What are the most important differences between strategic planning and strategic business management?

Strategic planning is the key for better strategic business management.

Hello,

Strategic planning and strategic management (or strategic business management),

Researchers, authors and experts are in debate if they have the same meaning, some of them they consider them have the same meaning and they are faces for the same currency, and others said each terminology has its own details,

if we go back to the origin of the word strategy and how it was invented, we find it is connected with war and used to plan the tactics of the war (war arts), later on the call it strategic planning. this way of thinking was developed to a more wider use in business and they name it strategic management.

management scientist mostly agreed that strategic planning is one function or one of the tools that used in in strategic management process i.e. strategic planning is part and not the all of the whole process of strategic business management,

I hope that I have added some useful information to all,

Best Regards 

Strategic planning is an organizational management activity that is used to set priorities, focus energy and resources, strengthen operations, ensure that employees and other stakeholders are working toward common goals, establish agreement around intended outcomes/results, and assess and adjust the organization.  The purpose of strategic planning is to set overall goals for your business and to develop a plan to achieve them. It involves stepping back from your day-to-day operations and asking where your business is headed and what its priorities should be.  Developing a strategic plan might seem like an overwhelming process, but if you break it down, it’s easy to tackle. Here’s our five-step approach:  1. Determine where you are.  Conduct external and internal audits.  2. Identify what’s important. Focus on where you want to take your organization over time.  3. Define what you must achieve. Define the expected objectives that clearly state what your organization must achieve to address the priority issues.  4. Determine who is accountable. This is how you’re going to get to where you want to go. The strategies, action plans, and budgets are all steps in the process that effectively communicates how you will allocate time, human capital, and money to address the priority issues and achieve the defined objectives.  5. Review. Review. Review. It’s not over. It’s never over. To ensure the plan performs as designed, you must hold regularly scheduled formal reviews of the process and refine as necessary.  At least once in a quater.

A strategic plan is a wonderful thing. It can help you take your small business to places you never thought possible. If you haven’t already done so, take the time to lay out a strategic plan now. It will help keep your small business on track and you focused on the future.

Strategic planning is sometimes confused with strategy formulation, because strategic plan is constructed in this stage.

Both strategic management and strategic planning terms mean the same! The difference is that the latter one is more used in the business world while the former is used in the academic environment.

Importance of strategic planning

Requirement for sustained competitive advantage. Competitive advantage is what keeps great organizations ahead of their competitors

Views things from broader perspective. The other reason why the organizations don’t simply rely on their finances, marketing or operations functional areas to create competitive advantage is that managers of each area often view things only from their own specific angle[3], which is too narrow view for the whole organization to rely upon. Only the managers (e.g. CEOs or strategic planners) who see the whole picture of the company and its surrounding environments can make the decisions that bring the competitive advantage.

Facilitates collaboration. Nowadays, most companies involve middle managers of functional areas into the process of formulating strategic plan. Middle managers are the people who implement the strategies set out in a plan and if they aren’t involved in making the plan, then they aren’t so committed to support it.

Thus, strategic planning is used to achieve the competitive advantage and to integrate all the functional areas of the company by facilitating the communication between the managers of all levels.

Benefits

1. Defines a company’s vision, mission and future goals.
2. Identifies the suitable strategies to achieve the goals.
3. Improves awareness of the external and internal environments, and clearly identifies the competitive advantage.
4. Increases managers’ commitment to achieving the company’s objectives.
5. Improves coordination of the activities and more efficient allocation of company’s resources.
6. Better communication between managers of the different levels and functional areas.
7. Reduces resistance to change by informing the employees of the changes and the consequences of them.
8. Strengthens the firm’s performance.
9. On average, companies using strategic management are more successful than the companies that don’t.
10. Strategic planning allows the organization to become more proactive than reactive.

Limitations

Although strategic management brings many benefits to the company it also has its limitations:

1. The costs of engaging in it are huge.
2. The process is complex.
3. Success is not guaranteed.

Above are the reasons why small and medium enterprises are usually reluctant to have their own strategic departments.

Thanks for the invitation to share my opinion.

Sometimes we think that both these issues are the same and it may be when the organization is fined tuned to such a degree that almost every task is done almost perfectly! But in the less utopic world there is a difference between the two.

Strategic planning is the process of formulating a direction for an organization, while strategic management is the process of determining how this direction can be achieved. So the planning may be done in most companies but what may not be achieved in the best degree is the strategic management , because it is more complex and it takes the whole organization to be functioning well enough to succeed the goals set by the strategic planning.

Strategic Planning is a part of Strategic Business Management. So one is a component (Planning) and the other is a whole (Management)

Not much, they are parts of the same process.

Thanks for invitation,

Agree with the answer of Mr. Obaid.

Thanks 

I support my colleague Obaid's answer 

Strategic business management entails developing a vision, mission, setting goals & objectives, developing strategies, selecting appropriate strategies, implementing appropriate strategies, control, monitoring the business and evaluation of business performance OR planning, coordinating, controlling, organising, implementing, controlling & evaluation. 

Strategic planning involves setting goals & objectives & developing means of achieving them. It involves looking ahead & plotting future possibilities for the success of a business. 

Strategic planning is a subset of strategic business management.

Thanx for the invitation 

thanks

i agree with Celeste Ann