internet strategic planning

Sarah Worsham / Oct 6, 2008

Creating an Internet Business Strategy – Implementation

gnrimplementation We’re in the home stretch of our Internet Business Strategy planning, but let’s quickly review the parts of the plan:

Executive Summary
Methodologies
Current Situation
Vision & Goals
Requirements
Implementation

The implementation portion of the Internet Business Strategy planning is not intended to be a full implementation plan. Once you have your strategy, you’ll need to create detailed implementation plans. For your Internet business strategy, consider the following for implementation :

Lessons Learned – Are there any previous projects we can learn from? Are there external sources that have implemented similar strategies?
Implementation of Sub-Projects – Does it make sense to divide the project into smaller, easier-to-manage proejcts? How will you divide up the implementation into sub-projects? Who is responsible for each sub-project? How will the sub-projects be managed in order to move towards a common goal?
Phasing and Milestones – What is a realistic timeline for implementation? Should we divide up implementation into phases? What are the various phases of implementation? What are target dates for each phase?
Budget Plan – What are the budgetary requirements for any phasing and sub-projects? Are there any opportunities for cost-sharing with other organizations? What are the specifics of our financial processes? Who is the financial authority for administration the budget? How does the available budget affect the time periods for phases and milestones?
Marketing – How will we get the word out about our strategy? Who is the target audience? Are there any events we should attend? What is our marketing budget?
Measuring Success and Making Adjustments – What are the critical success factors that should be communicated to our stakeholders? What performance metrics should we use? What cost avoidance can be expected and how can it be measured? How often do we assess our progress to determine if adjustments need to be made?

Once you have created your Internet business strategy, you will need to work to implement and communicate your vision throughout your organization. We’ll cover these topics in future posts.

(photo by qnr @ Flickr CC)

Technorati Tags: internet business strategy, internet strategy, internet strategic planning, internet strategic plan, internet strategy consulting, internet business consulting

Sarah Worsham / Sep 18, 2008

How to Create an Internet Business Strategy – Methodologies

cloudsthejamoker In the last post in this series we summarized the steps of a internet strategy plan. In the next series of posts, we’ll go into more detail. Thinking about methodology or what steps you are going to take to come up with your plan is an important step. While this may seem like planning to plan, good strategic planning involves all the major stakeholders in the company, which takes good planning to accomplish.

Stakeholders

Who are they and why are they important? Stakeholders are anyone who has a major stake in the strategic plan. Put differently, they are people who are affected or affect the plan. Obviously there could be herds of people affected, so strategy planning focuses on major stakeholders (usually high level managers). Once major stakeholders have been identified, you should also think about who is responsible for what in the strategic planning process and who is supervising the entire process.

Planning to Plan

Will the strategic planning process be handled internally or by consultants? Does the process need to completed by a certain date? Are there other strategy plans that this fits into (IT, finance, human resources, etc.)? Should the planning be split into phases? What are the roadblocks to the process (internal politics, resources, budget, etc.)? What are the factors for success? Are there any collaboration tools to help the process?

Strategizing

How do you identify quick opportunities for success? How will you identify opportunities for improvement? How will you come up with solutions? What time limits will you impose on the planning process (strategic plans that take too long can have situations change thereby changing solutions)? What are the realistic goals for the business? How will you market your strategies?

Monitoring

A key factor to the success of strategic planning is being able to monitor the solutions. Once you’ve come up with solutions you are going to implement, figure out what to monitor to make sure those solutions are working. If they aren’t working, how can you change them? Also important to consider is who will be responsible for monitoring solutions and making decisions about what needs to change (if anything).

Summary

You’ll notice that there are a lot of questions to ask (and try to answer). Strategic planning is thinking about the questions that need to be asked and then trying to answer them. Asking questions helps to develop an understanding of the challenges facing the organization. Once the challenges have been identified, it becomes easier to come up with solutions.

So far the Internet strategic plan is no different from an overall strategic plan. A good Internet strategic plan should involve a most of the organization and follows similar methodologies.

Next we’ll discuss how to analyze your current Internet situation.

(photo by The Jamoker)

Technorati Tags: internet business strategy, internet strategy, internet strategic planning, internet strategic plan, internet strategy consulting, internet business consulting

Sarah Worsham / Sep 15, 2008

How to Create an Internet Business Strategy – Introduction

chesspshutterbug One of the main services we provide to clients is creating an Internet Business Strategy. While I’d like to think there is a certain level of expertise to creating a formal Internet strategic plan, I do believe that every business owner can get into the mindset of thinking strategically. Even if you feel you’re not up to the task of creating your own Internet strategic plan, understanding what goes into creating one can help you think about ways to improve how you do business online.

At the heart of formal strategic planning is creating a strategic plan. While there are many different details that can go into a strategic plan, there are some basics that are important to think about:

Executive Summary – Every formal report should have an executive summary which highlights the main findings. The summary should include all the top-level information that a CEO needs to know to make a decision (without reading the rest of the report). The trick is to keep the summary to only one page, so being concise is important.
Methodologies – As part of the planning, think about who needs to be involved in the Internet strategy, how you’re going to plan the strategy, how to strategize, who is going to write the plan, and how to monitor the plan.
Current Situation – Where does the company currently stand as far as web presence? What does the company stand for online? What do other people think of the company and products? What are your online competitors?
Vision & Goals – What does the company want to accomplish online?
Requirements – What are the requirements in order to meet the goals? These requirements need to incorporate all aspects of the company that are affected by the implementation.
Implementation – How are you going to accomplish your goals? The plan needs to include milestones, budget, marketing, and, most importantly, how you will monitor for success.

This is the first in a series of posts discussing Internet Business Strategy. In the next set of posts, we’ll discuss these steps of an Internet strategic plan in more detail.

(photo by pshutterbug)

Technorati Tags: internet business strategy, internet strategy, internet strategic planning, internet strategic plan, internet strategy consulting, internet business consulting