere for the completion of these tasks and in so doing the organization will be moving forward and faster in its implementation of set objectives

Organizational structure and politics. Organizational structure is a scenario which involves grouping of related activities into a particular department to facilitates organizations effectiveness and promote efficiency. Politics of the organization, on the other hand, must be considered because of influence it has in process of strategic planning. In his book, (Ghoshal 2002, p.455) describe the organization politics as a role player in building a good consensus in the organization. Politics present opportunity to strategic leaders with skills of effective formulation and implementation. Organizational structure provides a clarity of purpose and time saving on things to do with paperwork within the organization or even on the filling system of that particular organization. Heinz (1993), described the organizational politics as groupings of related activities and people with a given speciality to a certain department for efficiency and effective strategic

Availability of resources . Human resource forms the fundamental aspects of strategic planning since all other factors revolve around it. Resources also range from financial, Natural, and economic. These resources provide a turning point for an organization when they are managed well. This latter is closely related to leadership because they all influenced by people. Resource constraints may pose a great disadvantage in formulation and implementation in one way or another.

Organizational culture. The culture of the organization is a very crucial component in the strategic planning process. Culture defines the people within a given organization to what they all share in common and they believe in. culture can affect strategic planning in that certain people may want certain things to implement in a certain way, in what they believe is the best, while on the hand, such things might have adverse effects on the organization’s objective. Therefore when formulation and implementation are being done culture should be considered since it something what those share in common. Culture provides norms and behaviour of a people hence they socially create standards that help evaluate and integrate events.

Stakeholder analysis and evaluation of their expectations

Innovation. Even though most organization tells their employees to be innovative and they go a stepfather to create strategies on how these new products will be developed, but they make mistakes by failing to create an innovation strategy. Innovation strategy involves tuning the organization culture to be innovative and formulate the process of implementation. Must organizations do have a strategy for a development of new product but they lack a crucial part of strategic innovation causing a failure of the new product development strategy.

Engagement. Since strategic planning is a process, it must involve thorough engagement of all the staffs available in the process. This will build an additional flavour that will improve the competency in an organization. Engagement of employees is also important as it gives a clear picture on what they think and the contribution they have towards achieving the aims and objectives of the organization (Schaefer 2009, p.450). Remember the manager will do work alone to achieve the goals of the organizations but the staffs and the employees will be doing much of the work, provided they are given direction.

Communication. This forms an important gradient of strategic planning in that all levels of employment will be giving their opinion and what they think needs to be done. Communication provides away on how the employees will be included and be part of the planning process. Employees will play a crucial role in providing feedback and surveys to examine the organization’s strength towards the strategic plan.

Stakeholders are people who are concerned and have interest in the smooth running of the organization. The company try as much as possible to meet their interest at any cost. They include suppliers, customers, trade unions, financier, shareholders and even the government. The shareholders are involved are given a chance to give out their idea during the strategic formulation process. Times there are given an opportunity to review and asses the ideas made during the strategic process and if there is any concerned a joint meeting is held and the issues raised are discussed in details. Though this is not always true since most organization are not involving their stakeholders in the decision-making process and even during formulation and implementation process. Stakeholder’s involvement is very important since it’s like a catalyst for future development and the results seem to be much greater compared to when they are not involved. Their involvement should always be in line with the organization’s aims and objectives. According to Demetreious and Huges (2006), the success of an organization relies on how it creates an active dialogue with its stakeholders. These stakeholders interact directly with the company and they expect better benefits in return and these are called voluntary stakeholders.  There is also a group of stakeholders called involuntary stakeholders, they are affected negatively by the decisions made by the company and there should be a way of reducing such harm to these stakeholders.  Guiding principles have to be put in place to protect these stakeholders.
Eden and Ackerman (1998) wrote that, the main processes involved in the implementation of a strategic plan are two; and that is coming up with the strategy and the second one is implementing it. But the organization will have lots of difficulties during implementation process when stakeholders are not involved in these two processes. The management should always ensure that this is well taken care of so that the sustainability of the organization and even the businesses around are well taken care of. This will provide a solution to, not only the financial bottom line but also a positive impact to the environment, hence good social welfare to the community (Noble, B.F., 2000 p 300). Though the primary focus is always to make a profit, but also the company should focus on meeting the shareholder concerns. Stakeholders also provide something called mapping, in this way they provide implementation instruments. Analysis from stakeholders can also be used to determine key factors affecting the organization and how they can be addressed. This will allow the key players to identify their interest and also their knowledge and opinion on what they would have loved to be done. This will also provide a level ground to mitigate the stakeholder’s conflicts and issues that might come up as a result of resistance to implementation of strategic plan.  

Strategic analysis tools for progress audit

Stakeholders may have dynamic opinions which of course do change over time and this should be put into consideration during strategic planning. The accommodation of this dynamism is prioritized by the management team without crippling the vital process within the organization. This will automatically call for stakeholder mapping for greater efficiency and effectiveness. Though this will involve thorough analysis to be carried out to allow collection of enough and adequate information on what is vital and what is not. According to Sadler and Dalal-Clayton, (2012), there is no one proper way or method to involve the stallholders but there exist many alternatives that can be used to achieve this involvement since it ensures effective cooperation. Stakeholder’s involvement should also be responsive to changing external and internal environmental factors (Sloan 2009, p.50). Measures are put in place to curb potential problems that might arise. Departmental heads should have a committee put in place to ensure compliance each and every sector for a successful implementation of the strategic process. The greatest mistakes that most companies do make is that, they don’t make a follow-up after such involvement, hence the bond ceases to be there. In any organization, stakeholders are considered as sources of vital information which can affect the organization negatively or positively.  Therefore stakeholders should always encourage to take part in organization’s activities even if they are opposed to it because their involvement is very fundamental and important for the smooth implementation of strategic plans.

SWOT analysis. This involves a process which is so simple. It’s a widely used method to analyze the strength and weaknesses of the organization together with threats and opportunities that do exist in the business or a project. It defines the organization or the business and its aims and objectives whether they are achievable using the available resources within the organization. This tool also considers the internal and external factors which can influence the achievement of these objectives of the organization. Strength and weaknesses are the internal factors within the organization, the organization has control over them. Threats and opportunities are the external factors which affect the organization directly or indirectly. This analysis is usually plotted in two by two matrix.

PEST analysis. This is like a picture comprising the external environment of the organization known as macro-environment. It’s a tool for understanding the main factors affecting the organization and they include; Political factors: Include government policy and regulation such as laws governing employment, regulations of the environment and tax policy. It can also include trade boundaries and political stability.

Developing alternatives for two strategic aims and objectives

Economic factors. These determine the purchasing power of the organization and the capital cost. It also involves the economic growth of the organization currency exchange rates inflation and interest rates.

Social factors. Focuses on the need of the consumers as the potential market increases for the benefit of the organization. Social factors also include the population growth rate in that area, life expectancy and general development in the health sector.

Technological factors. This forms the main backbone as it influences buy or sell decision. It also influences things to do with innovation automation of services and general development of technological skills. Generally, I would advise that it’s important to complete PEST analysis before SWOT analysis since PEST factors form the opportunities and threats in a SWOT analysis.

It focuses on determining and evaluating the strength of competitiveness and position of the organization (McGonigal, 2011, p.50). It was based on five forces which determines the strength of competitiveness of an organization. This method probably is the best since it brings the strength of the organization into context, showing the capabilities of the organization. It also brings a breakthrough of future plans the organization can venture into.

Step 1: Strategic Issues. These are critical issues from the planning team that need to be addressed with immediate effect during planning effect. This should be done as early as possible to prevent complications during early stages.

Step 2: Conducting Environment Scan. The helps in identifying the kind of environment the organization is operating on, which involves social, political, technological and economical. It’s also good to even consider Legal trends and Ecological for adequate results.

Step 3: Conducting competitive Analysis. This is important as it helps the management to identify the opportunities and threats that might be there due to other competitors or in the market. Identify what the competitors are not offering to the potential customers or how to improve what they are already offering.

Step 4: Identifying Opportunities and Threats. Opportunities are like a switch, that must act upon to ensure the organization actually get something positive out it. They do offer an important turning point for the growth of the organization. They do provide profitable growth, be it a competitive advantage, financial or organizational capabilities of the resources that organization can acquire.

Threats, on the other hand, are like a barrier that prevents the organization from exploring enough opportunities hence the organization won’t achieve its set objectives.

Impact of leadership, organizational structure and politics, resources, and culture on the strategic planning process

Step 5 Identifying the strength and weaknesses. Strengths are the capabilities of the organization, what the organization can do well without any constraints. This gives the organization an advantage where competition is very stiff. Strengths of the organization should also be customer oriented to meet the needs of the customers.

Weaknesses are the limitations of the organization. They hinder the vital processes in the organization which affects the quality of its output products. In determining this, customers should be involved since they can sometimes perceive what the organization cannot see or realize.

Step 6 determining the customer segments. Good organizations should know what their customers like feedback. Customer orientated organizations will understand that they cannot appeal to all customers because buyers are everywhere and each of them has different taste and preferences, Therefore once an organization has identified an area where it can operate and survive profitably.

The steps mentioned above can be developed by what is called SPACE analysis. It refers to a group of four factors that include; competitive advantage (CA), financial strength (FS), and environmental stability (ES) and industry strength (IS). This type of analysis seeks to bring a balance between all the variables of the External and Internal environment.
Competitive advantages factors (CA) are things such as market share, product quality, customer loyalty product life. Financial strength factors (FS) examples are a return on investments, liquidity, and working capital ease of exist. Environmental stability factors (ES) examples are Risk involved in business, inflation rate and competitive pressure. Industry strength (IS) examples are growth potential, financial stability, profit potential and Ease of entry.

Profit maximization. Price is the most effective way of realizing profit maximization because the right price will increase profit without necessarily increasing the volume of the products. Though increasing price might have an effect on the customers getting the price right is the most important thing (Grant 2016, p.47). The following strategies can be used to realize profit maximization.

Knowing the Gross profit Margin. Using estimated figures might not give accurate and correct values, knowing profit margin is necessary to prepare a separate account that will give room for benchmarking for statistics and comparison with other industries.

Analyzing the profit margins. Getting gross profit margin for every product will help to determine the overall gross profit of the organization including different business divisions, customers, and product categories.

Increasing prices of services offered. This might be disturbing at first, but most customers are more concerned with quality. Customers want to see the value of their money and whether the services offered are much different from other organization. Increasing prices of your services should be done with a lot of cautionary measures because this might send away loyal customers.

Conclusion

No discounting. Discounts though good for the customers but can sometimes affect the profit margin negatively. If for example an organization has a profit margin of 50%, and the management decided to allow 10% discounts on their services. This will demand an increase of 25% on their general sales to remain to maintain the 50% profit margin.

Decreasing the expenses. Involves identifying where a lot of money is being spent, then negotiate if fair prices can be realized, an example is like in the case of suppliers. This can also be achieved by automating most processes to run by the machine. This will increase efficiency in terms of reduced expenses

Product differentiation. Product differentiation will give the organization a top notch for the top quality service provider. The organization will gain competitive advantage within the region, as a result, gaining the customer's confidence

 Payment of tax. The organization should pay tax because it’s their obligation to do so and also to show their compliance with set rules and regulations. The government, in turn, will provide security and a conducive environment within which the organization can thrive in.

Provision of employment. The organization should provide employment to qualified citizens with required skills without any form of corruption or nepotism. This will also increase development in the region and improvement of general infrastructure. 

Environmental preservation. The organization should be involved in activities tree planting to help conserve the environment. Once in a while, the organization should also organize or set aside special days for general cleaning (Sadorsk 2010, p.65). They should also have a proper management of waste disposal to avoid environmental pollution. This will improve organization’s reputations.

Adherence to rules and regulation. The organizations should obey the constitution of the land, like for example if the country prohibits some products or some goods, the organization should not go ahead and acquire them illegally. Obeying rules of the country will give the organization of a brand name that will earn legacy.

The best alternative strategic option that meets the revised strategic plan is product differentiation. Product differentiation is very wide and it will give the organization greater opportunities and strengths. Using SWOT analysis, the organization is able to analyze the opportunities that do exist within organization, the strength of the organization and threats that the organization might face in the process of exploiting this opportunities. (Grant, R.M., 2016 p 564) SWOT also analyze the weaknesses of the organization. For all these to be realized, product differentiation can be adopted since it covers every aspect of SWOT analysis. Product differentiation provides the customers with alternatives making the organization very flexible in terms of service delivery. In case of multiple players or multiple organizations in the same geographical area offering the same services, product differentiation will give the organization a higher competitive advantage compared to others (Freeman and McVea 2001, p.69). This increases chances of survival and promote popularity of the organization within the country if not international. When an organization focuses more on customer satisfaction, they will have good reputation for good service delivery and in so doing they develop their brand name.

References

When using this kind of analysis, internal and external factors are of great importance, because they might have adverse effects on the product differentiation which the backbone in the revised strategic position. Another thing that could provide a successful implementation of this strategy is customer’s feedback. This can be achieved through surveys, observations and even conducting interviews on their preferences and choices. Then the organization adjust their services to meet the needs and wants of the consumers. Consumer’s involvement in product differentiation provides a way forward and it gives a roadmap of what needs to be done.

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