Strategic Planning

MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING ESSAY 1998/99 The development of a strategic plan is essential to the achievement of organisational goals. Discuss. The development of a strategic plan is an essential part of strategic management accounting. If carried out to its full credibility the organisation will achieve its goals. It is important to note that the strategic plan is set for long term planning, as much as 3-5 years. It has been established that a strategic plan requires the specification of objectives distinguished between three key elements, forming a hierarchy: the mission of an organisation, corporate objectives and unit objectives. These objectives are the first stage of the strategic plan, before the organisation has to ask, and answer, three simple but vital questions; 1) Where are we now? 2) Where do we want to be? (long term) 3) How are we going to get there? This is where we bring analysis such as SWOT analysis, the Boston matrix, the value chain and the Ansoff matrix into the plan. C...