This paper reviews the Strategic Planning Society (SPS) website, a subscription-based platform designed to bridge academic research and practical strategic planning for senior executives. The review evaluates the site's overall design, target audience, content quality, navigational ease, and limitations. It examines what the site delivers — including journals, white papers, and analysis of major strategic frameworks — and what it lacks, such as tailored analytical tools and links to external resources. The paper concludes that the SPS site is a valuable professional resource for strategic planning, while identifying areas for improvement including trial membership options and more applied analytical frameworks.
The purpose of this paper is to review the website for the Strategic Planning Society (SPS), an organization that seeks to bridge the gap between advances in academic research and the practical needs of business managers, directors, and CEOs who are looking for guidance on creating greater levels of strategic alignment in their organizations. The SPS operates several business models to sustain its growth, with a subscription-based membership to its content available for £199, which entitles the subscriber to access all research produced by the SPS in conjunction with leading universities. The website serves a dual purpose: acting as a lead generation tool for the Society, and showcasing the many other services it offers, including seminars, conferences, and access to a published magazine.
The overall impression the site delivers is one of professionalism and ease of navigation to highly specific content relevant to the strategic planning process in companies. Designed to appeal specifically to director-level, VP-level, and CEO-level audiences, the site conveys a high degree of credibility through its content. The site seeks to serve as a strategic planning resource for its members and uses a series of content-based and navigation-based approaches to deliver this positioning message.
The SPS website delivers on its commitment to provide strategic planning content for executives and key managers, and it offers a clean, easily navigated interface that many managers — who may not use the web as frequently as others — will find accessible. However, the site does not deliver more specific strategic activities that can be directly applied to an organization. Furthermore, it does not provide any type of strategic framework by which companies can evaluate themselves. The journals, articles, white papers, and other content are broadly prescriptive, and as a result there is little tailoring of content to the specific needs of individual corporations.
"Reasons the site merits inclusion in resource lists"
"Absence of applied strategic tools and frameworks"
"Site organization and limited external linking"
"Final verdict on usability and professional value"
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