Just like any other business, for an e-commerce company to grow and succeed in the short, medium, and long term, it needs plans with goals (see article on KPIs ) for three areas, which we call strategic, tactical, and operational planning. Learn more below!
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STRATEGIC, TACTICAL AND OPERATIONAL PLANNING
Next, we'll see what each of these plans entails. To illustrate this process, let's suppose you own an e-commerce tourism business . In that case, here's what the following would look like:
Strategic Planning (SP):
Strategic Planning (SP) is what the entrepreneurs who founded or are in charge of the company—more precisely, you in this example—develop and implement to give direction to the business. It derives from the Mission, Vision, and Values , that is, the Organizational Culture.
Let's say your tourism e-commerce business has the following organizational culture :
- Mission: To offer rest and leisure experiences with a high standard of quality for our customers.
- Values: Receptive communities are important to us; Sustainability is an obligation for us; The well-being of tourists is our daily obsession.
- Vision: Become the largest tourism company in the city of São Paulo by 2022.
Based on the objective established in the Vision, you, as the e-commerce owner, will develop a PE. To do this, you must perform an analysis of economic scenarios. You must adjust investments in each department of your business and establish an action plan that shows how your company will act in different scenarios in general.
Tactical Planning (TP):
As the owner of the Tourism e-commerce, you will transmit the EP guidelines to your immediate subordinates, that is, to the department administrators, who will each create a PT.
Therefore, the PT has specific goals (based on the PE guidelines) for each department. These goals will have a medium-term completion period, usually 6 months to 1 year.
Operational Planning (OP):
Administrators will transmit PT's guidelines to their e-commerce technicians and operators, who, in turn, will dilute PT's medium-term goals into short-term objectives that must be established in the context of the PO.
These short-term goals are, therefore, those that must be met daily or weekly by the Tourist Guides and also by the salespeople, butlers, cleaners, accountants and other employees at the most operational level of your company.
It is worth remembering that when the Vision of your e-commerce, which is the main goal of the PE, is reached within a period of 5 years (in 2022), it must be realigned with a new long-term objective, which will also require a realignment of the EP, PT and PO.
One final fact on this subject: in Brazil, 25% of online stores have only 1 employee (source: 3rd National Online Retail Survey ), which means that this employee (who is also the owner) will have to implement all three plans simultaneously.
