Zhuravel Y. Strategic planning at food enterprises

The thesis is devoted to theoretical and methodological foundations of strategic planning at food enterprises and to substantiation of practical recommendations on its improvement. The work examines the scientific approaches to defining of the notion «strategic planning» and pays attention to the process of forming of enterprise development strategy, which should constitute a controlled and informed process of thinking. Major factors of transition to strategic planning at enterprises are defined and its major functions and principles are outlined. The fact that the process of strategic planning at enterprises is an instrument to make management decisions in the sphere of economic activity is emphasized. On the basis of strategic planning process examination the links between functional elements of strategic planning founded on the use of instruments and methods of strategic management are determined. Hence, the problem of information maintenance and selection of the methods of internal and external information processing is emphasized. The origin of internal and external information and the ways of its use are substantiated. Global experience of strategic planning at enterprises is analyzed and the most notable models of strategic planning used by foreign enterprises that can be extensively introduced into the practice of domestic ones are outlined. This includes: Boston Consulting Group model, General Electric / McKinsey model, Shell / DPM competitive model and Arthur D. Little model. Conducted analysis indicates that food enterprises occupy significant share in the structure of industry of both Lvivska oblast and Ukraine in general. It should be mentioned that food enterprises have substantial achievements in export activity. Despite the loss of Russian market and problems of transit across its territory to the CIS countries, the enterprises expand the geography of their external supplies to both EU countries and Asia. The following are the major priorities of stimulation of food enterprises’ development: promotion of harmonization of domestic products’ quality with international standards; improvement of innovative activity efficiency in food industry; promotion of development of relevant infrastructure for storage and sales of food enterprises’ products; establishment of production with enhanced flavouring qualities; strengthening of domestic producers’ protection from poor quality food produced abroad and unfair competition. In order to define the process of development and implementation of strategic planning the information maintenance of strategic planning is examined. The research showed that after defining the background information one should proceed to listing the functions and their classification by the level of significance on the basis of maintenance and service function. Functional model can be used for food enterprises, where the maintenance of sustainable funding in conditions of unstable competitive market at current stage of its development is the function. Main function can be realized through: forming of optimal food program; development of products sales program; maintaining of labour resources; production of qualitative goods; defining of the level of expected income. Three-dimensional model is constructed based on such parameters as the level of enterprise’s competitive ability, its suppliers and partners and the level of social and economic development of a region, where an enterprise operates. Conceptual model, which generalizes the processes of strategic planning at food enterprises, is suggested. Main stages of strategic planning are defined based on the system of balanced indicators, which will bring positive effect and is stipulated by defining of general efficiency of enterprise’s activity. In case if the system is efficient, each employee understands the links between concrete responsibilities and strategic goals of an enterprise and a manager has an opportunity to assess an efficiency of each division’s work and can influence the process of enterprise’s strategy implementation due to the mechanism of decisions’ support. Key words: enterprises’ competitive ability, complex strategic diagnostics, strategic maps, Lvivska oblast, food enterprises, strategic planning.