Development of an Entrepreneurial Small Business’ (Abler by Robomedika’s) Strategic Plan by Shortened Systematic Strategic Planning (SSP)—Case Study

As many sources exhort managers to “think strategically”, only a few addresses how to make this happen. Shortened Systematic Strategic Planning (SSP) consists of a pattern of step-wise procedure for straight-forward planning, and the fundamentals involved in any strategic planning project. The use of shortened SSP is more suitable for the development of strategic plans for smalland medium-size businesses. SSP has been applied to and tested on different businesses’ subject issue and has been generated by the composition of the cause-and-effect relations of them. The intention here is to provide a new perspective and benefit for the strategic planners by introducing this new systematic methodology and demonstrating its implementation on an entrepreneurial and new business called Abler. Accordingly, let shortened version of SSP easily understood and universally applied to any smalland medium-size businesses. You are guided how to identify in what circumstances you might use its specific tools and how to target them directly at achieving effective results. The data that are used in this case are fictitious and only help for this study. Though, the given case does not cover all the steps of a typical SSP and use all the recommended techniques, it still reflects the basics.


Investigating Environmental and Internal Conditions-Clarification of Current Status
The aim of the first section of SSP is to answer the question "where are we?". This requires a comprehensive status analysis. During and after status analysis, the internal strengths and weaknesses of the organization, and the positive and negative developments originating from the external factors are identified.

Internal Analysis
Internal status analysis begins with a brief history of the business. Therefore, the business should examine its past performance to isolate key internal contributors to favorable (or unfavorable) results.
Diagnosing a business' key strengths and weaknesses requires the adoption of a disaggregated view of the business. Examining the business across distinct functional areas (such as, overall management, human resources, operations/technology, marketing, finance and accounting) is one way to disaggregate the business for internal analysis purposes. The purpose is to identify the potential of the business taking into consideration its existing performance and problems.

Environmental Analysis
Environmental analysis considers the general trends in the world, changes in the environment in which the business operates and particularly the expectations of the group served by the industry.
Environmental analysis does not only identify status, but also lays the basis for future forecasts or creation of scenarios. While making these assessments, the global and domestic trends in the sector/sub-sector in which the organization operates are discussed.
Intention of environmental analysis:

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To determine the developments and trends in the macro economical (demographic, economical, judicial-political, technological, sociocultural) environment that affects the business and its industry at most. This review should primarily be conducted at global scale, and then at regional and country scales.
The effects of trends and developments within these variables on the industry are analyzed with respect www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ibes International Business & Economics Studies Vol. 1, No. 1, 2019 to customers', governments', financial institutions', suppliers', shareholders', and employees' points of view.

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To understand the powers that effect competition in the industry (new businesses, customers, suppliers, substitutes, competitors, government, financial institutions, etc.) (Porter, 1998). When one of these groups has a higher power, this will have negative implications for the industry, whereas a lower power will have positive implications.
When the industry changes significantly, it is frequently not because of one competitive force but because of changes to two or possibly three forces combining.

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To foresee the trends that these powers would create in the industry. Vernon (1979) stated that each industry passes through the phases of introductory, growth, maturity, and finally regression. The phase that the industry is in facilitates the estimation of impacts and trends of powers defined in competition analysis.

Comparison of Status and Identification of Competitive Advantages
The organization's strengths and weaknesses are compared with the key factors in the market development phases, capacities, and resources of main competitors and the industry's success factors, to identify competitive advantages. Figure 2 summarizes the development of a business profile (Pearce & Robinson, 2011).
A factor is considered a competitive advantage if it is something the business does (or has in the future capacity to do) particularly well relative to the abilities of existing or potential competitors. A firm gains competitive advantage by performing these strategically crucial factors for cheap or better than its competitors.

Identification of Strategic Objectives and Main Goals and Development of Alternative Strategies
The parameters constituting the assumed opportunities need to be laid down as strategic objectives and main goals. Strategic objectives are the conceptual results that the organization aims at achieving within a certain timeframe. Strategic objectives and main goals answer the question "what do we want to achieve?" Main goals are specific and measurable sub objectives specified for achievement of strategic objectives.
Main goals can be classified as financial and market goals, such as target markets, product range, sales volume and profitability for the planned period, regional concentration, etc.; and operational goals, such as organization, investment goals, labor turnover rate, environmental standards, technology and equipment choice, quality and performance standards, long-term capacity plans, etc.
It is necessary to analyze what should be done and how should they be done to attain opportunities and thus achieve goals, as well as to identify alternative strategies. Determination of a suitable strategy for a business begins in identifying the opportunities and risks in its environment. While evaluating the opportunities defined based on analyses conducted, various strategies we can implement come out Based on using both the techniques of Generic Competitive Strategies (Porter, 1998) and Components of Strategy (Ansoff, 1970), the corresponding Grand Strategy(ies) can be identified (Pearce & Robinson, 2011). For example; concentration, market development, product development, innovation, horizontal integration, vertical integration, joint venture, concentric diversification, etc.

Evaluating Strategic Plans and Selecting the Best
Here you select the strategic plan most suitable for your organization. To do this, you make an evaluation of the alternatives based on qualitative factors (Muther, 2011). For example; synergy, competitive advantages, flexible organization structure, market orientation, critical success factors, etc.
Even if the best strategy is selected, contingency plans are still necessary for the selected strategy in a risky environment. A sensitivity analysis needs to be conducted (Keown & Martin, 2001), taking into consideration the possibility that basic assumptions and parameters do not come out as expected and the measures considered to be taken in this respect need to be identified.

Implementation Plan and Control
The implementation plan is a tool that gets strategic plans underway. The implementation plan required to be created to answer the question "how can we reach our target destination?" in the systematic of strategic planning must be coherent with the whole of strategic plan.
This is the step when action plans are prepared to identify by whom, how, and when the strategy created to achieve strategic objective and goals will be implemented within the business. This step also involves the preparation of budgets for utilization of resources required for the realization of action plans.

Result-Abler by Robomedika
They will create an innovative brand and establish a company that designs and produces innovative medical machinery. The company will touch patients' lives and make life easier for handicapped people.
The brand is Abler, which will be the innovative and new generation wheelchair and will be designed by Robomedika engineers. Their vision is being the best in everything they do. Serving people with an excellent care and high quality. Their mission is to carry health assistance to a better position and making life easier for patients. analyzed).

Competition Analysis
Based on competition analysis that helps us to analyze the status of the existing firms, threats of new companies, and the competitive power of customers and suppliers, shown in Figure 7, statuses of competitive forces are obtained, and they are shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5. The equity needed to enter the industry Ability to reach channel of distribution Cost advantage related with experience Barriers to enter the industry The share of the customer in the whole sale Potential of production of the products by integration    Table 1 show the business history and accordingly the strengths and weaknesses of the firm based on a functional approach.

Competitive Advantages, Success Factors, Weaknesses
Ottobock is a German company dominating the industry as a world market leader. They not only have great financial power, but also have an army of design engineers giving them the very best product designs and high-quality new products. Their key vulnerabilities seem to be their prohibitive costs and high profit appetites which lead them to soaring prices.
Medica 2000 is the biggest Turkish company in medical machinery industry. They are mainly focused on mass production of regular wheelchairs. Their sales numbers are quite high, but the main reason of this success is their great financial power and the lack of competition in the Turkish market.     Based on events 1 and 2, governments worldwide increase their budget for health-care and social security systems that increase the size of medical machinery market. In addition to this progress, economic growth also improves the sales and profitability.
 Based on event 3, Turkish government gives high incentives to local start-ups in the medical field.
Based on events 5 and 6, increased €/TL parity and the restrictions on low-quality Chinese products, Turkish brands may have best price/performance ratios that may help them in both local and global competition.
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Negative scenarios:  Based on event 7, if Turkey starts exporting to China, transportation companies will be able to find return loads easier for their containers. This less likely case will decrease the transportation costs which may be a threat for Turkish medical machinery companies.
 Based on event 8, new player means more competition. Russia currently is not active in medical machinery field; but if they give importance to this field, it may have a negative effect on especially Turkish companies. Source: Author 2015.

Business Opportunity
High profitability and fewer players may point out the attractiveness of the medical machinery market, but high R&D expenses and wide distribution channels require a great amount of capital for investment.
So, the market is quite attractive for financially powered big players but quite risky for start-ups.
On one side, there are high-tech global giants and on the other side, there are low-cost Chinese companies. It is not easy to compete with any side, and entry barrier to market is quite high.
As Turkey does not have a developed electronics industry, it needs to purchase 70% of inputs from other countries, which makes Robomedika dependent on factors that they cannot control. Backward vertical integration is necessary, but it is not easy to realize.
The first positive scenario can be their Big Bang, in which market attractiveness is quite high and Robomedika's product performances, costs, technical, and nontechnical competencies and management skills can help them take advantage (Table 5) of this opportunity. Figure 10 shows the Big Bang as a business opportunity, based on the competitive advantages of the firm that can be used for catching the probable positive scenarios that may happen for the industry.

Strategic Objective
Based on the determined opportunity of Abler by Robomedika, the following objective is set. "Touch to patient's life".
They will focus on creating more value for their customers through innovative solutions and comfort.
Their products should deliver better performance to their customers and provide superior health. Being innovative in the industry helps them to take place in the market. They should act as an entrepreneur by creating value and earning trust from their customers.

Main Goals
 50 units in 2013;  0.5% of the Turkish wheelchair market in initial phase (approx. 500 units annually); Table 6 shows the differentiation focusing as a strategy. They will use unique technology, features, channels, and customer services. They will offer physical benefits to their customers with lots of unique features. Also, they will focus on a relatively narrow market segment and a buyer group.

Main Strategies
They will bring specific features and advantages to the product. Thus, for marketing innovative products, they should use marketing tools (e.g., by attending local fairs and advertising in industrial magazines). The major jump for the sales will be by organizing a local dealer network, in which every single dealer should have an annual minimum purchase limit and meet some basic showroom requirements.

Discussion
The aim of Systematic Strategic Planning (SSP) is to force a consider the future and therefore provides an opportunity to influence the future, or assume a proactive posture, to provide better awareness of needs and environment, to help define and focus on the objectives of the organization. SSP-shortened version consists of a pattern of six steps for straight forward planning, and the three fundamentals (competitive advantages, scenarios and strategies) involved in any strategic planning project. The use of shortened SSP version is more suitable for the development of strategic plans for small-and medium-size businesses.
SSP has been applied to and tested on different businesses' subject issue and has been generated by the composition of the cause-and-effect relations of them.
Here, we have provided a new perspective and benefit for the strategic planners by introducing the newly generated shortened version of SSP and demonstrating its implementation on an entrepreneurial and new business called Abler by Robomedika. This will help SSP users to easily understand and apply this new methodology to any small-and medium-size businesses' strategic planning project.
Though, the given case did not cover all the steps of a typical systematic strategic plan and use all the recommended techniques, it still reflected the basics. Some of the special working forms, in the forms of key documents and output, were used in applying the techniques in each step of the SSP pattern on the given case.