To develop and grow you must have a business strategy. Strategy is simply a mixture of policies and actions that are there to deliver your vision.

There are a few tools that will help you define the strategy. One could be a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis and another is a PEST or PESTEL analysis looking at political, economic, social and technological factors.

Many different strategies and models are possible, even for companies in the same industry selling similar products or services. Look at EasyJet and compare it to Singapore Airlines - low cost versus high quality customer service.

A good strategy will help you to balance business growth, outcomes and profit. You will probably be focusing on both growth and reducing costs to compensate for the loss imposed by the current situation pharmacy finds itself in. It is very easy to say let’s reduce costs, but is that sustainable in the short and medium term? Will customer service be hit?

What are your and your team’s strengths? Have you identified the weaknesses of the team and the system? How do you compare to your competition? Where are the threats in the system and with these, what are the opportunities that will arise? By answering these questions you can carry out a SWOT analysis on your business as a structured planning method.