fourinsight ? Real-Time Planning: Strategic Planning's Best Friend

by Cat Fraser

Yesterday I was asked a question by a client that prompted this blog post: ?what do you mean by Strategic Planning??

It is still a good and very valid question, as in my experience people come at this practice from lots of different angles, processes and models which makes for a mix of ideas and egos wanting their own stamp on it as the next Drucker or Kotler.

My ideas are also changing, partly down to the open-ness and accessibility of courses across the pond (through iTunes University, I am currently a virtual student at Cranfield, Harvard and Duke ? to name just a few of the Strategy, Social Business and Management tutorials I plug into regularly!), but also down to the disruption real-time data is having on brand strategy.

As University business courses have taught us, Strategic Planning has been embedded in the design process for Advertising and Branding Agencies. Now however the younger Media Agencies, ?Social Media Agencies and Digital Agencies are also now accepting that they need Planning roles to ensure their work is rooted in insight.

This is great, but often they try to short-cut and tag on ?Strategy? as part of an Account Manager?s role to save cash. I?m not convinced this works ? strategy works best when it is outside of all the day-to-day which is fundamentally the Account Manager?s existence. (Stepping away from it all and thinking long-term, is a hard task when you have deadlines piling up and your mind is in a million places ? and I speak from experience). I therefore strongly assert that Strategy should be separated as?it requires a different type of person, skill-set and problem solving technique.

However despite my love for Planning, I can also see its downfall.

An Account Manager has the ability to react to a client situation and change strategic course to protect or optimise activity at any given moment ? and a Brand Manager also needs to be able to do the same. However being restricted by the confines of Strategy can prevent creativity and scope of what they can/ cannot do, often at the most critical, high-profile moment that the brand faces.

This is particularly true for Social Media crisis moments, where quick thinking is paramount and however useful the Strategic Planning was that got the ?attention of a global public in the first place, it is now redundant. Influencers have taken hold of an issue and are rapidly un-doing costly brand work, which traditional research methods would take far too long to investigate.

Consequently, those responsible with the day-to-day are left to manage the Strategy with no time for pre-testing, testing and post-testing that Strategic Planning advocates.

This is the new reality that I feel Strategic Planning faces and a key challenge for Social Business.

Fourinsight therefore views Real-Time Planning as Strategic Planning?s much-needed companion ? together the two work hand-in-hand, feeding continuous insight and strategy from Social Media Intelligence and other real-time data to ensure Strategic Planning and the rest of the organisation are continually up-to-date and their strategies are on-par with what the rest of the world is thinking.

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Moreover, Real-Time Planning offers continuous feedback on Strategic Ideas so Strategic Planning can be tasked with designing and delivering the Strategy that best fits the organisation ? without waiting for lengthy research programmes to feedback or out-of-date market reports.

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The Fourinsight Real-time Planning Reports use a simple three step model:

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We work closely as a partner to our Agency and Brand Strategy Clients?to devise the necessary Strategic Lens to view Social Media data, whilst ensuring that information being fed back is always actionable,?accountable?and valuable.

I am confident this model will develop over time, but I feel the key is to keep it simple so that the focus is on the data, its manipulation and moulding into business actions for Short-Term and Long-Term Strategy ? ?which should then be fed back into the Strategic Planning process as we know it in a continuous cycle of refinement and sense-checking.

To find out more about Fourinsight?s Real-Time Planning Reports contact cat(at)fourinsight.com

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