Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is the process of defining where an organization should go and then making the decisions to get it there. In order to determine where it should go, the organization needs to understand its current status and then lay out the steps that will get it to its goal.

Detailed Assessment

When Unlimited Priorities works with an organization to develop a strategic plan, we start with a detailed assessment of all aspects of the current operation and follow it with by collecting feedback from the market on how best to shape future directions. Development of a successful plan entails an integrated and multi-faceted process and touches many parts of the organization. It is impossible to plan future steps without understanding the history of the product and approach and the current environment. The kinds of questions examined during this assessment include: What is the current workflow? Who are the current vendors? What is the current IT infrastructure, including data bases, servers and indexing systems? How is the content made available to end users, metasearch and discovery tools? How is the web site maintained? What do Google Analytics tell us about the website and what is the current SEO model utilized? How is content collected/created? Who are current distribution partners? Are there potential cost saving opportunities that will not affect the quality of today’s product? What are the current branding, marketing, sales and pricing models? What are the best practices currently used for social networking?

Competitive Landscape

Unlimited Priorities assesses the competitive landscape by identifying potential partnership opportunities, reviewing available pricing models and querying potential clients in marketplace. These might include publishing companies, content aggregators or academic information suppliers. We review publicly available materials (brochures, websites, product reviews, articles and announcements) to confirm the competitors’ products to be reviewed and to provide a base for the subsequent analysis of product strategies. Product information is reviewed and analyzed for overlap/comparability with competitor approaches.

Unlimited Priorities conducts in depth telephone interviews with selected customer decision makers in order to gain perspectives on competitors’ different approaches to marketing. These interviews are used to confirm how strategies described by competitors are being received in the marketplace, uncover perceived strengths and weaknesses and potentially identify specific opportunities for competitive advantage vs. existing packaging and pricing approaches.

The Strategic Plan

Drawing from our findings from these activities and working with the members of the organization, Unlimited Priorities prepares and present and action plan for going forward that includes an in depth strategic plan covering all areas analyzed: Product/Production, Workflow, IT Environment, Social Networking, Branding, Marketing, Sales, Pricing, Licensing, Distribution and Partnerships.