Strategic Planning: A Business Primer for Information Professionals

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Strategic Planning A Business Primer for
Information Professionals

• Amy Affelt, Lexecon
• Lauren Meader, Covington Burling
• Jan Sykes, Information Management Services, Inc.
• SLA 2004

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What is a strategic plan?

• Document detailing
• Where we are now
• Where we want to be
• How we are going to get there

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How others describe it

• Strategy delineates a territory in which a
  company seeks to be unique. (Michael Porter)
•  
• Process for envisioning the future developing
  procedures/operations to achieve that future
  (Goodstein, Nolan Pfeiffer)

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Myths

• My industry is changing too fast to have a
  strategic plan
• I am too busy to take time to prepare a strategic
  plan
• Information Center is a support function and does
  not need a strategic plan
• My strategic plan is for my department only

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What is the benefit of a strategic plan?

• Compass for action
• Measurement system for monitoring progress
• Resource attraction and resource allocation

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Why do you need a strategic plan?

• Defines core values
• Communicates common understanding of goals
  unified plan of action on which to base business
  decisions
• Provides framework for evaluating new ideas
• DRIVERintegrated into how you run your operation
•  

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Who should be involved in preparing a strategic
plan?

• Information Center Manager
• Information Center Staff
• CXO level
• Customers

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Disciplined approach to

• Reflection on the business environment
• Markets/Clients served
• External influences (technology, competition,
  economy)
• Plans for reshaping the organization to meet
  objectives

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Planning process is a time to

• Brainstorm
• Share knowledge about events activities that
  impact your business
• Think creatively about the future

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New conversations give new insights

• New hires
• Exceptional employees
• Thought leaders
• Suppliers
• Customers
• Leadership team
• Environmental scanning
• Informal benchmarking

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Key components

• Vision/Mission statements
• Situational analysis
• Strategic direction of organization
• Competition
• SWOT
• Budget
• Goals/Strategies
• Critical success factors

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Useful resources

• Drucker, Peter. Management Tasks,
  Responsibilities, Practices. (Harper Business,
  1973, 1974)
•  
• Goodstein, Leonard, Nolan, Timothy and Pfeiffer,
  J. William. Applied Strategic Planning How to
  Develop a Plan that Really Works. (McGraw-Hill,
  1993)
•  
• Hamel, Gary. Leading the Revolution (Harvard
  Business School Press, 2000)
•  
• Porter, Michael. Competitive Strategy
  Techniques for Analyzing Industries and
  Competitors (Free Press, 1980).

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Formulation of Strategy
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Library as a Business Unit
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First, Pretend Youre the CEO
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Then, Think Like a Librarian
Remember, you are a Business Unit Manager
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Case Study Corporate Executive Board

• content firm
• mix of a for-profit think tank and a consulting
  firm
• membership based, Global 3000 companies
• multiple product oriented business units
• companies joined a BU, not firm as a whole
• three primary products
• custom research
• syndicated research
• meetings, seminars, on site training

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Firm Strategy

• Simply, increase membership, thereby increasing
  revenues.
• How? Promoting custom research.

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What can the Business Unit Do?

• What can the library do to help increase
  membership and promote custom research?
• - Make custom research a better quality product
• Librarians can help produce custom research
  faster
• More product being produced faster.

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How to Make the Case

• out of the box
• add value
• empower ROI
• best-of-breed HiPo
• path to profits
• innovicide krudzu
• leveraging assets metadecision

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Strategic Plan- Summary

• Hire fewer custom researchers
• Hire more librarians
• Spend less on online resources
• Spend less time using resources
• Save money on staffing
• Better quality product being produced faster-
  again, firm goal is business units goal

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Presentation to Executive Mgmt
Get Their Attention This proposal will allow
the firm to save 300,000 annually and help make
custom research a better product which will
result in increased membership.
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Firm Strategy Changes, So Too Must the Business
Units
Strategy for doing better what we do today
changed based on client feedback. Business
environment, technology and industry changed
resulting in syndicated research being more
important to the member company.
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How Can the Library Help

• New focus on syndicated research
• Librarians became part of research team, attended
  brainstorming meetings, performed almost all
  secondary research
• higher level of work, more analytical
• Did custom research suffer?
• Did custom researchers suffer?

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Different Year, Different Business Environment..

• Again, firm strategy changed based on client
  feedback.
• publicly traded, thus answering to stock holders
• growth/increased revenues more critical
• firm had approx. 12 business units
• cross selling key to growth
• more attention to adding BUs

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Case Study- Professional Strategy

• doing better what I do today
• finding a unique way to enter a market or compete
  in a fundamentally different way
• foresight- dont fit the future to what I have
  today

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