Vision & Mission: It is vital for any organisation to be able to demonstrate the strategic opportunities available over a three to five year cycle. A projection of the future state of the organisation with supporting rationale should be prepared, validated and quantified as accurately as possible so that the various stakeholders can see how the organisation will meet its statutory objectives
Strategy & Objectives: Once the Vision and Mission are documented and agreed the next step is to explicitly identify the strategy that would be pursued. Supporting this strategy must be specific objectives that support the ongoing decision-making process (prioritisation of actions, allocation of resources, delegation of responsibility, monitoring of performance, etc.).
There must be a direct alignment between the Vision and Mission and the strategic objectives as it will be through achieving these objectives that the vision will be realised.
Organisation: The areas of strategic importance that are identified in step two and the associated objectives for these areas must be aligned to the recommended staff (roles and responsibilities) to help make the case for approving the budget for each recommendation.
Supporting these resources will be reporting and process requirements which in turn will be determined by the extent to which tasks are retained internally (service delivery) or managed via third party suppliers (contract management).
Operations: Operations focus primarily on the business, financial and governance model that would be adopted. The Operations structure answers the questions of “What is required to achieve performance targets, manage working capital and revenue streams, ensure seamless service delivery, invest in market access and retention, etc?”
Accurate recording of financial performance and monitoring of this performance against the business plan is vital to prevent, pre-empt or mitigate challenges in a manner that minimises any negative impact on the achievement of the mission and objectives (steps one and two above)
Business Plan: The business plan (or Business Case) is the key strategic management tool that incorporates the key performance indicators for the year-on-year progress against the strategic objectives.
