By M. Isi Eromosele

Every organization requires strategy. Strategy in a company is a precise model statement of main business goals and the necessary policies and plans that will be implemented to achieve those objectives. It is declared in a way that affirms what the company is and what it wants to be in the future.

In the constantly changing business environment of today, creating a specific business strategy statement is the key to success. It gives a blueprint that is an overall guide for the future development of the company. Strategy unifies the employees of the organization by giving them a sense of direction that they can connect with.

Without a business strategy, corporate decisions will be made in a vacuum, without regard to other interconnected decisions. Such decisions would lead the company in a defective direction with no clear sense of what the outcome is.

Strategy guides the implementation of business concepts that is expected to result in a positive outcome for the company. Additionally, embedded in the strategy would be ways to adapt to unexpected changes in the business and marketplace environments.

There are two levels of strategy: corporate strategy and business strategy.

Corporate strategy looks for structural ways to combine the various business units of a company, so they can all work toward achieving a common business objective. Here, the focal point of strategy is to describe the setup of the various business units that will form the company as a whole.

Business strategy deals with creating a plan for the efficient development and production of a group of related products. It defines how the company can establish competitive advantage over its competitors in the marketplace.

Generally, the majority of strategic decisions take place at the business unit level, where advanced technology applications and process methods are used to analyze the business. Additionally, other connected areas such as market share forecasts, competitor analysis, government regulations compliance and consumer purchase behavior are studied.

Marketing makes an essential contribution to the development of strategy within many companies. This is because it is usually the business unit that has the highest degree of direct contact with a company’s customers as well as the outside marketplace environment.

The marketplace environment is one that a company does not have any control over. As such, marketing plays a key strategic role in formulating synchronization between a company and its target audience in its marketplace. It searches for answers as to how a company’s challenges in choosing its markets, staying competitive in those markets, product development, product pricing, product/services promotion, distribution approach to serve its markets and establishing customer relationships that will result in increased market share.

In helping to develop business strategy, marketing speaks in two contexts: present and future. The present context relates to the company’s business relationship with its customers and marketplace. The future context deals with designing plans that will engender improvements in relationships with the company’s customers and marketplace through the implementation of specific marketing activities.

While many companies may have recognizable existing strategic viewpoints, most do not have a precise strategy for unexpected changes in the future. This needs to change. There is a need for the development of correct viewpoints of the future that relates to the current corporate activities of the present.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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