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Business strategy at a glance
Your business strategy is how you make sure you understand your business and your market, and respond with a plan for success. How will you make the most of your strengths? How will you stand out from competitors? How will you change your business to become more successful?
Our quick self-assessment tool will help you reflect on your understanding of business strategy and point you to the right content to continue building your skills.
Check out the topics and the interactive tools available in this section. Use the links or the navigation pane to browse through the pages and tools.
A good business strategy can take you from just about surviving to thriving. Find out what you’re already doing well and where you could improve your approach to business strategy.
At the end of this assessment you’ll get:
- a better idea of your strengths and weaknesses
- practical tips and tools
- links to expert advice.
5-10 minutes
Self-assessment: Strategy
Business strategy resources
Content and tools to help you plan and implement strategy
An introduction to business strategy
The right strategy gives you clear goals for business success, and connects your people and tasks to those goals.
Looking outwards at your market
See where you fit in the market. Follow four steps to find your ideal position among your competitors.
Looking inwards at your business
Identify where the value is in your business, where the costs are, and which business activities are most critical.
Reflect on a product, service or mix you provide. Identify the elements that provide value to your customers. Think about whether your product has any service elements, or whether your service has any product elements. You might identify new opportunities for your business.
Compare your business, product or service against competitors to see how you stand out. Reflect on where you sit in the marketplace in terms of price, performance and customisation. Depending on your position, we’ll help you identify some common opportunities and risks.
Reflect on whether you’re making the most of the resources in your business. Think about whether each resource is valuable, rare, hard to imitate, and fully used. Based on your answers, we’ll give you some tips to make the most of each resource.
Gather your insights as you learn about strategy . This worksheet will help you choose the right strategy for your business.
Your strategy statement is the first step in turning your strategy into action. It describes the objective, scope and advantage of your strategy .
Split your strategy into four categories and develop tasks and targets for each. This helps you implement and measure your strategy.
How we work with partners
We work with experts in the public and private sector to get best practice advice to help small businesses succeed. If you are interested in partnering with us to contribute content, please get in touch.