Strategic planning is a management activity and a process that defines the direction and the objective of an organization over the long term (what should the firm do on the long run?) and that defines how should resources should be allocated to pursue this objectives.

Strategic planning refers to develop a plan of action to achieve a particular goal. It includes an evaluation of the organization and the context. It has a focus on the future. It serves as a guide to allocate resources over the long run, but also as a guide to middle manager.

Taken as an ongoing process, it strategic planning can be a key asset of an organization.

The Stakeholder Theory is a theory of organizational management that states that companies could archive better performance by taking all stakeholders into account, not only shareholders. Stakeholders are clients, suppliers, employees, the government and the society where the company operates.

Stakeholders are defined as parties that are affected by the actions of the company, directly or indirectly. Stakeholders can be classified in internal and external.

Internal stakeholders are:

• Cash: money or its equivalent.
• Bank Deposits: money placed into banks, including checking accounts and money market accounts.
• Holdings of Stocks: publicly traded stocks can be easily converted to cash, and are considerer financial resources of an organization. This stocks are traded on stocks exchanges, like the NASDAQ or the NYSE. It takes only a few minutes to sell stocks on the market.

Planning is an administrative process that consists in analyzing different strategies and courses of action, taking into account the present and future organizational environment.

The business planning process defines:

Financial planning is a process that evaluates the situation of a business in relation to it’s financial resources and needs and determines how to manage the liquid assets, taking the future inflows and outflows of funds into accounts.