Research On The Application Of Strategic Planning Tools

This study presents one of the first attempts to empirically investigate the strategic planning tools and processes used by enterprises in the United Arab of Emirates(UAE).It is significant that enterprises are able to comprehend their internal and external environment in order to plan a strategy that ensures growth and long-range profit.Currently,with the rapid changing business environment,enterprises have to adapt to the changing market conditions.In order to become more competitive,enterprises have to be more adaptable and flexible otherwise they will run into difficulties and in the long-term they are supposed to disappear.Getting an internal perspective from outside it is not an easy job.It essentially requires the cooperative spirit from enterprises and thus this research concentrates on the procedures and techniques,which are related to the activity of strategic planning.A range of techniques and tools has been given for each type of analysis such as the portfolio analysis or strategic positioning.Consequently,two perspectives have been presented: first,all the sampled enterprises in terms of size;small,medium and large have been considered.Second,they have been divided into clusters where the results are shown by small and medium/large enterprises.With regard to the findings,it has been found the majority of the enterprises perform strategic planning once a year and time horizon set up for the strategic plans is 1-3 years.This activity is executed by top/senior management and the chief executive officer CEO still has an outstanding role.The most common techniques among enterprises in the UAE are: BCG matrix,Analysis of cost structures,Brainstorming,Mission statement and Competitor analysis.At the end,some of the enterprises proved to have their own tools which can be a good field for future researches.