• Internal €“ management, employees, resources, facilities, times
• Intermediate €“ suppliers, customers, competitors
• Intermediate €“ political, economical, legal, technological, socio-cultural.

Know your environment

In order to develop a direction of travel for the next one to three years, you must appreciate your current competitive environment (see the above box). Your internal environment is the one that is within the control of your pharmacy and this can be assessed using a Strengths, Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis. This is perhaps the most effective and objective way for you to determine how capable your pharmacy is when it comes to surviving 'threats' and capitalising on 'opportunities'.

Typically, a SWOT analysis would be conducted:

• When planning a new business
• Whenever major expenditure may be required (e.g. premises expansion)
• When offering a new product or service
• During times of significant change in the pharmacy market.

Your immediate environment has a direct impact upon the success of your pharmacy and must also be assessed. For example: What is our customer base? What percentage of your customers are aged 60-plus?

Your broader or macro environment comprises factors that you have little or no influence upon, but which could have a significant impact on your organisation. A Political, Economic, Socio-cultural, Technological, Legal and Environmental (PESTLE) analysis is useful when looking further at this.

Assessing your environment in this way will provide you with rich information that should help give you a clear focus on a strategic path that will enable you to grow turnover. Key to the achievement of such growth is an absolute understanding of critical success factors.

Critical success factors can be internal or external to your pharmacy. You should develop objectives to support your direction and then decide on the steps that are critical to its achievement. This is a very worthwhile exercise for any pharmacy.

For your plan to be effective, it is not enough to state that your pharmacy aspires to growth. You must clearly articulate:

• The market within which you operate and how it impacts upon your business
• Your strategic direction (e.g. focused or healthcare destination) of choice
• The critical success factors required to achieve your strategic direction.

It is only as a consequence of such planning that a pharmacy practice can develop a plan for its overall strategic direction and how to achieve growth.