(-) Operation Strategy
Operation strategy is the basic conception for carrying out the operations in a particular operation field. It can be described as an overall concept in concrete form which takes care of different aspects like what items of value needs to be supplied to what type of customers and what are the capabilities and system requirements for accomplishing the same.
Operation strategy is the lower level strategy of the overall company strategy. The basic problem of overall strategy of the company is to cope up with the structural changes in the environment and the conceptions of how to carry out activities in the operation structure to achieve the dream and vision of the company. The overall strategy of the company (strategy of operation structure) shall be taken up for learning in details in chapter 3 of this book.
In contrast, the topics regarding operation strategy include basically the type of customers to be targeted in a particular operation field and the type of products or the services (or the combinations of the two) to be provided in what manner. In other words, it deals with providing answers for “to whom”, “what” and “how”.
However there is one more additional item which is the competition. The competitive rival has also been making similar efforts to provide similar type of value to similar customers. While establishing the strategy for overall company, the competition is not the essential problem, whereas, it forms the most essential problem in the case of operation strategy. This is why operation strategy is sometimes called competition strategy.
In the operation strategy, creation of some difference somehow as compared to the competition rival becomes the essential problem. This is known as creation of distinction and “how” as described above means “how to create the difference”.
The establishment of operation strategy is normally carried out at the level of operation division (marketing). However, there are some companies which have used strategy operation unit extending over to the operation division as the unit for establishing operation strategy. As against this, the overall strategy of the company is decided by the head office.