Strategic Aims and Objectives for Businesses
Setting up strategic aims and objectives is very helpful for the business, so that they will be able to measure their progress towards their stated goals for a particular business period of time. Aims indicate where the business wants to be in the future, whereas objectives set a clearly defined target for the business. For Merlin Entertainment business, their aim and objective is to be one of the leading entertainments in the world; just like what others aim to be. This aim can then be broken down into objectives. Their objective is to give the people the good service with a very low cost; to increase sales and at the same time meet the customers’ satisfaction. In business, a good set of objectives should be SMART:
Specific – the objective must be clearly stated and focused. Measurable – in order for thee business to see how it is performing against its objectives, it needs to be able to quantify its performance. Achievable – for an objective to be useful, it needs to be something that the business is in a position to achieve. Realistic – it is no good for a business to set itself unrealistic goals because it will inevitably fail; this is bad for morale, and worse for share prices. Time-related – the objectives must be related to a timescale, otherwise there will be no real impetus behind the objective and measurements of the performance will be unreliable.
For Merlin Entertainment, their objective is specific, being one of the leading entertainments in the world, it is easy to understand and everyone can tell that they have been successful in achieving it since in the beginning. Their objective is also measurable, within the period of time the growth of the number of people going to the Thorpe Park can said to be increasing as the year goes by, even when the year of the recession. There you can tell that it is progressing and is so close to their objective.
Objective is achievable, many people already know about it and they enjoy going there. It is not impossible to achieve their objective to be the world’s leading entertainment since they provide good service and satisfactory. It is also realistic, it is already happening and everyone can tell that they are close in achieving their objectives. Being the best entertainment in the world can be real if they continue to perform good services to the people and they maintain their good reputation. And lastly, the objective must be time-related, they should take into consideration that a deadline is also included so to make the objective measurable. That is the reason why the Merlin Entertainment has a clear understanding of their objectives to be aware of their roles and responsibilities in achieving them.
