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Business growth and survival hinge on making strategic plans and implementing those plans to gain a competitive advantage. However, “monitoring and control” is critical to successfully implementing strategic plans.
Monitoring tells you whether the company is heading in the right direction so you know when to double down on efforts or make changes.
But how do you use monitoring and control to achieve your strategic goals and drive your organization forward? This article will answer this question.
Specifically, we’ll examine why monitoring and control of strategy is important, who is responsible for the activity, when it should occur, and more.
Why is it important to monitor and control strategic plans?
Monitoring and controlling strategic plans are important because it helps you evaluate progress when implementing a strategy and determine whether you need to make any adjustments.
Reaching a desired business outcome requires turning strategic plans into action via implementation. Strategy implementation involves performing a series of activities over time. While performing these activities, managers need “monitoring” to determine whether their overall strategy is unfolding as planned.
“Strategic monitoring” involves gathering and analyzing data to see whether your business is on track to achieve strategic goals, while “strategic control” involves making appropriate changes based on these findings.
For example, if monitoring reveals deviations from strategic objectives, the control process involves deciding if corrective action is needed and making changes to steer you back on track.
Monitoring also helps you evaluate the impact of unforeseen events on strategic objectives and make appropriate strategy reassessments.
The business environment is dynamic and constantly changing because of external factors like technological advancement, government policies, economic conditions, activities of competitors, changes in customer behavior, etc.
These factors can make an effective strategy obsolete when they occur, needing you to make strategy revisions to achieve desired business objectives.
For example, a business may develop a growth corporate strategy to expand into a new (relatively uncompetitive) market. But before executing the plan, a competitor can enter and capture the market. The business will then need to revise its plan to wrestle a portion of the market from the competitor.
Who should be responsible for monitoring and controlling strategic plans?
Monitoring and control of a strategic plan are about evaluating the implementation process and reassessing strategies when needed. Thus, corporate strategy monitoring and control have elements of corporate strategic planning, which is the function of top-level executives.
Monitoring and control of strategic plans have other components of corporate strategies. Its concern is guiding the company’s future direction. It is long-term in nature and focuses on the entire strategic management process.
Thus, top-level executives are responsible for monitoring and controlling a strategic plan.
When should monitoring occur?
Strategic monitoring and control help a business meet the objectives outlined when its corporate strategies are formulated. Monitoring and control mainly aim to identify problems before they occur and make necessary adjustments.
Interestingly, internal and external forces start threatening the achievement of strategic goals immediately after you define them. Thus, monitoring should begin immediately after strategy formulation.
When formulating strategies and defining objectives, certain assumptions are made about the company’s internal and external environments. Before implementation, some of these assumptions may no longer hold, which means the strategy might need some revising.
Thus, immediately after formulating strategies and outlining objectives, you should start monitoring the internal and external business environment to identify issues or tactical opportunities and adapt strategies accordingly.
Monitoring and control should continue during implementation. As you translate high-level goals and objectives into specific initiatives and have employees execute required actions, you should collect and analyze data continuously to determine progress toward achieving objectives.
Implementation control can also take place via operational control systems like monitoring and adjusting budgets, schedules, etc.
How is the efficiency of a corporate strategy measured?
A corporate strategy is efficient if it uses the resources you allocate according to your plan and delivers the expected results.
Determining the efficiency of a corporate strategy requires monitoring performance to check whether you are achieving objectives. The process includes:
Choosing the right metrics.
Setting standards (performance benchmarks) that you will measure performance against.
Comparing actual performance with standards.
Analyzing deviations.
After outlining strategic objectives, you identify what you need to measure and define your key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs will help you track your progress.
Choosing the right KPI to measure objectives can be a difficult and time-consuming process that involves drawing insights from large volumes of data and meeting with different company actors.
Using the strategy software Kippy makes the process easier. Kippy uses artificial intelligence (AI) to recommend accurate key performance indicators based on specific objectives.
Consequences of failure to monitor and control strategic plans
Appreciating the importance of monitoring and control of strategic plans helps you understand the consequences of failing to perform these functions.
Monitoring and control help answer two questions:
Are you executing strategic plans properly and on track to achieving strategic objectives?
Have internal and external factors made your strategic plans obsolete such that you need to revise them to achieve strategic objectives?
Thus, failing to monitor and control strategic plans results in poorly executed plans or the execution of obsolete plans. Either scenario means you cannot achieve strategic objectives, leading to wasted resources, missed opportunities, and business failure.
Takeaway: Monitoring and control of strategic plans made easy with Kippy
Strategic plans will only lead to desired outcomes with effective strategy implementation. Interestingly, “monitoring and control” is key for effective strategy implementation.
Monitoring is collecting and analyzing data to measure progress toward achieving strategic objectives. It involves tracking the performance against strategic goals and monitoring the competitive landscape. Control means using findings from monitoring to make adjustments (such as revising strategies) toward achieving objectives.
You lay the foundation for effective monitoring and control by choosing the right key performance indicators for measuring strategic objectives.
Kippy is the only strategy management platform in the world that automatically generates accurate KPIs to measure progress toward your objectives. You input your objective, and Kippy will furnish you with relevant and actionable KPIs, reducing weeks of effort to mere seconds and saving you tens of thousands of dollars annually.
Kippy makes it easy to cascade your strategy to all levels of your organization, putting your corporate strategy at the heart of everything everyone does. Kippy also automates HR appraisals, making it easy to determine how employees are performing toward achieving your objectives.
Ready to employ the power of AI in the monitoring and control of strategic plans? Book a demo and see how Kippy can help.