Strategic Planning

What is Strategic Planning?

It is a set of goal directed actions that a firm takes to gain and sustain a competitive advantage in the market over the long haul. We do this by identifying a unique position that creates more value for your customers than your competition can. This approach will help you grow, earn superior profits and sustain your advantage in the midst of fierce competition and changing market conditions. If you want tools to help you respond to changes in the market, generate innovative ideas, and learn a process for creating strategic scenarios,

Transition Designs can help.

Who Benefits from Developing a Strategic Plan?

A variety of organizational structures benefit from planning their strategy:

  • Incorporated companies benefit from a strategic plan to help them focus on profitable growth.
  • Non-profits benefit from a strategic plan to help them achieve their community impact objectives.
  • Education institutions benefit from a strategic plan to increase impact of program offerings.
  • Government institutions benefit from a strategic plan to ensure effective use of public resources.
  • Healthcare companies benefit from a strategic plan to focus on clinical and service excellence.

Incorporated Companies

Strategy might be built around or lead to any or all of the following: new products; redefinition of key customer groups or market segments; differentiation of your brand; new core competencies; revenue growth via various approaches, including acquisitions, grants, and endowments; divestitures; new partnerships and alliances; and new employee or volunteer relationships.

Strategy might be directed toward becoming a preferred supplier, local supplier in each of your major customers’ or partners’ markets, low-cost producer, market innovator, or provider of a high-end or customized product or service. It might also be directed toward meeting a community or public need.

Non-Profit Organizations

Strategy might be built around or lead to any or all of the following: bringing value to stakeholders, enhancing community impact, improving service delivery, ensuring better outcomes, creating a culture of innovation, exploring opportunities to commercialize or expand reach, enabling partnerships, maintaining financial strength, ensuring research is translated to practice or creating awareness within community groups.

Education Institutions

Strategy might be built around or lead to any or all of the following: addition or termination of educational programs and services; services to new, changing, and special student populations; redirection of resources; modifications in instructional design; use of technology; changes in testing or adoption of standards; differentiation of your image or brand; new core competencies; geographic challenges; grants and endowments; research priorities; new partnerships and alliances; and faculty, staff, or volunteer relationships.

Strategy might be directed toward becoming a low-cost provider or a market innovator. It might also be directed toward meeting a community or public need.

Government

Strategy might be built around or lead to any or all of the following: enhanced public health and safety, meeting human and social community needs, ensuring economic vibrancy and employment, providing education and learning opportunities, cultivating the arts and vitality in the community, protecting natural resources, or improving government performance and effective use of public resources.

It can also focus on accountability measures such as increasing public confidence in service delivery, decision making, internal management and modernization of systems and processes.

Health-Care

Strategy might be built around or lead to any or all of the following: new health care services; redefinition of key patient and other customer groups or market segments; differentiation of your brand; new core competencies; revenue growth via various approaches, including acquisitions, grants, and endowments; divestitures; new partnerships and alliances; and new staff or volunteer relationships. Strategy might be directed toward becoming a preferred provider, a center for clinical and service excellence, a research leader, a low-cost provider, a market innovator, a provider of a high-end or customized service, or an integrated service provider. It might also be directed toward meeting a community or
public health care need.

What You Receive In Your Strategic Plan

As we work together to create a tailored plan for your organization, we will:

  • Outline your competitive strategy
  • Evaluate the organizational vision and mission
  • Identify areas of organizational competitive advantage
  • Identify what parts of the business are the most critical to success
  • Determine how sustainable your current approaches are over the long term
  • Identify areas of organizational vulnerability
  • Assess stakeholder needs
  • Gain insight into customer preferences
  • Outline your positioning in relation to key competitors
  • Assess market trends impacting business operations
  • Develop strategic scenarios, options for you to pursue
  • Conduct strategic decision making to determine the optimal path forward
  • Develop an implementation plan for the chosen strategy

Common Questions About Strategic Planning with Transition Designs

How Long Does the Process Take?

This process takes about six weeks for most organizations. Some clients prefer a workshop format, where all of their planning takes place in one day. Other prefer that Transition Designs complete their entire

What Are the Logistics?

We have developed a process-oriented structure where we meet once per week in an online format over Zoom. During this meeting, we review materials and training for a specific topic that we are focus on that week. In-between meetings, business leaders fill out templates from the training that week. These answers then get refined and filtered until they culminate in a strategic plan. Transition Designs is available to answer questions and support your organization along the way.

This strategic planning process is so effective because we partner with executives to complete the plan. The business executive brings the business knowledge, and Transition Designs provides the training and tools for strategic planning. This approach leverages the subject matter expertise of both parties and results in a high quality deliverable with a relatively quick turnaround time.

How Much Does It Cost?

The cost for the training, templates and planning materials is $5700. Our process oriented structure results in a greater value for our clients than had they engaged the services of a consulting team to complete the plan on their behalf.

The strategic planning process is also something that, after being taught once, can be executed year after year, maximizing your one-time investment and benefiting your organization year after year.

Client Testimonials

“I am referring the consulting and advising work performed by Dr. Melissa Francisco. She assisted with strategic planning, economic impact studies, research in market needs and potential competition. Recommendations were delivered on time, with high fidelity and were effective in helping us achieve our initial round of funding.” -Chester Kennedy, Founding Member, BRIDG


“Experience Kissimmee hired Dr. Melissa Francisco as part of a team to update our organization’s strategic plan. This involved surveying community partners, meeting with our Board of Directors and presenting findings to industry stakeholders including the Osceola County Commission. During the process I found Dr. Francisco to be very responsive and accessible. The feedback from our team and Board regarding the overall process and final plan was very positive.” -Misty Johantgen, COO, Experience Kissimmee


“As a part of developing our strategic plans, Osceola County has worked with various partners over the years, including a team that Dr. Melissa Francisco was a key component. These plans often involved significant research into County operations, market needs and potential competition for services. The research was useful in presenting a final product that our end users could understand and appreciate. In addition, I personally found her to be easy to collaborate with and professional.” -Donna Renberg, Assistant County Manager, Osceola County Florida


“I highly recommend Melissa Francisco and Transition Design Consulting. This year our company Alpha-Omega Training and Compliance (AOTC) reviewed our strategic planning process, conducted stakeholder and employee surveys, did an internal and external analysis, and culminated everything into a designed plan. Melissa was super helpful with encouraging me to take a step back from day-to day-emergencies (that consume my time) and spend time developing a plan for AOTC that will help us achieve our future growth goals. I’ve enjoyed the time invested into this project and look forward to future planning.” -Brian Barnett, VP, AOTC


I have had the pleasure of working on various projects with Dr. Melissa Francisco over the years, and she has proven to be an amazing asset to have on the team. She is a dedicated professional with the perfect balance of technical savvy and visionary foresight to bring about optimized results. She is exceptionally talented when it comes to strategic planning, process improvement, change management, and business performance – all the more impactful when combined with her background in Industrial Engineering. I highly recommend Dr. Francisco. She is a delight to work with and will help bring success to companies and individuals fortunate to have her on their team. “-Gloria LeQuang, Strategic Marketing and Community Relations


“Melissa follows a strategic planning process in consulting that leverages my AFI (Analysis, Formulation, Implementation) model, an industry best practice, and a data-driven approach. By skillfully incorporating tools such as the Value Chain Analysis, VRIO (resource-based view of the firm, and PESTEL/VUCA into her analysis for strategic planning client work, Melissa is uniquely positioned to deliver valuable research-based insights and actionable implementation steps. Melissa is focused, hard-working, and driven to achieve client results and exceed expectations. If you are looking for bespoke consulting services, working with Melissa is an excellent choice.” -Frank T. Rothaermel, Professor at Georgia State University

Are you ready to create your strategic plan?