Evaluating Your Internal Business Capabilities

Every business has internal elements that must be analyzed when you're doing strategic planning.  You need to know how every area is operating now so that you understand where you’re starting when you’re building your plan.

There are two main categories of these internal elements.  

• Strategic (vision, strategy, structure)

• Operational (people, systems, processes)

After gaining an understanding of the internal business capabilities, you can begin to evaluate your situation.  Within each area, you’ll want to identify how strong or weak your business is.  You may find that your strategic areas are really strong, but your operational areas are weak. Or, perhaps, you might find that there are really strong and really weak areas throughout.  Regardless of what the final outcome is, having a clear glimpse of where things are now will give you the insight you need to build a strategic plan that will strengthen your business.