How Have They Been Involved in the Strategic Planning Process at the Company?

1. How have they been involved in the strategic planning process at the company?

In this paper, the main focus will be on implementing what we have learned in this course by applying this knowledge to my company’s future strategic planning. Furthermore, as the owner of this company, I will demonstrates how I will be doing strategic planning in the future. The people I gathered this papers information from are those who play a major role in determining my company’s future success and even failure. We all share an equal responsibility in deciding our company’s strategies, and the direction were heading towards. As the CEO of this company, I find it more effective to make strategic decisions through teamwork rather than making decisions on an individual level. However, as the owner of this company, it is mostly important to identify the roles that each individual plays in our strategic decision making process. Before going into the role identification process, I want to start by introducing the representatives I chose for the benefit of this paper:

1. Mr. Tarek Khalil is my warehouse manager. His job is to maintain receiving, warehousing, and distribution operations by initiating, coordinating, and enforcing program, operational, and personnel policies and procedures.
2. Mr. Kanan Jamal is my customer service manager. His main job is to help develop and implement a customer service policy for our entire business. He manages a team of customer service staff, and handles any complaints, or face to face enquiries from customers.
3. Mr. Danny Perez is our technology manager. Our company runs on many new complex software systems, in which he recommended from the start of my company. He mainly maintains these systems, and recommends technology strategies, policies, and procedures by evaluating our company’s outcomes.
4. Mr. JR Galarza is my sales manager. He establishes and adjusts selling prices by monitors costs, competition, and supply and demand. He also manages our sales staff.
5. Mr. Kyle Saleh is our store, and customer designer specialist. His job is to maintain a quality design for our 30 thousand sq. ft. store, and change that design based on what customers are mainly looking for. He also deigns customer homes

The individuals above are not only involved in the strategic planning process of the company, but they also help me in creating the process itself. Participating in the development of our core value ensures that everyone is on the same page. These professionals aren’t only hired help, but they are also long-term friends who share the same core purpose as I do. Michael porter in his book mentioned that “Core purpose is an organizations most fundamental reason for being”. Of-course we are all in it to make money, but our core purpose is never confused or conflicted with our company’s goods, and unmet customer needs. We do want to satisfy our customers, and meet their needs, but our core value is reflected through our motivation to make the company grow to be as successful as it can be. When we make a strategic plan for any department in our company, we make it as a team. I always motivated my employees to be a part of the planning process because it allows them to be more engaged. This gives them a voice in deciding which direction our company is heading.

1. Describe briefly the company. What it does? Who are its customers and markets (in general terms)?

3o years ago, my family invested in starting a furniture business. 30 years later today, this investment turned into many furniture stores nationwide. I grew into this business and eventually worked my way up to opening my first location at age 24 (1 year ago), and my second location 1 week ago. The size of my first store is about 30 thousand square feet, and is located in Paramus, New Jersey. The size of my second store is 15 thousand square feet, and is located in the Bronx, NY. At Furniture City Superstore, we provide all kinds of quality furniture from many different countries all around the world. We sell traditional, modern, transitional, and custom furniture. We retail furniture to the general public, and provide for all different backgrounds, age, etc. we are located  fairly in a very competitive market. We are surrounded by very big furniture giants like Bobs, Ashley, Ramour & Flannigan, IKEA, LazyBoy furniture, and more.

1. What is the current strategic planning process in the company (preferably your current company)?

Normally my team and I are involved in creating our own individual strategic plan that revolves around our specific department in the company. For example: Tarek would strategize a plan for improvements in the warehouse, as he is the warehouse manager. However, once that is completed, each of the above members recollect to share their plans with one another, and make sure that Tarek’s plan in the warehouse does not interfere with Kanan’s plan in Customer service. Once we recollect, than we reflect on each other’s ideas, and come up with a common strategic plan that can benefit the store as a whole. If we were to just implement individual plans for each department without considering the outcome, these plans would interfere with one another, and fail. Our process is similar to that of what we learned about conducting the SWOT analysis. We use a team so that different individuals bring different perspectives. And then facilitate discussion and equal participation to meet a common ground.

1. What types of strategic issues are typically discussed, and what types of decisions are made?
2.  There are two types of strategic issues that are typically discussed. There are the external issues, and the internal issues. The external issues are the more general issues. External issues include things such as, what is going to sell, who is our targeted audience, and how we will beat or avoid our competition. Internal issues on the other hand are more focused. They consist of issues like inventory accuracy (warehouse department), improving our infrastructure to better support great customer service (Customer service department), new arrival product experimentation vs market research, and which is a more effective Strategy to spark customer interest (Sales Department).  The decisions we make are based on what the team believes is effective, and more strategic. For example:  to build a better infrastructure for customer service required things like order tracking technology, self-help phone options, calling back instead of long wait times, FAQ on our website. We predict that investing in such technologies would be a good strategic decision because this increases customer satisfaction, and lowers the word load on our customer service staff.
3. Who is involved in the strategic planning process (title, not names), and what is their role in the planning process?

The people involved in the strategic planning process are the managers of each of our departments at Furniture City Superstore. We have 5 departments in total, the warehouse, customer service, sales, IT, and the design department. The managers all share a common planning process. When the question is asked, everyone disperses into the first phase of the planning process which is collecting data. Each manager than regroups with his/her department staff, and brainstorm ideas that revolve around the question asked. However, they will come up with ideas that will focus on their specific department, and develop ideas that stay in accordance with the company’s overall objective. Once they’ve finalized their plan, the managers recollect, share their ideas amongst each other, and present the idea to me (CEO). If no mutual decision is made, we vote. The manager’s major role is to collect data by doing market research, consult their department staff, recollect, come up with a mutual plan, and present it.