Planning Processes

In today’s exceedingly competitive environment, forecast-based planning or budget-oriented planning techniques are inadequate for an agency to prosper and survive. Public, nonprofit, and private agencies must employ deliberate planning that unmistakably identify the objectives and evaluate both the external and internal circumstances. Agencies must execute the plan and assess the development, and make necessary adjustments in order to stay on course.
The planning process of private agency, for instance, generally integrates: formulating mission and objectives; environmental scanning; plan formulation; plan implementation; and evaluation and control (Quick MBA). The mission statement expresses the business image of the agency, including its unchanging purpose and values, in addition to innovative visionary objectives that direct the agency’s search of future opportunities.
The environmental scan includes the internal examination of the agency, examination of its industry, and external macro-environment (Quick MBA). Given the data, the agency should match the opportunities that it has identified to its own strengths, while dealing with its external threats and weakness. Eventually, selected approach is essentially executed by means of procedures, budgets, and programs.

This process involves management of the agency’s resources as well as encouragement of the staffs to realize objectives. The implementation of the plan has to be monitored and adjusted if necessary. In the evaluation and control process, the agency must identify the parameter to be determined and the intended values for those parameters, so that it can necessarily carry out the measurements. Then, it has to evaluate the determined outcomes to the pre-defined standard and make the required changes (Quick MBA).
The preceding process is most appropriate to planned management at the business unit level of private agencies, and it is most appropriate for stable environments. With appropriate planning process, an effective and organized response is expected; and that is the fundamental purpose of planning in private agencies is all about. Reference Quick MBA. (n. d. ). The Strategic Planning Process. Retrieved February 20, 2009, from http://www. quickmba. com/strategy/strategic-planning/