Developing " Strategic Support Systems " for Electric Utility Strategic Planning

The continued development of strategic planning processes in electric utilities is of utmost importance, given their increasingly complex, dynamic markets. Development will be blocked unless electric utilities begin developing and integrating other organization systems within their strategic planning processes to create "strategic support ·systems". This article describes three dimensions for assessing stage of development, discusses several major support systems, and notes the stage of development in strategic planning recently found within the industry. DEVELOPING "STRATEGIC SUPPORT SYSTEMS" FOR ELECTRIC UTILITY STRATEGIC PLANNING High quality strategic management is at a premium in today's large electric utility. Given the increasingly competitive and dynamic environments utilities now operate within, the need for effective strategic planning processes is clear (1). Diversification efforts are also creating more complex organization designs which will require sophisticated new planning processes not unlike those of large multidivisional firms in other industries