Marketing concepts and applications

Marketing

First of all, the strategic initiatives need to be coordinated with the general vision of the organization and, more precisely, with the strategic objectives. The Director of Planning would first have to analyze what the strategic objectives are for the respective year or period of time and decide whether these initiatives work towards achieving those goals. For example, if one of the strategic objectives would have been to expand the activity of the organization, developing a new perinatal center would certainly make sense, as would expanding the hospital's ambulatory care presence in secondary service areas. If, however, the goal is to reduce costs, then a hospital-wide cost containment program makes more sense.

From this perspective, it seems that some of the strategic initiatives exclude each other. It is difficult to see, for example, how some of the development initiatives could still support the cost containment program. Most likely, the management will need to properly analyze the existing resources and capacities of the organization and decide whether the current situation of the organization requires a development initiative or whether cost reductions are much more necessary in order to be able to maintain the sustainability of the organization.

It is clear that a strategic analysis, as part of the corporate strategy that also includes strategic choice and strategic implementation is one of the important decision support tools to be used. The strategic analysis will take into consideration the values and objectives (the vision and strategic objectives previously mentioned), the organizational resources (both in terms of financial resources and human resources) and the environment, in this case the capacity of a development initiative to really have a significant impact on the community.

In the same category of decision support tools that can be used here is the strategic assessment model, which take into consideration three primary segments in the decision making process: the internal environment, the task environment and the general environment. While the internal and general environments are pretty clear in this case and have previously been discussed, primarily through the necessary balance between the organization's resources and its projected initiatives, the task environment considers some of the external factors that may have an influence, in this case potential legislative acts that can award more funding to hospitals etc.

There is probably another very important part of the analysis of these strategic initiatives: sustainability. Besides correlating the vision and strategic objectives with the strategic initiatives here presented, the decision makers will also need to analyze the existing resources and decide on whether the hospital has the capacity and resource to develop some of these initiatives. If not, the decision makers can also analyze whether some of these initiatives could still be supported from third parties. Different fundraisers could be used to gather funds for developing the perinatal center, for example, as could budgetary funds be used.