Comprehensive Analysis Methodology for Business Planning

Introduction

This Book’s title is ‘Critical Analysis and Architecture for Strategic Business Planning’, and an architecture cannot be designed to represent the business structure without critical analysis of all the significant elements of the business to ensure accuracy and relevance. However, because the architecture is required for strategic business planning, the analysis must also look outward from the company to determine what external factors impact the organisation.

The investigation for a suitable methodology took a dual approach, using the normative research methodology to provide the overarching research framework to investigate the literature for the area of concern. The search for difficulties and omissions was combined with noting best practice tools and techniques from business research and information systems analysis to provide a methodology for the solution development. The development of the proposal is based significantly on linking existing constructs and theories for business analysis into a single cohesive method. The focus in the literature search comprised an assessment of the role of management in business analysis, planning and development and includes appraisals and discussions about tools and techniques for business research and analysis. The methods from information systems analysis were examined for techniques that might prove helpful in the development of a solution.

Reviewing the whole of the business and the external factors impacting the organisation requires the analysis to be comprehensive and critical. The methodology for seeking competitive advantage follows the dynamic capability of the subjectivist approach to the resource-based view (RBV). The methodology comprises the critical analysis guided by the knowledge management structures and the development of the architectures required to assist the managers making the strategic decisions.

Originally the resource-based view looked only internally to the organisation “The resource-based view (RBV) concentrates on concepts internal to a firm and disregards the world outside, whereas the industry view neglects internal antecedents and consequences”, which is recorded by (Gellweiler, 2018). However that early RBV approach has been extended with later opinions about dynamic capabilities and the subjectivist approach as mentioned previously and Gellweiler’ paper “combines most influential concepts on firm resources and industrial forces to a complementary picture for strategic positioning” (2018), which is the approach used by the methodology proposed by this chapter.

Knowledge management has at the core of the application the requirement to know what knowledge is available to the organisation and where it can be found. Chapter 2 reviewed the importance of information and the requirement to determine what information and its extension to intelligent knowledge which is needed to acquire competitive advantage. Therefore any methodology to rsearch and analyse the business situation will require knowledge management to be embedded with the methodology and requires the “ability of organizations to realize economic value from their collection of knowledge assets as well as their assets of information, production distribution, and affiliation” (Gold, Malhotra, and Segars, 2001). Knowledge management needs to be adopted by the organisation at the highest level “knowledge management, which is an institutional systematic effort to capitalize on the cumulative knowledge that an organization has (Serban and Luan, 2002)

The research and analysis methodology is focused on the intersection of the internal resources with the external factors to select choices for optimal competitive advantage. It is subjective in approach as the value of changes are subject to the interpretation of the staff and managers and dynamic as the valuation might change as circumstances change. A reference architecture model would be a valuable mechanism to help guide the implementation of this complex project. “A Reference Model (RM) or reference architecture is a conceptual framework to identify the major elements that comprise a concept and to show at a general level how these elements are related to each other” (McKee, 2018, p.78).