Strategic Planning and Marketing Research: Revenue Tool for the

GeoSpatial Industry

 
Would you ever consider going on a long trip by car without a navigation plan and a map? Would you spend thousands of dollars on an overseas trip without utilizing books or maps to help you navigate in your new environment? Probably not. Then why do we businessmen and businesswomen continually navigate our businesses on a daily basis without a plan (a map if you will) to keep us on course and to assist us in making complex business decisions?  

The answers to this question in our industry are varied from, "Those things (strategic plans) don't really work," to "We tried that once, paid a lot of money for it too, then it just sat on a shelf collecting dust-nobody really ever looked at it again. We just kept on doing things the way we always had." As the following illustration suggests the road to strategic planning and sales and marketing contains a great deal of obstacles and detours making it difficult for organizations to navigate the business road to revenue growth. Developing highly effective strategic plans provides a map to ease your navigation troubles and warn you about impending business detours you may have to take.

 

 

copyright 2001 GLOBAL MARKETING INSIGHT, INC.

Strategic Plan Components

 

  
Strategic Plans are to help a company grow and move on to its next developmental stage. If well thought out and simple to follow a Strategic Plan will bring a disparate group of employees together and focus them on a common cause as a team. There are typical growth strategies, which need to be followed in order for the plan to have a chance for success. They include:  
 
  • Expanding Geographic Boundaries. Stretching out into new territories.
  • Creating New Businesses. Creating entirely new business lines.
  • Diversity in Product and Service Offerings. Providing products and services not currently offered.
  • Increased Penetration. Expanding your growth in the markets you are currently serving and have not yet fully addressed.
There are hundreds of books written on strategic planning containing just about as many definitions of what strategic planning is. What really matters is the ability of your executive management team in developing a common definition for strategic planning as well as, why it will be beneficial for your organization to implement plan. Organizations are only successful in achieving strategic plans if the employees in their organizations can achieve the tasks needed for the strategic initiatives contained in the plan.  

Why do so many plans fail? Typically they forget to include the people portion in the implementation process of the plan. Another major reason for failure is lack of buy-in by the CEO and/or Board of Directors. The CEO and/or President (as well as the entire executive team) must be part of the development of the plan. The CEO must be committed to the plan or no one else in the organization will be. The plan must also address the needs of the stakeholders of the organization such as your Board of Directors, the Bank, or any Venture Capitalists involved with your company. Our definition of Stakeholder is someone (or group) that can keep you in or take you out of business. Your plan must address the needs of the Stakeholders or they will continue to change the game plan on your organization and the most well written well thought out plan cannot keep up with company missions that change monthly.

   
Please note clients are typically addressed as a separate group in the plan. Most Strategic plans address the following areas in some form or another, such as the development of:    
 
  • Vision · Mission
  • Stakeholder Analysis
  • Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT Analysis) Goals and Objectives
  • Financial Analysis · Budgets and Schedules
What the plan developers typically leave out of the planning process is a direct mechanism for matching the goals and objectives against the realities of the organization they are operating in. Goals and objectives of strategic plans must be looked at in terms of the current capabilities of the organization. In other words you must determine if the goals and objectives you are embracing in your grand plan have any chance of success given the current environment of your organization. If they do then you have not violated any forces such as people resources and financial resources. If the goals and objectives cannot be accomplished in your current structure then you must determine which areas you are weak in and ways in which to compensate for it. A simple "gap analysis" of your organization against your goals and objectives can tell you where you stand.  
Categories for Goals  
Based on the findings of your "gap analysis" you may have to add even more goals to your list in order to realistically accomplish your strategic plan. Keep in mind that most goals fall into the following general categories.  
 
  • Profitability. We are typically in business to make money. Most goals are related to this
  • Effectiveness and Efficiency. These types of goals help the organization strive for competitive advantage through well thought out objectives as opposed to some organizational efforts, which merely shout, "Do more, with less and oh by the way, do it faster."
  • Sales and Marketing. The geospatial industry is slowly learning that just because you build a better, faster, maybe even cheaper technology or service clients do not come running. Therefore most plans have some sort of goals related to this area.
  • Personnel. We cannot operate our organizations without human resources. There should be goals, which give more than lip service to making sure our most valuable assets stay with the organization.
  • Research and Innovative Thinking. These goals focus on the ways in which your organization can present what makes it unique from your competitors and provides positive differentiation in the mind of the client to encourage them to value your organization' s products and services over others.
Environmental or Social Responsibility. We are all directly or indirectly related to the "geospatial" industry. The term connotes earth and environmental awareness. There should be some goal which allows the personnel of the organization and its stakeholders to be able to "give something back'. The strategic plan provides a perfect place where those ideas can be put into action  
Final Crucial Elements of a Strategic Plan  
Now what? Don't put that plan on a shelf yet! "Measures of success" must be attached to each goal and objective as well as an individual assigned within in the organization that will be responsible for the completion of each goal and objective within a given start and end time. Does this mean every single goal and objective of the organization must be completed by an employee? Of course not, it means that even though an objective may be outsourced, someone in the company must be responsible for its completion. Without assigning the goals and objectives of a strategic plans to individuals within the organization there will be little chance of success.  
One more important element, which is often overlooked by organizations, is the delivery of the strategic plan to the entire organization. The strategic plan must be given to all employees at an all-hands meeting and they must see their names or their departmental names attached to specific areas for completion. When they see their name or department name in a company wide presentation of the strategic plan they will take notice of the plan. Why you ask can I just not send the plan out to everyone and expect him or her to read it? Keep in mind that adults learn in a variety of ways. Adults learn visually (through seeing), auditory (through listening), and kinesthetically (through doing). A well orchestrated all hands meeting which shows them the strategic plan, tells them about the plan and their part in it and finally solicits their input through some form of team building session. This approach strengthens their understanding of the plan and its importance to the organization. This all hands meeting is very important and it should be planned in a way, which encourages employee buy in and establishes each employees role in the success of the plan and the organization. Strategic planning is all about implementation. Stay committed to the plan and your organization will realize improvements in profitability, improvements in employee retention, and realize a greater number of satisfied clients.  
Market Research: Utilizing your own Data through ArcView Business Analyst
Typically the development of a strategic plan uncovers informational needs within the organization. It is not unusual for the need for market research information to surface. Market research can sometimes be a costly and time-consuming activity within an organization. Before you go out and pay for research look within your own organization to see if you can develop your own research capacity. ArcView Business Analyst is a tool which allows you to manage your organizational data in a way that could provide the answers to the questions you have long been asking about your current client base or potential client base.  
ArcView Business Analyst combines Internet tools, business information, consumer information, and demographic information and street information all in one package. ArcView Business Analyst allows you perform a complete analysis of your current client base and future client base. Just a few of the main features allow the user to:  
 
  • Look at their current customer locations.
  • Analyze their market penetration.
  • Analyze their current customer base in order to develop a profile and find out where more potential clients are located.
  • Geographically locate their current clients and future clients.
  • Develop marketing tools for direct mail and advertising campaigns

If you are an organization with multiple locations and have small marketing or corporate planning departments ArcView Business Analyst could assist you. For under $12,000.00 for a single user ArcView Business Analyst can provide quite a cost savings over customized research which depending on the size of your customer base for the above stated capabilities could cost ten times the amount of one user license for ArcView Business Analyst.

Types of Market Research

There are of course market research needs, which cannot be met by any off the shelf software products and must be developed for your organization. Market research typically falls into three categories.

 
 
  • Qualitative. Research, which is based on a verifiable sample with thorough enough data collection and analysis to provide valid results in a thorough report with all source material, provided. This type of research is typically less expensive than quantitative research.
  • Quantitative. Research, which is based on valid statistical samples where a statistical software (such as SPSS) is utilized to provide results, which can be correlated in many ways to answer your research questions.
  • Pure (Topical). Research, which utilizes standard research methodologies to provide an in-depth look into the topic, researched. This type of research is typically reviewing already existing material and information in order to be presented in a specific topic report format. This type of research does not usually collect new data or have in-depth analysis associated with it. It collects already developed information and provides it a format which the client has requested.

 

Over the years there has been a great deal of conversation on the validity of research with or without the use of statistics. Over the years through our research experience we have learned to help our clients clarify some important points before preceding with any type of research. These points are:  
 
  • Being very clear about what you want to discover.
  • Keep in mind research is not research if you predetermine the outcome.
  • Remember that statistics do not prove things with 100% certainty. The best research combines quantitative data (numbers) and qualitative data (human input).
  • The results of research findings, which are numerically or statistically significant, may be completely useless if your organization or management cannot use it.

Research fees are typically based on a time and materials basis. Researchers take into account the size of the population sample needed to survey in order to generate valid results and the time needed to collect, input and analyze the data. In the geospatial industry there are research documents available from as low as a few hundred dollars for off the shelf research to hundreds of thousands of dollars for complex, quantitative studies of large population samples.

Organizational Payback for Utilizing Strategic Plans and Market Research

Remember the key to obtaining useful research is to have a clear understanding of what your organization needs to learn through the research. We often find what the client needs to know is already contained in their own organization. By working with their data and business analyst tools their own initial research work internally.

In closing well-executed strategic plans and marketing research provides tremendous financial paybacks to organizations. Over the past five years our findings with over 100 clients who have completed strategic planning programs have typically experienced over a 20% growth in revenue in year one, an average of 50% growth in revenue in year two and almost 100% growth in revenue in year three.

Keep in mind the effectiveness and success of all business planning is only successful with dedicated implementation. Just like planning for a journey you can obtain the map but if you decide not to go on the trip the map becomes just another unused tool which perhaps will just end up on a shelf collecting dust

 
Author: Dr. Shawana P. Johnson President

Global Marketing Insights, Inc. 10060 Brecksville Rd. Brecksville, OH 4414440-717-9583

shawana@globalinsights.com

Acknowledgements Global Marketing Insights, Inc., Cleveland, OH 2001 www.globalinsights.com