A business strategy can be defined as a set of planned actions or decisions that will help achieve a business owner or manager’s goals. This will likely be an entrepreneur looking to grow their business and achieve commercial or career success.

So, in this article, we will explore business strategies further and also take a look at the Value stream map.

Levels of Business Strategy

It is considered that three levels of business strategy exist to think about. These levels are functional level, business level, and corporate level.

At the bottom of a company’s hierarchical pyramid will be the functional level strategy. This will be one developed by a first-line manager or possibly a supervisor who delegated the task. It will amount to decision-making at an operational level and likely relate to production and marketing.  Also, things like research and development and human resource issues will be covered by strategies at this level.

Immediately above the fuctional level will be the business-level strategy. These are for the general managers to work on. They will be responsible for converting a vision into a solid strategy that will form the very foundation of the company’s overall aims.

So, at the peak of a company’s pyramid will be its corporate-level strategy. This will be a strategy that is integrated, action-oriented, and the most long-term of the strategies. Only the top management will formulate such a plan. It will be board-level and include discussions about diversification or future investment, which may relate to takeovers or mergers that a company is looking to get involved in.

Value Stream Map

A value stream map will view the entire flow process to ensure that a company is achieving the best possible results from its maximum efforts. This is assuming maximum efforts exist. If they do not, a value stream map will identify that.

All businesses will want to check how effective a strategy is for them and it is the value stream map that does that. It is an important part of the strategic process and something of a monitoring technique in this respect.

This approach will illustrate the current state of a company and so identify any gaps. These can then be worked on by management from whichever level of strategy they relate, whether it be functional, business, or corporate.

An example of value stream mapping is when we consider inventories. That is to look at their size, type, and cycles. Changes over time with machinery processes, batch sizes, shifts worked, and downtimes can be covered. It is all about achieving maximum efficiency through cutting waste, whatever type of business you have. You would find these inefficiencies from adding the data from a particular process to the data boxes within your value stream map.

Consulting All Staff

So, as you have now perhaps discovered, a business strategy can be mapped. Then this will help all the areas of a business looking to benefit from streamlining. Each manager or supervisor can tap into what has been produced and then follow the strategy to best effect. It is about all staff working together to achieve the right result in the end. This will benefit the company because of increased profit, and the customer that receives a better service.

To conclude, we only have to know of the existence of value stream maps to make a start towards improving our business strategies. We can allow a professional firm experienced in this to guide us through such a process to ensure that we get it right and it proves most effective. We do not necessarily already have the skills within our company to execute the effective strategy and there is no shame in calling upon others to provide outside assistance that goes beyond the expertise of the current workforce. It can work out more cost-effectively than employing someone especially to train everyone in producing strategies at all levels. Computer software can help us too, and the companies providing it can provide the training in various ways. This can be through written or digital manuals or online video demonstrations.