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Businesses today are constantly looking for ways to gain the competitive edge over their competition. Planning is by far one of the main ingredience to attaining that edge. The importance of formal planning in organizations has grown dramatically. Until the mid-1900s, most planning was unstructured and fragmented, and formal planning was restricted to a few large corporations (Thomas S. Bateman & Scott A Snell, 2007) this has change dramatically. “Planning is a decision process—managers will be deciding what to do and how to go about doing it” (Thomas S. Bateman & Scott A Snell, 2007) If a business is not in the habit of doing extensive planning on all levels, then that business would likely to fell. Being able to specify the goals to be achieved and deciding in advance the appropriate actions needed to achieve those goals is perhaps the key to any successful business plan. Companies must be able to use planning strategies successfully to grow the company and adjust those strategies when necessary. In order to better understand the process of planning and I will examine the various levels of planning. Strategic, Tactical, Operational and Contingency planning are necessary in order for a company to survive and must be integrated together in order to form a solid base for a successful business.
Strategic Planning
Strategic planning involves making decisions about the organizations long-term
goals and strategies. Strategic plans have a strong external orientation and cover major portions of the organization (Thomas S. Bateman & Scott A Snell, 2007) In strategic planning its important to note that this is done by the top-level managers. They are not the ones who carry out the p ...