Strategisk beslutningsstøtte

An early definition of business strategy was given by Alfred Chandler in his 1962 classic Strategy and Structure: "Strategy can be defined as the determination of the long-term goals and objectives of an enterprise, and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals".

In other words, strategy is decisions about long term goals of a business. Choice of, perhaps stepwise, directions and allocations of resources are included.

Iterative
Chandler's definition imply looking forward to visions and goals, and planning for how to reach the goals.

Analysis and decisions
Telescope uses three central tools in analysis and decision work: Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) tables, Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) tables, and Decision trees. Input into the SWOT table is internal strengths and weaknesses from investiations of, for instance, value chains of the firm and competitors. External opportunities and threats of the SWOT table come from such analyis as the Five Forces. In the middle of the SWOT table we develop possible strategies and actions. Benchmarking can give inspiration for alternative strategies.

When we have grouped possible actions of the SWOT table into strategic themes, we can carry these over to the MCDM table. However, this is not the final step before a decision. In the MCDM table we get a great overview of goals, criteria, weights, and options, and we can now use this overview to work on creating better options than the ones currently at hand.

Uncertainty is basically modelled by decision trees and scenarios. The tool used by Telescope can include such trees in the MCDM table or work on them separately.