Introduction
Every good strategy starts with a sound strategic analysis leading to a rich and shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities a business faces.
StratNavApp.com provides everything you need to achieve that.
The usual place to start your strategy is by understanding:
- your strengths and weaknesses,
- the opportunities and threats you face, and
- your competitive environment.
Tools and Frameworks
StratNavApp.com contains a large number of tools to help you to do this. They're all included in the Analysis quadrant of the Strategy Board.
These include:
- Business Model Canvas: identify and describe the key elements that make your business work. This is a great starting point for more detailed analysis. (Learn more)
- The Lean Canvas: especially for early-stage startups in the idea phase. (Learn more about the Business Model Canvas)
- SWOT: a quick, easy and almost universally recognised way to summarise your Strengths and Weaknesses, and the Opportunities and Threats you face. (Learn more about SWOT)
- McKinsey 7-S analysis: a more comprehensive way to identify your strengths and weaknesses as well as any inconsistencies in your capability across the 7 key dimensions of Shared Values, Structure, Systems, Style, Staff, Skills and Strategy. (Learn more about McKinsey 7-S)
- PESTEL analysis: identify the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal forces your business faces. (Learn more about PESTEL)
- 5 Forces analysis: understand the attractiveness of your industry and how to position yourself in it for maximum profitability. (Learn more about Porter's 5 Forces)
- Strategy Canvas: analyse your Competitors. Then analyse how they stack up against the Competitive Factors your customers take into consideration when choosing your product or service. Pull all of this information together in an attractive visual Strategy Canvas. This will show how you differentiate your offering from that of your competitors. (Learn more about the Strategy Canvas)
- BCG Matrix: understand the different strategies most appropriate for each of the different products or services in your portfolio. (Learn more about the BCG Matrix)
- Pareto Analysis: analyse how different products or services contribute to your profit margins. (Learn more about Pareto Analysis)
- Value Chain: analyse exactly how your business creates value using this familiar framework. (Learn more about Value Chain Analysis)
Of course, you don't need to use them all. Some will be more useful for your particular needs than others.
StratNavApp.com is repository-based. This enables you to build links between the different models, making your analysis more holistic. To create links between the models:
- Click on a card in one of the models.
- Scroll down the screen to where it says "Do Next".
- Select the type of content you want to link to.
- Start typing. The system will do an automatic lookup of any existing content to link to. Or you can press Enter to create new content.
Getting Started
There is not right or wrong approach to analysis. But, if you're not sure how to start your strategic analysis, we suggest that you follow these steps:
- Start with the Business Model Canvas.
- Once you completed it, click on each element on the Business Model Canvas in turn.
- Scroll down to where it says "Do Next" and select "Add related insights".
- Capture any known or suspected insights. These could be Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities or Threats related to that element on the Business Model Canvas.
- Then click on each of the insights you've just created. Enter as much detail about them as you can. Don't forget to check/set the various fields for:
- Internal versus external
- Positive versus negative
- Any other categorisations that are shown (these will be context-dependent).
- Once you're done, the system will have created some of the other models for you. Visit each of the SWOT, McKinsey 7S, PESTEL and Porter 5 Forces to double-check that everything makes sense. Fill in any missing insights.
- Identify your competitors and/or competitor categories.
- Identify the competitive factors which your customers use to choose between you and your competitors.
- Bring these together on a Business Model Canvas.
- Complete the Value Chain being particularly careful to highlight what is unique to your business.
We've presented these as a series of steps to follow in order. But don't be afraid to jump backwards and forwards through the process if you need to.