Corporate Strategy: The Ladder for Strategic Ascendancy

With the ever increasing B2B sales and rapidly expanding global network, organizations today face a tough challenge  dominating the competition and gaining substantial market share. Moreover to answer questions like “Where are we now?, Where do we want to be?, and How do we get there?”, companies require a concrete strategy to help comprehend and answer these questions at hand. These multifaceted problems requires the senior management of the companies to work in tandem to create and define “Corporate Strategy”, that helps address the ever increasing challenges of the corporate competition.

Corporate Strategy defined by the company’s senior management team are guiding principles for the organization as a whole which takes into consideration an assessment of the existing capabilities of the company and external opportunities and threats to the business. Thus formulation of a company’s Corporate Strategy requires inputs from multiple stakeholders, particularly senior management who are well aware of the strengths and weakness of the organization.

To device a proper Corporate Strategy most companies use existing documentation regarding their Corporate Product Strategy, Corporate Marketing Strategy, Corporate Operations Strategy, Corporate Finance Strategy, and Corporate Human Resource Strategy. These documents are integrated to help define a coherent Corporate Strategy. The level and complexity of documentation for these strategies vary depending on the size of the company and the breadth of its product portfolio and geographic reach.

Many companies execute strategic planning exercises at appropriate and specific time intervals like once or twice a year to arrive at a corporate strategy. This process helps ensure that leadership team has coherently defined goals and strategies that align with the overall strategic goals of the organization.

Corporate Strategy is often defined at a company level; but strategy can also be formulated at lower levels depending on the size and complexity of the organization. For example, the Corporate Strategy for an entire company can be divided into strategies for each business unit or geographic region and then divided further into specific product or brand strategies for each product or brand in a defined geographic region. The Product or Brand Strategy is the lowest level of this hierarchy.

Corporate Strategy thus acts as a benchmark for the company to execute future plans by carefully assessing it internal and external capabilities and helps inundate actions that aid in achieving overall targets and goals.