Strategic Planning
The Principals at BLMC have been doing strategic planning for clients for over 30 years…first with the BCG / McKinsey / GE approach, later with the concepts of Strategic Intent developed in the early 90’s. Our methodology includes a business environmental analysis, competitor analysis, internal resource analysis, product operating mode, strategy development, financial plan development, and operational plan development. Following is a brief description of the activities that take place under the major strategy development sections.

Business Analysis
Micro-environmental Analysis:
The purpose of micro environmental analysis is to describe, analyze, and better understand the external world with which the client must do business. It is intended to encompass the broad areas which deal with: The Market and its characteristics; The Industry and its characteristics; The Competition and its characteristics; and The Customers and their characteristics.

Macro-environmental Analysis:
The purpose of macro environmental analysis is to describe, analyze, and better understand the impact which government, the economy, and changing social attitudes will have on the client, its products, the market, and the industry during the planning horizon.

Competitor Analysis
The purpose of the competitor analysis methodology is to analyze each major competitor in sufficient detail so as to be able to re-construct the strategies that the competitor is pursuing. This is not an easy task. Some competitors are small and privately held; and, therefore, information is difficult to come by. Other competitors don't have a clearly articulated strategy; and, therefore, the task becomes one of determining what they are doing, which becomes their implied strategy. Other competitors say one thing and are doing something else. Regardless of the competitor's sophistication in formulating and implementing a logical and consistent strategy, we help our client understand their major competitors and how they think and act.

Internal Resource Analysis
The purpose of this section is to objectively assess the strengths and weaknesses of the client relative to the leaders in the industry where the client competes. The most difficult task in preparing this analysis is to maintain objectivity. There is a tendency to temper the degree of the weaknesses and to stretch the degree of the strengths. The concern is not with the fact that a business has weaknesses and vulnerabilities; this is normal and is expected. The concern is whether they are adequately understood so that a given strategy's success will not be contingent on a weakness and so that necessary action can be taken to strengthen weaknesses which are required for success.

Product Operating Mode
The purpose of the product operating mode is to synthesize all the strategic elements associated with Environmental Analysis, Competitor Analysis, and Internal Resource Analysis into an assessment of the attractiveness of the industry and Strength of the client’s position within that industry for each of the client’s major product lines This summarization results in the assignment of one of three possible product operating modes to the product line

• Invest Grow
• Maintain Selectivity Invest
• Maximize Cash

Strategy Development
The purpose of the strategy development section is threefold:

• To prioritize the opportunities, threats, strengths, and weaknesses identified earlier in terms of what is required for success.
• To formulate objectives which will respond to the most important priorities?
• To develop strategies as to how objectives will be realized.

The data gathered and analyzed in earlier sections (Business Environment, Competitor Analysis, and Internal Resource Analysis) highlighted certain facts and assumptions about the present and the future; which, depending on how they are handled, will present advantages to the client and its products or will have a negative impact. The next step in strategy development is to translate the prioritized actions into objectives. Objectives are specific statements as to what will be accomplished. They include what the end result will be and when the end result will be realized. This step in the process represents a transitional bridge between prioritized action statements and the actual formulation of strategies.

Financial Plan Development
As part of the strategic plan, we convey the expected financial results of the strategies that have been proposed. This includes proforma income statements, balance sheets and cash flows. The objective here is to determine the strategic alternatives with the best overall financial impact.

Operational Plan Development
This section contains a description of the programs and action plans that will be used to accomplish the strategies selected. By definition, strategies are very broad, general types of statements. They conceptually indicate what will be done, but the details necessary for effective implementation are left to the operational plan. These details are frequently referred to as tactics. The operational plan is prepared on a functional basis; and typically contains:

• Marketing Programs
• Manufacturing Programs
• R & D/Engineering Programs
• Administrative Programs (i.e., personnel)

Supporting Methodologies
Quality Systems Strategy Development:
A methodology to reform a company’s quality systems into a first pass yield, quality assurance structured, operator driven approach. This strategy moves away from the philosophy of inspecting quality into the product and moves toward the process and assuring that the process requirements are being met. This strategy supports ISO 9000 requirements.

Economic Modeling:
The development of models based on stochastic or deterministic methods to describe a business process, a market response, or the valuation of a product offering in terms of customer savings. BLMC partners with EconomicPath in developing complex business models for pricing or shareholder value determination.

Product Portfolio Analysis:
A methodology first developed by McKinsey and modified by BLMC to be more in line with our client’s needs. The methodology focuses on the product horizon segmentation and how they are managed. We provide a detailed analysis of when product offerings contribute to the revenue and income statement as a function of time and allocation of resources. This analysis is used as part of the Financial Plan development section of our Strategic Planning process.

Service Management Strategies:
This is a complex but complete methodology that allows product focused companies to move to a service based focus, where the customer’s needs and sense of success drive the product offerings. We have helped many of our clients, who do business in a highly volatile market environment, and wish to increase the revenue from service offerings, to minimize the effect of the market on bottom line profits.