Kudler Fine Foods – Strategic Plan

In today’s highly competitive business environment, budget planning or forecast based planning methods are insufficient for business to survive. The firm must engage at strategic planning to clearly define objectives and built a strong internal structure in order to assess both the internal and external situation to formulate planning, implement the strategy, evaluate the progress, and make adjustment as necessary to stay on track. Strategic planning has a bad reputation.

People think of it as a laborious process to produce a document that will just languish on a shelf.

Many business managers consider strategic planning to be a waste of time. But these perceptions aren’t really accurate. A company needs a strategic plan for the same reason that a ship needs a rudder to steer it. Strategic planning should be an integral part of the business. In our case today, we will review the Kudler Fine Foods strategic plan in general.

Kudler Fine Foods was established in 1998 when Kathy Kudler fulfilled her vision of establishing her own gourmet food store.

Kathy had a passion for gourmet foods but found that her particular neighborhood just did not have a wide selection of products to choose from for the day to day meals. “Although she had no experience in operating a gourmet food shop” (Kudler Strategic Plan 2003), she believed that a one-stop shopping experience at a place with lots of variety and reasonable prices would be successful. Kudler Fine Foods, like many other businesses, has to contend with threats that influence their position in the industry.

Especially the forces model analyzes competitiveness and strategic planning to increase a company’s competitive advantage.

According to this, there are 5 major forces that influence a company’s success or failure in an industry. They are the threat of entry of new competitors, the power of suppliers, the power of customers, the threat of substitute products or services, and the rivalry among existing firms (Turban, Rainer, et al, 2003). All of those factors have forced KFF “Kudler Fine Foods” to step up.

They need to improve their quality and services in order to make their products more desirable than those of their competitors. To do this Kudler Fine Foods start offering gourmet foods at competitive prices, offers satisfaction guarantee, takes special requests, offers food and wine sampling, and is committed to getting the products in the store that their customers want. (Kudler Strategic Plan 2003) In any successful business there are four management functions, “planning and strategizing, rganizing, leading and controlling, and decision-making” (Gomez-Mejia ; Balkin, 2002), from the overall perspective Kathy Kudler seems having difficulty in controlling those four factors.

KFF should start to improve the business in order to get more efficiency prior to the business future growth. They should start improving the foundation of the business by involving a strong management in building or modifying the strategic plan, organizing, leading and controlling the business and to include long-range planning is to assist the business in establishing priorities and to better serve the needs of the stockholders.

A strategic plan must be flexible and practical and yet serve as a guide to implementing programs, evaluating how these programs are doing, and making adjustments when necessary. A strategic plan must reflect the thoughts, feelings, ideas, and wants of KFF and mold them along with the company’s purpose, mission, and regulations into an integrated document. The development of a plan requires much probing, discussion, and examination of the views of the KFF outlet managers who are partly responsible for the plan’s preparation.

However, more often than not, the development of the plan is less complicated than its implementation. Implementation, in essence, pulls a plan apart and diffuses it throughout an organization. Every outlet within the KFF business which is involved must then accept the plan, agree to its direction, and implement specific actions. In order to effectively and efficiently implement a plan, all individuals involved in its implementation must function as a whole or the plan is destined for failure.

Therefore, KFF strategic plan needs to include a mission statement, objectives, goals, and an action (or Implementation) plan. Mission Statement This is the agreed-upon statement by the organization and explains the reason for its existence.

It is necessarily broad to encompass the diversity within the business. The statement is not precise in its measurements nor does it need to be, but it does need to be periodically reviewed by the business to see whether it still encompasses all of the relevant activities of the business. Objectives The objectives are the areas of emphasis within the business.

Rather than specific statements with a specific goal, objectives state that the business plans to continue to do quality work in the following areas. These objectives or areas of emphasis need to be attained by discussion and review of the current activities as well as activities in which it would like to participate in the future. Goals These need to be both long-term and short-term goals, “i.

e. six months, one-year, three years, and ten-year” goals need to be set so that the strategy for reaching these goals can be outlined in the plan.

Most businesses recommend setting the long-term goals first and then setting short-term goals, those goals which can be reached as steps to attaining the long-term goal. Action Plan The action plan should be designed after the main goals and objectives have been set in order to attain the mission in a straightforward and measurable way. With an action plan, the goals themselves can be obtained.

Without the action plan, and the measures it entails, it would be impossible to implement the plan and measure its success. As a conclusion KFF has a good chance of continuing the positive cash flow.

All what the organization has to do is accept the fact that strategy essential in updated and secure substantial returns succeed by creating a connection between the store goals and the management team including the consumer’s lives. This will help the organization to move further in terms of future growth to different cities and states. References Kudler Strategic Plan 2003 – University of Phoenix – MGT/521 Course Material. Turban, E, Rainer, R.

K. , ; Potter, R. (2003). Introduction to information Gomez-Mejia, Luis R. Balkin, David B. (2002) Management 1e.

New York : The McGraw Hill Companies.