Your business strategy is the key to excellent business decision-making. It’s imperative for small businesses who can’t easily absorb the cost of an ill-conceived idea. Your business strategy should clearly identify priorities and where to focus and because of the small business size, it also needs to be flexible.

If you’re struggling to come up with an idea on how to craft your business strategy, let us help you out with some useful tips.
How do you ensure your business strategy is working for you?

No business is a statue stuck in time. Instead, it adapts and shape-shifts over time. Because of this, you need to ensure your business strategy offers room for manoeuvre.

This means that you should regularly look to renew your business strategy. You need to amend it in the framework of new information that you didn’t have before. This needs refining according to the options you have before you.

Only once you’ve taken everything into account can you work out the priorities that should be given pride of place. You can then attach to these a timeline for your goals to be met, whether that’s within the next month or the next year.

The importance of data

Feeding the business strategy refinement process should be ample data. This data is necessary to ensure you’re only making strategy changes which make sense for your business. For your cash flow to remain healthy, you need to have a clear insight in to business finances.

This information then informs revenue-led strategic decisions. This is particularly important when we look at small businesses. Here, fluctuations are more acutely felt. The impact of a good decision is exponentially greater, but on the flipside the impact of a poor decision is extremely hard-hitting.

It stands to reason then, that business strategy needs to be more concretely founded for the small business than the larger counterpart. You’ll struggle to stick to your strategy if the priorities you’re focusing on now are the ones you set three years ago. Those priorities may well have been right at the time, but they are unlikely fit for purpose now.

This is important for small business because it’s all about managing risk. Sometimes taking the seemingly risk-free option is actually the most risky. However, whilst it is risky to look afresh at priorities and make potential changes, it helps fuel sustainable growth.

The business strategy therefore needs to be laid bare and put under the spotlight for scrutiny. Up-to-date data needs to inform it and how it can and should be changed.

For example, a closer look at business performance may lead you to shift marketing into a higher position of priority while you may have been set on focusing on investing in logistics. Of course, this process can ruffle a few feathers. Business partners don’t always like change.

They had an idea in mind and are running with it. However, if you’ve really put your business strategy under the spotlight then it will make sound sense.

Business strategy is about choice

Fundamentally business strategy is about ensuring you don’t stagnate. However in reality an old and outdated business strategy can actually mean the reverse is true.

That’s why it’s vital to continually view your business strategy as a work in progress that’s open to change – otherwise your whole business could come to a standstill.

What efforts do you take to ensure your business strategy is up to date? Leave your comments in the section below or get in touch on Twitter by tweeting @Pandlecloud.