Planning is the basic function of management which begins with a goal that the organization wishes to achieve. To achieve the goal or target, planning helps a lot. This planning may be comprehensive or limited in scope. Planning may be of any form or style in practice depending upon the situation. The form or style of planning varies as per the nature of the organizations and their needs. However, to make the study and work easy planning can be divided into two groups: strategic planning and operational planning.
1. Strategic Planning
Strategic planning is a long term perspective planning which defines the broad goals and objectives fro the entire organization. It also decides the policies which will guide the organization in its pursuit of these goals. Strategic planning is defined and prepared by high-ranking managers in which organization's service to the society, the level of competitions, need of additional lines of services, impact of technology, politics and social changes or factors and other uniqueness are considered and dealt. Strategic planning is more concerned with policy matter and future directives than that of predicting future operations. However, it helps the manager to meet the future contingencies by providing opportunities to correct mistakes.
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2. Operational Planning
Operational planning can be known as the implementing planning or tactical planning because it contains details of its future day to day actions. In it, a scheme, a detail action plan or operational directives are prepared which involve deciding specially how the corporate resources will be used so that organization's goal could be achieved. To achieve the goal, it identifies the major activities. For which, it deals with what should be the levels of our operation for the period? How should we adjust our marketing strategies? What should be our short-term financial and personnel needs? It clears that strategic planning tires to answer that where re we now? and where do we want to go? and operational planning answer how do we get there?
