Functional Strategy, game plan to reinforce all 3 levels of Corporate, Business and Operations Strategy Hierarchy

Functional Strategy
Functional strategy refers to the set of actions (initiatives) taken in an organization's functional areas, i.e., marketing, HR, finance, Operations, etc., to enhance resources and organizational capabilities. Functional strategy advocates for business organizations to see their management decisions as specific to functional area of the organization such as marketing, human resources, finance, public relations, operations, etc., and how they contribute to the organization's strategic objectives. Functional strategies are linked through agenda set by markets to corporate, business and operations objectives.

Functional strategies are concerned with the effectiveness and efficiency of methods/tactics used in implementing strategic choices; and commitments regarding resources, and how to manage the function's resources - skills and competencies of workers and employees. These resources and capabilities reinforce the organization's strategic choices and grand strategy - as defined by the organization's strategy hierarchy - at the corporate, business and operations strategy levels. Functional strategy is the short-term game plan for key functional areas, within a company, required to reinforce implementation and execution of organization's strategy. Functional strategies help in implementation of strategic choices and grand strategy by organizing and activating specific sub-units of the organization to pursue the corporate, business and operations strategy in daily activities through tactics. Functional strategy is tactical in nature, and concerned with how each individual functional area is organized to support and contribute to strategic objectives.

Tactics are the actionable decisions that pertain to everyday moves in functional areas in a company to improve for example, its market share, competitive pricing, customer service, sales, or other aspects in response to current real world conditions, that can give it a competitive advantage. Tactics are most meaningful in the service of long-term goals. They involve seizing opportunities and managing risks as they arise. A tactic is an immediate action/task designed to respond to fast changing realities.

Marketing/Sales
HR
Finance
Operations
Sales

Marketing Function Strategy and Management
Marketing involves organizing products - goods and services - for sale by deciding target market (type and size of customers), price, where it should be sold, and how it should be advertised. Marketing involves the activities, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offers that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large. Typical marketing function within an organization might include performing tasks such as: market research, producing a marketing plan, product development, as well as strategically overseeing advertising, promotion, distribution for sale, customer service and public relations, sales and communications.

The goal of marketing is identifying unfulfilled needs and desires, and exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy those needs of a target market at a profit. Marketing is concerned with defining measures and quantifying the size of the identified market and the profit potential. Marketing determines which market segments the company is capable of serving the best, and it designs and promotes the appropriate products and services.

Marketing Goals and Objectives
Marketing function goals and objectives are created by managers in marketing to guide the work of employees in the marketing department. This requires managers review the total company goals and identify ways that the marketing department can support those company goals. Each supporting action represents a goal for the department to continue and improve on. Marketing objectives identify specific actions that marketing employees can perform; each objective providing a method of achieving the company's goals.

Marketing Goals
Marketing level strategic goals state "what" is to be achieved in a marketing functional area and "when" results are to be accomplished. Marketing goals are statements of what results you want to achieve with your marketing. What's the primary reason you are marketing? Marketing goals should fit into and support your overall business goals. A marketing goal can be a number, such as a certain year-end revenue figure; it might be a number such as four new clients per month. Some examples of marketing goals are:

To Increase customer value - Customer Value may include Life time value, Referral Value, Influence Value, and Knowledge Value.
To Empower colleagues to become brand ambassadors
Bring in more customers - "To increase sales by 50% within 12 months"
Target new customers - Bring in 20 new customers per month
Enter new markets internationally, or locally -
Open a new distribution channel in a new market geographically -
Improve shareholder relations
Enhance customer relationships - i.e., customer loyalty
Improve internal communications - "To increase the number of enquiries from our marketing communications activities by 20% by the end of the month"

Marketing goals can also be quantitative translations that fit with your company's financial objectives, stated in marketing terms. Some examples of marketing goals include: The goals are the building blocks of your marketing plan, the starting point of the plan. Some examples of marketing goals include:

Marketing Objectives and Types of Objectives
Marketing objectives are goals set by a business (marketing management) to promote its goods and services to its customers within a specific timeframe. The types of marketing objectives may include:

Profitability Objective - This regulates the amount of expected income based on the promotional strategy. It is the business's ability to earn a profit as an objective in doing business. Profitability measures/indicators include: Net Profit Margin, Asset Turnover, Return on Assets, and Financial Leverage. Examples of profitability objective could be:

Increasing annual sales by 15% or gaining five new accounts each month.
Return on assets shows the percentage of profits a company makes relative to its resources.

Market Share Objective - A market share objective determines the percentage of market share an organization aims to capture. Market share measures may include: Increase market share; or Tracking rate of new customer acquisition; this is an effective way to gauge a marketing plans contribution to growing market share. Examples include:

Achieve a market share of 25 percent for a given product, i.e., product 'A'.
Increase the percentage of customers who rate services as excellent from 75% to 80%.

Promotional Objective - A promotional objective aims at promoting a company's goods and services. It is the desired level of awareness of the product. The promotional objective is a part of the overarching strategy. Creating a brand identity with imagery and punchlines id the first stage of a marketing campaign, followed by expanded messaging either through email or news letters. Promotional goals include:

Increase Business - This can be done through a variety of promotional actions, such as running targeted advertisement campaigns, holding special events, launching a social media blitz, etc. The objective is to reach potential new customers and give them an incentive to encourage business.
Increase Sales - Once an organization has its set of clients, the next promotional activity is to increase their spending. The objective is to get customers to buy additional products or more expensive products than the ones that initially brought them to the business.
Encourage Repeat Business - This objective aims at converting one-time customers into regular customers by providing special offers, notice of sales, special perks, and two for one offers designed to keep them coming back.
Brand Awareness - Brand awareness is a significant marketing goal. It can be accomplished, in part, by being consistent in all marketing messages and using promotional products. An example objective measure of building brand awareness may include: Achieve 75% customer awareness of our brand in our target markets.
New Product Introduction - The objective of promoting a new product launch is to expand a company's reach into new markets, while still retaining its existing customer base.

Growth Objectives - Growth is an essential objective that contributes to increased revenue. A growth objective involves analyses of current size of the business and determining or planning the growth strategies to achieve the desired growth. Growth strategies help companies to increase their market share,realize sales efficiencies, and increase brand awareness.

Marketing goals are not te same as objectives. Essentially, marketing objectives are the performance goals of the marketing strategy set in order to achieve the overall organizational business goals. The objectives help a business analyze what the business wants to achieve from its marketing strategy. The process of setting goals gives a clear picture of what needs to be accomplished.

Marketing Management
Marketing management is concerned with two things: (1) the creation of customers, (2) the delivery of value to those customers. It involves the development of policies that ensure effective implementation of marketing strategy. Marketing policies ensure for example, that every part of the organization is on board and promoting the organization in a consistent manner.

Marketing Strategy
Marketing strategy is concerned with the decisions about markets, their development and leveraging of opportunities they offer. Marketing strategy, according to Varadarajan (2010), consists of an integrated set of decisions that helps the organization make critical choices regarding marketing activities in selected markets and segments, with the aim to create, communicate, and deliver value to customers in exchange for accomplishing its specific financial, market, and other objectives.

Marketing strategy makes marketing tactics and actions work better, and towards achieving the marketing objectives. Marketing strategy provides the means to persuade, influence and motivate a targeted audience and generate visibility. Marketing strategy can be categorized into categories based on how they reinforce corporate, business or operations strategy. Brand strategy contributes to and reinforces corporate strategy. Pricing strategy and marketing-mix strategy/tactics contribute to and reinforce business strategy. Marketing strategies such as: Advertising, Public Relations and Communications reinforce operations strategy.

The types of marketing strategy include:

Brands and Image Creating Decisions
Brand marketing strategy is to link your identity, values, and personality with communications to your audience. Essentially, your brand is the bridge between your product (goods or services) and your customers. Brand strategy brings your competitive positioning to life, and works to position you as a certain "something" in the mind of your prospects and customers. Brand strategy defines;

What the company stands for,
A promise you make, and
The personality you convey.

And while it includes your logo, color palette, and slogan; those are only creative elements that convey your brand. Instead, your realized/actual brand lives in everyday day-to-day interactions you have with your market, such as:

The images you convey,
The messages you deliver through e.g., your website, etc.,
The way your employees interact with customers.

Brand strategy, when successful, can help you capture market share.

Market Positioning Strategy
These are marketing strategies that contribute to and reinforce the business and competitive strategy. They are concerned with decisions and choices from elements of the marketing-mix. An effective market positioning strategy combines elements of the marketing mix . It is designed to meet the organization's marketing objectives by providing its customers with value. It focuses on business opportunities and concerns such as: customer retention, diversification of the customer base, market share growth, market value growth, becoming the market leader, increasing purchase frequency, etc. Marketing strategy may grouped under the following categories:

Marketing-Mix Strategies/Tactics
Marketing mix refers to the various elements of a company's offering in the market that help position the business strategically . And it's an essential tactical tool in building and implementing an effective marketing strategy. The marketing-mix are variables that managers and owners control to satisfy customers in their target market, add value to the business while helping to differentiate their business from competitors. The marketing-mix is designed to meet the organization's marketing objectives by providing its customers with value. It focuses on business opportunities and concerns such as: customer retention, diversification of the customer base, market share growth, market value growth, becoming the market leader, increasing purchase frequency, etc.

The marketing-mix, when marketing goods, is intended to bridge the gap between production (producer) and consumption (consumer) of goods through values assigned to the marketing-mix variables product, price, place, and promotion.

Product/Market Selection Decisions - These are the goods and services offered to customers in selected markets to meet their interests or demand. Attributes under consideration include: variety, quality, design, features, brand name, packaging, and services.
Pricing Decisions - The cost people pay for a "product"; provides the means to capture value. Attributes under consideration include list price, discounts, allowance, payment period, and credit terms. Pricing strategy is concerned with decisions on influencing increase in volume or communicating brand value, Pricing is a complex issue because it is related to cost-volume-profit trade-offs, and because it is frequently used as a competitive weapon.
Place (Distribution) Decisions - Home where the "product" resides; this includes Channels of Distribution (or Location Outlets); these define the places where, when and by whom the products and services are delivered to customers. Attributes under consideration include: channels, coverage, assortments, locations, inventory, distribution, transportation, and logistics. The Place/distribution component strategy identifies, "where", "when", and by "whom" the products - goods or services - are to be offered for sale. Place strategy guides decisions regarding channels to ensure consistency with the total marketing effort.
Promotion (Communication) Decisions - This refers to the methods which are used to put products - goods or services - in the public eye. Functional strategies for promotions should provide marketing managers with basic guides for the use and mix of advertisement, personal selling, sales promotion, and media selection. "Product" exposure and public relations effort - this includes all the activities which are undertaken to communicate the product features and customer value to the customer and increase the sale- such as promotion functions like advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, word of mouth, publicity, etc. Attributes of concern include: advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations.

In the service marketing context there isn't a gap between producer and consumer (as in the goods-based case), since the service provisioning (production) occurs right between producer and consumer. Service marketing is concerned with marketing intangible products - services. This marketing is based on value and relationship. It involves marketing of various economic activities offered by business organizations. The various economic activities included in this type of marketing are: telecommunication services, health care services, financial services, personal care services, entertainment services, tourism services, trade and professional services.

The marketing-mix used in service marketing is expanded and is a combination of the goods-based factors in addition to the following Physical evidence, People, Processes, Performance and Productivity.

Physical Evidence - The physical evidence element of the marketing mix refers to the physical environment experienced by the customer. This could include: the physical design and layout of the premises. the layout of the company website.
People - This refers to the service personnel whose presence and actions define the service that satisfies the wants and needs of the customer/consumer to whom the service is directed. People decisions are usually centered around customer service - how do you want your employees to be perceived by the customers? The People element of service marketing-mix includes anyone directly or indirectly involved in the business-side of the enterprise. These include employees who are involved in selling the product = service, designing it, managing teams, representing customers, etc. Employing and retaining the right people is imperative in both the long and short term success of the organization.
Process - The Process element describes a series of actions that are taken in delivering the product - service - to the customer. The process may comprise a number of parts such as: sales funnel, payment systems, distribution procedures, and managing customer relationships. Assessing, adjusting and optimizing the different parts of your process helps you streamline your business efforts while also ensuring your methods are up-to-date and in line with current trends.
Performance and Productivity - This factor accounts for your ability to deliver to your customers what you've promised. Are your customers satisfied? Are you offering them value? Performance also involves things like quality, how you compete in the market place, and whether or not your goals are being achieved.

The center of the marketing of service is how the service production and service expectation match to each other, so that consumers perceive good service quality and are persuaded to continue coming to get the same service.

Product Strategy
Product strategy is concerned with decisions about the types of products or services, number products or services, diversity, and rate of change. The options selected by an organization is dependent on whether the organization is attempting to reach new or existing customers, and whether the products - goods or services - are new or already exist.

Pricing Strategy
A pricing strategy is how the seller uses pricing to achieve a certain business objective. More specifically, it deals with the psychological reaction that a consumer has towards certain kinds of prices. Every business is different - different products, different customers, different market shares - so it makes sense that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all pricing strategy. Pricing strategies are set at a higher organization or brand level, and is aimed at the life-cycle of the product. Pricing strategy is a model or method used to establish the best price for a product - goods or service. It helps you chose prices to maximize profits, and shareholder value while considering customer and market demand.

Relationship Marketing Strategy
This type of marketing is basically focused on customer building. Enhancing existing relationships with customers and improving customer loyalty. The goal of relationship marketing (or customer relationship marketing) is to create strong, even emotional, customer connections to a brand that can lead to ongoing business, free word-of-mouth promotion and information from customers that can generate leads. Relationship marketing is a facet of customer relationship management (CRM) that focuses on customer loyalty and long-term customer engagement rather than shorter-term goals like customer acquisition and individual sales. Webster (1992) notes that long-standing customer relationships should be at the core of marketing strategy, because customer interactions and engagement can be developed into valuable relational resources. Organizations capitalizing on long-term and trustworthy customer relationships can help design value-enhancing marketing strategies that will subsequently generate competitive advantages and lead to superior performance.

Advertising Strategy
Advertising is any paid form of communication from an identified sponsor or source that draws attention to ideas, goods, services or the sponsor itself- essentially commercials and ads (whether digital or print). Advertising in business is a type of communication that persuades and encourages people to take a particular action. Communication is important because it verses people on the different things that the business has to offer. Advertisements also shows the advantages, features and values of a certain product.

Public Relations Strategy
Public relations is the strategic management of relationships between an organization and its diverse publics, through the use of communication, to achieve mutual understanding, realize organizational goals, and serve the public interest. Public relations is more than managing the flow of information between an organization and its publics. It is a communications discipline that engages and informs key audiences, builds important relationships and brings vital information back into an organization for analysis and action.

Communications Channel Strategy
Communication is important because it verses people on the different things that the business has to offer. A marketing communications channel, also sometimes referred to as a media channel, is a delivery vehicle to your customers for your message or offer. It is just one element of a successful marketing campaign, albeit an important one. Combined with your messaging and the right creative for the channel, it can resonate with your ideal customers and encourage them to do business with you.

Marketing Communication Channel strategies are the types of communication you do to get your message in front of your target market using the most appropriate channel. For traditional media channels you could choose:

Advertising - Television, radio, and print media will be the offline focus. Used for introducing your audience to new products and services.
Direct Marketing - Directly connecting with carefully targeted individuals to cultivate a lasting relationships. Used for direct outreach to prospects in a database or sales list.
Paid Advertising - This includes traditional approaches like TVs and print media as well as internet, and Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
Word of Mouth Marketing - It totally relies on what impression you leave on people. It is traditionally the most important type of marketing strategy. Being heard is important in business world. When you give quality services to customers, it is likely that they’d promote you.
Public Relations - Press releases, exhibitions, sponsorship deals and conferences. Used for getting news worthy attention.
Outbound Marketing - Any kind of marketing where the company initiates the conversation and sends its message out to an audience. This includes traditional approaches such as direct mail, cold calling, radio ads, TV ads, trade shows, and telemarketing.
Events
Partnerships and joint ventures

For digital marketing, these are example strategies you could invest in:

Inbound marketing - []
Content marketing - The idea is to create and distribute relevant and valuable content that customers want. This involves promoting your website and business with various forms of quality content through blogs, search engine optimization, social media, infographics, newsletter, podcasts, white papers, eBooks, etc. The useful content pulls visitors towards your website, brings them closer to your brand, engages them and converts them into customers as well as loyal followers.
Email marketing - Collecting an email list and providing customers with various promotions, discounts, and exclusive offers is a great way to market within a select group of people who are already more likely to buy the product as opposed to people who aren't subscribed to a company's email list.
Search engine optimization - Search engine optimization is one of the easiest fields to break into, but one of the hardest to succeed in. However, taking advantage of true search engine optimization skills and incorporating SEO into content on a blog or website is the best way to stimulate traffic and unique visitors.
Local search - Local search marketing is all about putting your business on the map in local searches when customers are searching for a business like yours. For a more formal definition, local search marketing is a form of search engine optimization that helps local businesses show up in relevant local searches.
Social media - Social Media Marketing Strategy is a form of digital marketing strategy.
Paid advertising - This includes digital approaches like TVs, internet, and Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
Affiliate marketing - []
Transaction Marketing - []
Targeted Marketing Strategy - The selection of potential customers to whom a company wants to sell its products or services. The strategy involves segmenting the market, choosing which segments of the market are appropriate and determining the products/services that would be offered in each segment.

Combining a selection of these strategies across multiple online and offline channels, referred to as multi-channel marketing, can help all businesses build brand awareness and reach more of your ideal clients.

Marketing Channels
Marketing channels may include:

Print publications.
Radio.
Television.
Billboards.
Signage.
Telephones.
US Postal Service.
Events.

Marketing Plan
A marketing plan sums up the ideas for what a company wants to accomplish. The purpose of the marketing plan is to describe who your clients are and where they are, and how you can reach them. The marketing plan is vital for small businesses; it help small businesses leverage their resources and audience for maximum impact at minimum cost. Marketing plans detail specific strategies to reach the company's goals, and contain the time tables for when certain marketing strategies will take place and details the logistics of marketing campaigns. The marketing plan goes into the logistical details of executing your strategy such as budgets, more detail time scales for objectives and goals, who in the organization will manage the various points in the strategy, the logistics of various distribution channels and their incumbent costs. etc. The marketing goals are the building blocks of your marketing plan, the starting point of the plan. For any given company's situation not all these goals will be relevant, a subset of these goals will be part of the marketing plan. The right number of goals is the one that offers reasonably high probability of success over a given period of time. "Reasonably", "period of time", and "success" all have to defined by the company, and should be consistent with the overall business goals and management commitment.

A marketing plan contains one or more marketing strategies. It is the framework from which all your marketing strategies are created. The plan helps you connect each strategy back to the larger marketing operation and business goal. The marketing plan is a more lively document than your strategy, and will need to be updated more frequently and adjusted to accommodate changes in costings, market conditions, economic conditions and other factors. A marketing strategy describes how your business will accomplish a particular mission or goal. This includes which campaigns, content, channels, and marketing software the business ill use to execute on that mission and track its success.

Human Resource Function Strategy and Management
Human Resource Management (HRM) is defined in terms of the set of functions, and activities designed and performed in order to maximize both employee as well as organizational effectiveness. It is a management function that helps organization in recruiting, selecting, training, developing and managing its members. HRM is the function within an organization that focuses on planning of, recruitment of, management of, and providing direction for the people who work in the organization. The functions of HRM include workforce planning, recruiting and hiring, performance management, and learning and development. HRM is concern with the management of people in the organization from Recruitment to Retirement.

HR Goals and Objectives
The primary objective of resource management is to ensure seamless experience for the staff and other people associated to management and organizational goals. HRM objectives are basically influenced by organizational goals and vertical Objective of HRM is to ensure a stable work environment with data at one place and efficient operations.

Types of HRM Objectives
HRM objectives are basically influenced by organizational goals, and include ensuring availability of resources, easy access to data, on-time payroll, ensuring compliance, etc. Some of the main objectives of HR are:

Achieve Organizational goals - To help the organization reach its goals. Fulfil organizational goals by utilizing human resources to achieve business goals. Organizational objectives include: workforce handling, staff requirements like hiring and onboarding, payroll management and retirement.
Work Culture - Foster better work culture through automation of activities like leave approvals, reimbursement request acknowledgement to help create positive vibes in the work place. Developing good team culture through developing and maintaining healthy and transparent relations among team members and teams.
Team integration - Ensuring teams coordinate efficiently through better communication.
Training and development - To provide the organization with well-trained and well-motivated employees. Ensure effective utilization and maximum development of human resource. Enhance employee’s capabilities to perform the present job.
Employee Motivation - To increase to the fullest the employee’s job satisfaction and self- actualization. Attend to employee needs to keep them motivated ; keep them on the right path and keep distractions and negative vibes away.
Workforce Empowerment - Empowering the workforce improves employee morale, motivation and ensures workforce engagement.
Retention - To achieve and maintain high moral among employees.
Data and Compliance - Managing company and employee data, and managing compliance. Managing payroll compliance and keeping the company out of any penalties or fines.

Objectives of HRM include ensuring availability of resources, easy access to data, on-time payroll, ensuring compliances, etc.

HR Strategy
HR strategies are internally consistent bundles of human resource practices. HR strategies set out what the organization intends to do about the different aspects of its human resource management policies and practices. The purpose of HR strategies is to guide HRM development and implementation of programs. They provide a means of communicating to all concerned, the intentions of the organization about how its human resources will be managed. They provide the basis for strategic plans and enable the organization to measure progress and evaluate outcomes against objectives.

Types of HR Strategies
HR strategies provides a vision for the future, but are also vehicles that define the actions required and how the vision should be realized. Because all organizations are different, all HR strategies are are different. HR strategies however, can be categorized into two (2) types; overarching strategies and specific strategies.

Overarching Strategies - These describe the general intentions of the organization about

How people should be managed and developed,
What steps should be taken to ensure that HRM processes of the organization can attract and retain the people it needs, and ensure as far as possible that,
Employees are committed, motivated and engaged.

These strategies are likely to be expressed in broad statements of aims and purpose that set the scene for more specific strategies.

Specific Strategies - These relate to the different aspects of human resource management. They set our what the organization intends to do in areas such as:

Talent Management - How the organization intends to win the war for talent,
Continuous Improvement - Providing for focused and continuous incremental innovation sustained over a period of time,
Knowledge Management - Creating, acquiring, capturing, sharing and using knowledge to enhance learning and performance,
Resourcing - Attracting and retaining high quality people,
Learning and Development - Providing an environment in which employees are encouraged to learn and develop,
Reward - Defining what the organization wants to do in the longer term to develop and implement reward policies, practices and processes that will further the achievement of its business goals and meet the needs of its stakeholders,
Employee Relations - Defining the intentions of the organization about what needs to be done and what needs to be changed in the ways in which the organization manages its relationships with employees and their trade unions.

They are concerned with the overall organizational effectiveness. - achieving human resource advantage by employing 'better people in the organization with better processes', developing high performance systems and generally, creating a great place to work.

Finance Function Strategy and Management
In a business, the finance function involves the accounting and utilization of funds necessary for efficient operations. The financial function is concerned with two sets of activities; strategic management - acquiring funds to meet the organization's current and future financial needs, and Operations - recording, monitoring, and controlling the financial results of the organization's operations. The accounting aspects of finance function brings business to life, and passes through every part of the firm's operations.

Financial Function Goals and Objectives
The goals of the financial function includes:

Strategic Budgeting - The goal is to create and monitor the overall company budget, and the variety of functional departments' budgets. Budgeting requires research to estimate revenue levels based on demand forecasting. Using annual budget projections, the accounting staff can help you set targets for profit goals and for overhead and production spending levels. Overhead includes costs such as phones, rent, and marketing; while production costs are those related to making your product. Create monthly or quarterly budget variance analyses to see if you are on track with your revenues and spending or if you need to make changes before expenses get out of hand.
Cost Containment - To ensure you get the best quality at the lowest price for materials, supplies, and services, make purchasing management one of the duties of the finance department. Require that employees get multiple bids or present some justification for large purchases; and have vendors, suppliers and contractors rebid their contracts every year. Look for trends in spending lvels to determine where you can cut costs without sacrificing quality.
Cash Flow Management - Cash flow management is about knowing when your bills are due and when you can expect payment from your customers, or other sales revenues; and its critical to your financial health. Its not enough to show a profit on paper, the financial function to should help you manage your working capital and credit to ensure you have enough to pay your bills at all times. Make receivables management a key role of the financial department.
Debt Service - Keep an eye on credit use, including interest amounts you are generating, the scheduling of your payments and the status of credit report and scores.
Tax Planning - Use proactive strategies to lower your tax burden, such as deprecisting assets, and offering voluntary benefits to employees that help you lower payroll taxes.
Accurate Record Keeping - The most important objective of any finance department is to keep accurate financial records. This includes you meet your legal requirements and ensuring you don't spend more than you have by accident. Consider audits to prevent fraud and institute policies and procedures for controlling contacts and payments.

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Financial Strategy
Financial strategy is concerned with the choices and commitments regarding acquisition of financial resources, analyzing cost structure, estimating profit potential, allocation of financial capital, dividend policy, or accounting functions in managing investment/working capital/cash flow. Most businesses require substantial amount of capital to both develop and operate; and therefore, cost and availability of capital have an enormous impact on the business. When demand is high, large amounts of cash is generated, and when demands drops cash gets used up very quickly. Financial strategies concern objectives in key results areas such as: profitability, liquidity and cash management, leverage and capital management, asset management, investment ratios, and financial planning and control.

Businesses respond to and operate under a variety of financial strategy options. Strategy selection is influenced by the company's overall goals, objectives, and mission statement.

Finance and accounting operations implement strategies to reduce functional and operational complexity, streamline processes, optimize the use of technology, and efficiently use resources to deliver cost effective, high quality services.

Return on On Investment Capital
The following financial strategy options can b mixed to achieve various business objectives such as accelerate growth, minimize investment, and improve returns and the timeliness of those returns. For example, for business objective such as Return on Investment, the mix of financial strategy options include:

Manage Contracts
Rollover Asset
Additional Capacity
Franchises
Management contract with limited equity investment
Buy out of negative leases
Acquisitions
Joint Ventures
Management contract with major equity investment
Ownership (Construction)

Improve Return on Investment Capital (ROIC) involves the following financial strategy options:

Rollover Asset (sale)
Manage Contracts
Additional Capacity (assumes demand is high)
Buy out of negative leases
Buy in to joint ventures with management contracts.

Cash Generation
Understanding how to generate cash in relationship to your business' time horizon is essential to survival. The fastest way to generate cash is to rollover an asset. The longest time to generate cash is to develop a concept - opening an operating business model that is successful and worthy of franchise investment - and then providing for the marketing of the franchise.

Rollover of an Asset
Ownership
Acquisitions
Manage Contract
Franchise

Operations Function Strategy and Management
Business operations function constitute many processes, including material acquisition, product (good or service) development, forecasting, scheduling, etc. The term operations embraces all the activities required to create and deliver an organization's products (goods and services) to its customers or clients. Every organization has an operations function, whether or not it is called operations, and its main activities/processes include: product management, supply chain, inventory, forecasting (production/sales), scheduling, quality management, and facilities planning and management.

Operations Management
Operations management has both strategic and tactical roles in the organization. Strategically operations management is concerned with operations strategy design/formulation and implementation. Operations management strategically is concerned with the design, management, and improvement of the resources and systems that create the organization's products (goods and services). Operations strategic management involves decisions, in the seven (7) major functional areas of operations, such as:

Operations management, tactically, is responsible for managing the resources such as materials and machines, technology and people, and the process for making products - goods and services - that the market wants. The whole chain of events must be well managed for a company to be competitive. The areas of concern in Operations Management of strategic relevance include:

Providing better products - goods and services - The goal of every business is to provide the best goods and services they possibly can.
Improving organization's supply chain,
Reducing costs such as labor, taxes, tariffs, etc.,
Learning to improve operations,
Understanding markets - Interacting with customers can provide insight into current markets, trends, and customer demands that help your organization plot a course for the future. This helps with diversification of product lines, add production flexibility, and can smooth out a business cycle.
Employing top talent - Create opportunities to attract top talent to the organization.

All the above gives your organization a competitive advantage.

Operation Management functions include:

Product Design
Location
Layout
Process Design
Human Resources and Job Design
Inventory
Reliability and Maintenance
Scheduling
Quality Management
Procurement - Procurement is the process of getting the goods and materials your company needs.

The operations strategic management decisions are guided by the concept of competitive advantage as defined by business strategy - differentiation, cost focus and response.

[TBD]

The mission of operations function in the private sector is usually expressed in terms of profits, growth and competitiveness; in the public sector and non-profit organizations it is often expressed in terms of providing value for money.

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Supply Chain Management - Should we make or buy what we need to produce our goods and services? These are decisions about the structure of the supply chain and may include design options, integration of operations along the supply chains, and location of facilities.
Movement of Materials - These decisions areas include procurement, inventory management and transport.
Inventory Management - How much should we keep on hand? hen do we re-order?
Forecasting and Capacity Planning - What does the short-term and long-term schedules look like? How much can we make in what period of time?
Scheduling - What do we need for materials?

The areas of concern in Operations Management include:

Planning: Operations managers must constantly forecast, plan, and adjust to optimize processes based on conditions.
Process: Production of goods or services requires having strong, repeatable processes.
Efficiency: Managers must troubleshoot bottlenecks, inadequate resources, and downtimes to create optimal efficiency.
Cost Control: Production is typically a major part of a company’s cost structure, and you must manage it wisely.
Quality: Good quality control is necessary to maintain customer satisfaction and the company’s reputation. Companies can greatly suffer without it.
Continuous Improvement: To remain competitive, companies need to have processes in place to consistently seek better ways of doing things.
Technology: Underlying all of these foundations is technology. Well-used technology keeps a company ahead of the curve.
Profitability: Executed properly, all of the above foundations lead to a strong bottom line.

needed to produce the company's products - goods and services, and implement the company's business strategy.

Operations Strategy
"Operations strategy is the total pattern of decisions which shape the long-term capabilities of any type of operations and their contribution to the the organization's overall strategy." Operations strategy underlies overall business strategy, and both are critical for a company to compete in an ever changing market. Strategy changes the way operations run to make the organization more competitive and strategic in the long-run. The role of operations strategy is to provide a plan for the operations function so that it can make the best use of its resources. When sound operations management decisions are made, it shows that the strategies were effective, and the organization's mission can be met.

Operations Strategy Perspectives
Operations strategy is the tool that helps to define the methods and systems of producing goods and services offered to the customer. Operations strategy drives a company's operations, the part of the business that produces and distributes goods and services. Operations strategy's role is to provide a plan for the operations function so that it makes the best use of its resources. There are our (4) perspectives on Operations Strategy; and they include:

Top-Down Perspective - The top-don perspective defines the impact of corporate strategy and objectives on business strategy and objectives and in turn their influence on operations strategy. This is a representation of top-down reflection of what the business wants operations to do. This comes down from business strategy.
Bottom-up Perspective - The bottom-up perspective describes the day-to-day experience of providing products - goods and services - to the market and the problems and solutions revealed, which become formalized into operations strategy. This is bottom-up activity where operations improvements cumulatively build strategy. This represents what day-to-day experience suggests operations should do.
Market Requirements Perspective - The Market Requirements perspective translates market requirements into performance objectives such as quality, speed, dependability, flexibility, and cost. This is a representation of what the market position requires operations to do.
Operations Resource Perspective - This perspective involves moving from a broad understanding of what resources, processes and capabilities an operation may possess within its resources through to identification of key decisions that operations managers will need to take in order to exploit, build on and develop these capabilities. This represents what operations can do.

Operations strategy has vertical relationship with overall business/corporate strategy, and it has a horizontal relationship with other functional strategies, such as marketing, sales, finance, IT, and HR. Operations strategy provides the ability to improve products, services, and processes. Operations strategies focus on maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of production while minimizing operating costs.

Components of Operations Strategy
Components or elements of operations strategy include:

Designing and Positioning the Production system,
Focusing Production/Manufacturing and Service Facilities
Design and Development of Product - Good/Service
Selection of Technology and Process Development
Resource Allocation
Planning of Capacity, Facility and Layout -

Operations Strategy design is concerned with some very broad questions regarding structure, and infrastructure - how major resources should be configured in order to achieve the firm's corporate objectives.

Market Requirements Perspective
The goals or purpose of most organizations is the efficient production of goods and/or services. To do this, they have to procure resources, convert them into outputs and distribute them to their intended users. Performance objectives are broad performance measures that provide a device for understanding market requirements. The market requirements perspective translates market requirements into performance objectives such as quality, speed, dependability, flexibility, and cost. Performance objectives are the main device used to understand market requirements. These objective measures represent the various aspects of performance in which the market requirements can be expressed.

The operations performance objectives include:

Quality - The quality objective is considered to measure how well a product conforms to certain specifications. It is also how desirable the features of the product are; how reliable the product is; how durable it is; how easily it can be serviced; how well it performs its intended function; and how much the customer believes in its value.
Speed - The speed objective measures how fast a company can deliver its products and generate sales quotes. The objective will be concerned with such issues as: the time that it takes to produce one or more products of the company or the time that it takes to research a new product and develop it.
Dependability - This objective is a measure of company dependability and/or product dependability. Organization dependability objective is measure of how dependable the company is when it comes to timely delivery of products to customers, in accordance with planned prices and costs. Product dependability objective is a measure of the product's ability to function in an intended way consistently over a reasonable period of time. "Dependability" could also mean a proportion of services or goods delivered late, average lateness, proportion delivered early, etc.
Flexibility - He flexible operations objective is a measure of operations that can configure their product lines to deal with various requirements and to also adjust these product lines quickly to new requirements. The latter is also closely related to the speed objective.
Cost - The variation in costs objective looks at how much variation exists in the unit ost of a product as measured by chages in a variety of factors including: the volume and the variety of products.

Each of the performance objectives can be thought of as bundles of issues that will need separating out. Some of these objectives are more important for some operations than others. One well-known method of distinguishing between the importance of performance objectives is classifying them as order winners or qualifiers.

Order Winners are performance objectives that clearly gain more business for the company as its performance in these areas improve. Qualifiers are the "givens" of doing business. No matter how well an organization performs at its qualifiers, it is not going to gain great competitive benefit. If however, a company fails to meet the expectations of the market in a qualifying performance objective it will suffer disadvantage in the marketplace.

A key dimension in understanding markets is to distinguish between order-qualifiers (necessary to get onto and remain on a customer list of internal resources) and order-winners (those criteria that win business from other qualified potential suppliers). Analyzing markets starts with executive opinion of market order-winners and order-qualifiers, and then testing them with data showing actual demands for different customers, orders and products.

Operations Strategy - Operations Resource Perspective
Operations strategy guides the structural decisions and evolution of operational capabilities needed to achieve the desired competitive position of the organization as a whole. In Operations Resource view, operations strategy design some very broad questions are addressed regarding how major resources should be configured in order to achieve the firm's corporate objectives. Some of the issues of include: long-term decisions regarding "structure" - the physical attributes of operations such as capacity to produce, facility location, process technology, and supply networks; and "infrastructure" - the people, systems, and software.

Infrastructure decisions include: planning and control systems, quality management, work organization, work systems, human resources, new product development, and performance management of employees.

[TBD]

A firm's Operations Strategy must be conducive to developing a set of policies in both process choice and infrastructure design (organization structure and the systems, human resources, culture and resources that support i; and are consistent with the firm's distinctive competencies).

Distinctive Competencies
The main objective of any business is to secure a position through which it can attract more customers as compared to its competitors. To achieve this, Operations managers are supposed to work in close conjunction with marketing to understand the market’s competitive situation in which an organization is operating and identify the unique competencies in order to determine the important competitive priorities (or distinctive competencies).

In making decisions related to the growth and survival of an organization, competitiveness plays a crucial role as it is related to the effectiveness of the organization in meeting customer requirements over its competitors, and hence, considered an important factor. For this, organizations depend upon their operational strengths and use them along with opportunities as their competitive weapons or Competitive priorities. Some of the generally accepted distinctive competencies include:

Price/Cost - A firm competing on price basis is able to provide consumers with an in-demand product/service at a price that is competitively lower than that offered by firms producing the same or similar goods/services.
Quality - A firm competing on this basis offer products or services that are superior to the competitors on one or more dimensions such as: Performance - a product's primary operating characteristics; Conformance - the degree to which a product's design and operating characteristics meet predetermined standards; Features - the bells and whistles of a product; Durability - mean time until replacement (how long does the product last before it is worn out); Reliability - a product's mean time until failure or between failure; Serviceability - the speed, courtesy, competence, and ease of repair; Aesthetics - a product's looks, feel, smell, sound, or taste are aesthetic qualities; Perceived Quality - this is usually inferred from various tangible and intangible aspects of the product.
Service -A firm competing on Service basis can define this in a number of ways such as: Superior Customer Service; Rapid delivery; On-time Delivery; Convenient Location.
Flexibility - A firm competing on flexibility basis depends on their ability to provide either flexibility of product or volume.
Trade-offs - Competing on one (1) or two (2) distinctive competencies at the necessary expense of the others.

With the help of operations strategy, an organization can translate its competitive priorities and product plans into processes related to decision-making. Decisions related to operations help in determining different processes for producing variety and volume of products.

Operations Strategy
Operations strategy is concerned more with the total transformation process that is the whole business, and less with individual processes. And how the competitive environment is changing and what the operation has to do in order to meet current and future challenges. It s also concerned with the long-term development of its operations resources and processes so that they can provide the basis for a sustainable advantage.

Operations Strategy Decision Factors
Several factors included in operations strategy influenced by distinctive competencies and connection to long-term operations decisions such as:

Capacity Decisions - This is concerned with facility planning facility layout and location. Facility planning decisions include: How is the facility used in production? What is the relationship to other resources? How should it be arranged? These are decisions concerned with capacity management and may include: measures of capacity, capacity planning, the size and timing of capacity changes.
Operating Decisions - []
Technology Decisions - []
Resource Planning - []
Production Plans - []
Process Decisions - These involve decisions concerning the type of process, technology, measuring and performance.
Quality Decisions - What quality system should we use? What impact does quality have on our organization? These decisions are concerned with: the aims, tools and programs for ensuring customer satisfaction.
Outsourcing - []
Product Plans - What goods and services to offer and the design of them? These are product development decisions concerned with: types of products, innovation, breath of range, new product development, and flexibility.

Market penetration Strategy - This refers to capturing a larger piece of the target market. An insurance company might define market penetration success by the number of new automobile policies gained. Developing an operations strategy for market penetration has several potential focus areas. A business can decide to attract customers away from competitors. It can attract nonusers that have no experience with your business or with a competitor. Another strategy might employ one or more geographic locations, centered around a target demographic. Businesses can also try to add more value to existing clients, thereby enticing increased spending on product or service upgrades.
Product Development Strategy - As an operations strategy, product development goes well beyond rolling out new products. Think about software companies that may have a new product coming out but that also provides free patches and low-cost upgrades for existing product improvement; this is part of the product development strategy. Initially, when a product is rolled out, it is compared to other products on the market. Being the best is a good strategy, but it also means that competitors will immediately work to exceed your product specifications. For example, a rental car company that eliminates long lines at the airport improves an existing system for both new and repeat clients. The better this service process is, the higher satisfaction ratings the company receives. This builds loyalty and referral business.
Improve Supply Chain - The supply chain refers to the process of creating a product via its delivery. One operations strategy might look to improve costs in the creation of the product. Another operations approach is to make the delivery of goods more efficient. An example of improving the creation can include reducing costs of materials with bulk purchases or automating parts of the production line. Making the delivery component of operations more efficient could involve anything from improving warehouse layout to reduce time and labor in fulfilling orders to obtain delivery contracts that reduce delivery contracts. For example, a home improvement warehouse might reorganize the warehouse layout, bringing more frequently bought items closer to the front and within proximity, based on size to the loading docks. This means that consumers or warehouse employees spend less time walking through a warehouse to get to the products, thereby expediting the process and saving on labor.

It isn't uncommon that several operations strategies may exist within a company simultaneously.

The actual and realized strategy involves both top-down and bottom-up approaches - a combination of intended strategy and emergent strategy - respectively.

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Operational goals are the workflow methods that bring the strategy to fruition, and exist at all levels of the organization, from CEO down to part-time employees. Operational goals are the short-term tactics designed to achieve the company's long-term strategy. Operational goals lay out increments called benchmarks; they streamline the day-to-day activities of the business. They measure daily, weekly, and monthly benchmarks. For example, the monthly budget report shows if a company's financial goals are on track. Manufacturing examines production reports to ensure the number of units produced meets production goals with minimum waste.

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Strategic Areas
A company's Key Success Factors (KSF) define what the organization has to be good at to be successful. They typically pertain to competitiveness, such as a company's attributes, resources, capabilities and competencies.

Core Operations Strategy Areas
These can be categorized as follows:

Corporate - Overall company strategy, driving the company mission and interconnected departments/functions.
Customer-Driven - Operations strategies to meet the needs of a targeted customer segment.
Core Competencies - Strategies to develop the company's key strengths and resources.

Operations Goals and Objectives
Operations strategy specifies the policies and plans for using the organization's resources to support its long-term competitive strategy. The objectives of operations strategy-makers is to try new ways to achieve the operating goals and objectives that have been assigned to operations such as unit cost, product quality, etc.

Provide better goods and services
Improve the organization supply chain
Reduce costs , such as: labor, taxes, etc.
Learn to improve operations
Understand markets
Employ top-of-the-line talent

The characteristics of a company that achieve a high return on investment (ROI) include:

Low direct cost per unit
Low investment intensity
High capacity utilization
High product quality
High operations efficiency

These characteristics are key to strategy as well as implementation. They can be measured and evaluated, and should be, to determine if the decision was a good one and where to go next.

Operations Management Strategic Decisions
Operations management decisions areas include:

Supply or Sourcing Decisions - Supply chain management is the process of transforming those goods into products and distributing them to customers as efficiently as possible. These decisions specify which activities are performed internally, and which activities are outsourced, and how to manage suppliers. Decisions involve defining the process boundaries and interfaces. It includes strategic sourcing decisions, vertical integration, and supply network configuration.
Technology Decisions - These decisions characterize how to process inputs into outputs. It includes the methods and systems employed, as well as the know-how and intellectual property. The technology decisions can be grouped into the following key categories: a) coordination and information technology decisions such as assignment of responsibility, incentives, measurement, and control; b) product technology decisions in product philosophy, product architecture, and product capabilities; c) process technology decisions on how to structure the conversion processes and methods used in execution; and d) transportation technology decisions on how goods are exchanged among different activities in the network.
Demand Forecast Decisions - These decisions specify how to match demand to available supply. These decisions characterize the interfaces and relationships with customers and include demand planning and forecasting, as well as tactical capacity allocation and order management. Demand management is an important driver in inflexible supply processes that cannot quickly adapt to changes in demand such as the core processes in airlines, hotels, hospital wards, and car rental companies, It also relates to service and customer relationship management.
Improvements and Innovation Decisions - These are decisions on characterizing the processes and incentives to improve and innovate products and processes.

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Sales Function Strategy and Management
The Sales function/department advises the marketing department based on its feedback with customers and focuses on customer contact to drive sales. Sales operations is about supporting and enabling front line sales teams to sell more efficiently and effectively by providing strategic direction and reducing friction in the sales process. To do this, sales operations fulfills both strategic and tactical functions. Sales operations teams accomplish their goals through a variety of roles and function including: strategy, data analysis, hiring and training, forecasting, territory design, and sales process optimization.

Sales Management Goals and Objectives
There are three general objectives of sales management viz-

Sales volume - Increase units sold by 10% or more.
Contribution to profits - Increase profit margins by 10% or more.
Continuing growth.
Revenue Generation - One of the main objectives of sales management is to generate revenue for the organization. The sales department is solely responsible to bring in the money.
Increase Sales Volume - Through efficient sales management, the organization wishes to increase the number of units sold. This will ensure that the production facilities do not remain idle and are utilized to the fullest.
Sustained Profits - Sales management has an objective of improving the profits of the organization through effective planning, coordination and control. Sales management strives to increase sales and reducing costs, this ensures good profits for the organization.
Organization Growth - With the sustained and continuous sales management techniques, the organization tends to gain market share and results in growth of the organization.
Market Leadership - With increased sales volumes and profits, ‘sales management’ enables an organization to become the market leader.
Converting Prospects to Customers - Getting prospects to become customers is an art and a science, it requires good planning and sustained efforts. This is accomplished through sales management.
Motivate the Sales Force - One of the core objectives of sales management is to motivate the sales force. Selling is a very stressful task, achieving sales targets can become very challenging. Therefore, the sales management task is to ensure that the sales force is continuously motivated through proper incentives and reward systems.
Compliment Marketing Activities - Sales management’s task is to support the marketing functions of the organization. Marketing and sales need to go hand in hand to achieve the desired results.

Objectives often get translated into more specific goals by breaking down and restating as definite goals. Planning precedes goal setting. In planning, sales executives provide estimates on market and sales potentials the capabilities of the sales force and middlemen.

Sales management is instrumental in charting the course of future operations. The activity provides top management with informed estimates and facts for making marketing decisions and for setting sales and profit goals. Sales management and the financial results of a company are related.

Sales Strategy
Sales strategy is a plan to achieve a sales goal and is what directs the selling activities of any business. Selling is crucial to the success of any business, but it must be orchestrated to deliver success, which is what the sales strategy does. The sales strategy describes how a business will win, retain, and develop customers. Sales strategy is different from marketing strategy - an overall approach to marketing products (it is how you build sustainable competitive advantage for the company's products) through positioning, and differentiation by managing the marketing mix of the 7Ps - .Product, Price, Promotion, Place, Packaging, Positioning, and People.

A sales strategy is particularly important in addressing business challenges such as:

Stagnant sales revenues - Flat/declining sales
Merger of Sales Forces - A need to align sales teams and have them pursue common objective.
Start-up of new Venture - A need to get sales started and realizing the ambition of the founders and investors.
New Product Introduction - A need to deliver the expectations set by management.
Launch by a new competitor - A need to counter the threat from new competitors.
Expansion to new markets - When a company is diversifying and expanding.

When creating a sales strategy be clear as to which challenge(s) you are addressing.

Key Building Blocks of a Sales Strategy
A winning sales strategy has a number of elements/building blocks including:

Goal and Objectives - An effective sales strategy requires you know the goal of your business, i.e., what your overall aim for the business is.
Target Market - You need to decide who will buy your products and services. The Target Market is defined in the Marketing Plan; each plan sets out to determine the effect of the plan on a target market.
Product and Services - Building the best products and services that meet the needs of their target markets.
"What are the competitive advantages?" - This requires identifying the "strengths" and "weaknesses" of competitors that you will need to sell against and exploit.
Route to market - How do you reach and sell to your customers?
Selling Process - [TBD]

Sales Objectives
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Increasing your monthly and annual revenue
Reducing customer churn - Keeping your customers is synonymous with keeping the company afloat. Customer churn is the number of customers that leave your business within some specified period e.g., 3 months. This is an account management function that is taken on by the sales team.
Increase units sold/profit margins by 10% or more.
Boost customer lifetime value - This involves the cash value a customer contributes to the company over a specified period, e.g., one year.
Increase number of leads qualified - []
Increase win rates
Lower customer acquisition costs
Reduce cycle times
Track sales time per week
Set activity goals - Increase number of cold calls/scheduled video.