Purpose of The SBU Strategy Documents

Purpose of the SBU Competitive Strategy Document

The Strategic Business Unit (SBU) Competitive Strategy template document should be used by a single business, either a stand-alone business or a business unit within a larger corporation.

The SBU planning document should represent the most up-to-date thinking on the strategy of the business. It should be written by, or at least fully supported by, the person(s) responsible for the success of the business.

The Cover Page - The cover page format shown on the template page can be used by any business. In practice, the cover page is surprisingly important for two reasons. First, the quality of the printing on the top page is the first impression readers will have of the plan. Using a bold font suggests a bold plan. Second, the name(s) printed on the cover signal the political weight of the document. A strategic planner delegated to write the strategic plan should still seek to put, on the cover, the name of the person in charge of the business (such as the chief executive officer or the business unit manager).

The "Purpose of this Document" Page - explains to the reader that the purpose of the SBU Competitive Strategy document is to put forward the competitive strategy of the business. This page can also be used to describe the format of the strategy document and to list other relevant documents.

Document Format - From a logical viewpoint, the SBU template document is divided into two major parts. The first part presents an analysis of the industry as if it were developed by a business professor or Wall Street analyst. The second part of this SBU template document presents the competitive strategy of the business. For practical reasons, the design of the SBU template document incorporates a few modifications :

• At the beginning, an executive summary is included to highlight the key aspects of the competitive strategy. This addresses the practical issue that not all recipients of the SBU competitive strategy will have the time to read the whole document. Most CEOs and presidents of large corporations want each business unit to have a clear and thorough strategic plan, but they themselves often prefer to read just the executive summary.
• At the end of the SBU document a glossary and a listing of abbreviations are presented to help the reader with the terminology of the industry and the jargon of the various professional disciplines within the business.

Other Relevant Documents - Another goal of this page is to list other relevant documents that the reader should be aware of, both industry documents and other corporate documents. Industry documents may include recent or noteworthy textbooks that best describe the industry; industry reports from Wall Street industry analysts; industry surveys; and more. Other business unit and corporate documents often include marketing analyses; customer survey results; legal and tax documents; product user guides; advertising literature; annual reports; and more. In practice, listing all other relevant documents is helpful for the following reasons.

• Anyone involved in writing or reading the SBU Competitive Strategy document will have a clear sense that all relevant information known about the business and the industry is either in the strategy document itself, or is contained in one of the documents listed on this page (or the information does not exist).
• Just listing the other business unit and other corporate documents suggests how the other documents are linked or should be linked. For example, a business unit within a corporate division should plan within the context of the division's plan and within the context of the corporate plan.

The "Table of Contents" page - The purpose of the table of contents is to list the sections of the SBU Competitive Strategy document. Each section starts on a new page. so that is easy to customize by adding and deleting sections. The framework outlined by the table of contents should remain intact as much as possible. Maintaining the framework facilitates the process of building a strategic database of information simply because it is a structured repository for the information as it becomes available. It is important to know what one knows; and it is also important to know what one doesn't know. If you are the president or corporate strategic planner of the corporation and your goal is to get all business unit managers to develop a strategic plan, there will be a tremendous benefit to the corporation if the same basic table of contents is used for each business.

Caution: Because of the perceived effort required to adequately develop a business plan, a common mistake made by many companies, in a counter-productive effort to simplify the planning process, is to lump small yet distinct businesses together. This is a big mistake. It is far better to keep separate businesses separate, even if their strategic plan is only one page.

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Copyright 2008 Alan S. Michaels               Alan S. Michaels    All Rights Reserved.
Last modified:   Tuesday February 19, 2008