SWOT Analysis:

This is one of the most popular techniques in planning and strategy development among the managers in organizations to take certain actions and arriving at the goals. The abbreviation SWOT stands for Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. These four categories are used to scan the internal and external environment of the firm related to a product or its portfolio. The studies have shown that the managers engaged in finding strategies by performing multiple analysis techniques usually come to an end of making more profits and successful accomplishment of the organizational level goals (Donald, 2019; Frost, 2019; Umunnakwe, Ekweozor and Umunnakwe, 2019). The SWOT analysis in terms of fit and stretches for strategy development and formulation is necessary to achieve the organizational goals. SWOT analysis has four categories.

Strengths: The strengths of the organizational are measured in terms of the internal resources, financials, business assets, personnel size, quality of management, internal business operations etc.

Weaknesses: These are usually the internal resources of the firm where the firm is weak, for
instance, financials, employees, assets, product features etc.
Opportunities: The market opportunities are scanned in the external environment which may be market structure, product features, government protection, competition, etc. These opportunities are exploited by the firms on the bases of the strengths of the firm

Threats: Finally, threats are the external uncontrollable factors which may cause an obstacle to the firm in achieving the organizational goals.

Fit and Stretch:

The SWOT analysis of the business organizational allows the managers to match the internal strengths of the firm with the opportunities available or the weaknesses which can be converted into business opportunities. The studies established that the firms allocate all of their resources based on the available opportunities in a way that best fit the achievement of the goals of the firm.

Stretch approach:
The fit approach is applied when the firm matches its internal resources with the external environment to exploit the available opportunity.

Fit approach:
This approach is exactly opposite to the stretch approach. In this approach, the manager focuses over on setting the overall goals realistically to achieve them. This is more setting the realistic goals to be set and achieved.

Porters Fiver Forcers: 

The Porters five forces are very popular among the organizational managers while taking any scanning decisions to plan, formulate goals and strategies. These five forces are as under:

Bargaining power of supplier:
The analysis of the firm is also done on the basis of the bargaining power of the suppliers. The firms in a competitive market structure has lower amount of bargaining power except for coming into some consortiums to increase control over the price. For instance, the market for grocery items is very competitive. The firms have to face stiff competition as little feature change can be provided to the customers.

Bargaining power of the buyer:
The bargaining power of the buyers also depends upon the market structure within which the firm is operating. The firms with highly competitive market lose control over the price of product. For instance, electronics market, the number of sellers are quite large in numbers and thus the level of competition is also very high.

Threats of new entrants:
The 3rd Porter’s forcer is the threats of the new entrants. This happens usually when the industry has lesser amount of producers, market demand for the product is high and the existing firm is unable to cater to the product demand. The new firms entry increases supply cuts down the profits and also shift the price control from the producer to the buyers. For instance, the electronics market in developing countries.

Threat of substitute:
The 4th forcer of the model is about assessing the threat of the substitute of the product. This significantly decreases the sales of the company. The firms shall have to look into the number of substitutes available and the potential substitutes which may come as a result of company’s high profits and market share. We can take the example of Mobile phone industry which has multiple substitutes at the moment.

The rivalry of firms:
This forcer of the model is quite important and it is generally assessed by the managers by analyzing the market structure. A competitive market clearly indicates that the rivalry among the firms is high, therefore, every firm has to offer a wider variety of products along with unique features. On the other hand, if the firm is in monopoly, oligopoly or du poly market structure the rivalry will below. For instance, in the context of Asia, the Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola companies are in high rivalry.

Conclusion:
The strategic planning generic framework lays down the concept about how the top management of the company transforms the vision of the organization into realistic goals, strategies and objectives. The formulation of the strategies to achieve the goals through appropriate planning is possible by using a number of tools. This study found that the BCG matrix, product life cycle, SWOT analysis and the Porter’s five force model are the most powerful tools to go for an effective planning, formulation of realistic goals, and strategies. The study provides an in-depth knowledge on the strategic planning and a generic framework.