MOST Analysis- A Business Success Tool

Every business is bound to offer some kind of product or service to its customers. To smoothly run the business and keep serving its customers, a firm needs to lay out a good business plan that goes into the specifics of how that is going to happen.

 

The ultimate goal of every for-profit business is to make money but it is not only a two-step process.

 

At the core, it’s the business plan that determines the success of a company. The biggest difference between a successful company and the one that falls short is the quality of the business plan they start out with. 

 

Successful businesses analyze their business plan by making use of some analysis techniques like PESTLE Analysis, SWOT analysis, MOST analysis, and many more.

 

During the blog discussion, our main interest will be MOST analysis among such analysis.

 

Overview

 

MOST analysis is one such analysis technique used by businesses to keep a check on their alignment with their business’ mission and vision. 

 

It is very common to lose track of the business plan or purpose while a business is indulged in serving its customers. Once a business is up and running, there are a lot of things happening that the business can get derailed from the decided path. 

 

This is where MOST analysis comes in handy and helps the business to organize its activities in support of each other so they are all heading in the same direction. 

 

Let us look at what is MOST analysis and how is it used by businesses. 

 

 

What is MOST Analysis and its Four Elements? 

 

MOST Analysis is an analytical technique used by businesses for strategic planning and strategy development. It is made up of four elements: Mission, Objective, Strategy, and Tactics. They together constitute this analysis tool and help organizations to achieve their goals, where;

 

Mission in MOST analysis defines the ultimate goal of the company; 

Objectives are the goals that are used to measure the organization’s success; 

Strategy in MOST analysis deals with the approaches towards achieving the objectives; 

Tactics are used to define the short-term activities and projects with which the strategy is implemented.

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MOST Analysis 

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Organizations primarily use the technique of MOST Analysis to determine what an organization wants to achieve (through mission and objectives) and how it is going to achieve this (through strategy and tactics).

 

• MOST Analysis is a highly-structured system that helps to assign targets to team members of an organization, working at every level of it. 

• This analysis technique works from top-down and ensures the retention of focus on the prime goal of the organization. 

• The process of MOST Analysis starts with the organization’s mission statement at the higher level then it goes deep into specific details about individual tactics. 

• During the planning process, it is ensured that the strategies being formed are in-line with the mission statement.

 

When we look at the working of MOST Analysis from down to top, it looks like: It works in a way that every tactic employed has to be justified in terms of reaching the laid strategies, which in turn must contribute to the decided objectives, which must, finally, contribute to the organization’s mission.

 

Speaking of analysis tools, you can also sneak a peek at our blog on Business Analysis Tools

 

We will understand what role these elements play and their significance in MOST Analysis in detail.  

 

 

1. Mission

 

Mission is arguably the most important element of the MOST analysis. Every business runs with a mission.

 

Basically, mission is the main purpose of the business plan. We can also say that mission is the answer to the question, “What is an organization trying to achieve?”. It is the top-level and overall reason for being in the business.

 

“Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

- Google

 

Profitability may seem to be the end goal of every for-profit organization, but it may not always be true. However, it can be said that profit is the tangible part of a mission. For a non-profit organization, it is explicitly not the mission. 

 

Deciding on a good mission is crucial for any business because a good mission is essential to broader business success. It becomes imperative that the mission can be ambitious but not over-ambitious. 

 

The more specific you are upon defining your mission, the more success you will face in the future while trying to define the remaining points within the tool. Once it has been established, the rest of the MOST analysis can begin. 

 

 

2. Objective

 

After having decided the mission of the organization, it rolls down to coming up with objectives. Objective is a collection of all the individual goals that add up to the overall mission. 

 

Every objective achieved will make the mission target easier to reach. However, it is not the only essential component to reach the mission. 

 

A good objective should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely (S.M.A.R.T.) and one that sets a clear target to be achieved, in a tight time-frame. 

 

Objectives should guide and govern the actions of a business. While setting up objectives it should be ensured that they are specific enough to guide your decision-making and planning for the future. 

 

There are mainly five classified objectives of a business:

 

• Economic Objectives

• Social Objectives

• Human Objectives 

• National Objectives 

• Global Objectives

 

Each of these objectives help a business unit to keep the interest of their owners in view. They also need to ensure keeping the interests of their employees, customers, the community, as well as the interests of society as a whole. With the mission in place, it is easy to decide on a few objectives. 

 

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Four Elements of MOST Analysis

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3. Strategy

 

The first two elements, Mission and Objective talk about what an organization wants to achieve, and the last two elements, strategy and tactics talk about how it will be done. 

 

Strategy, in the simplest form, means combining different plans and ideas. In the business world, strategy involves different ideas that help a business achieve a certain goal. An example of this can be advertising to increase sales. 

 

In the process of MOST analysis, strategy plays a vital role as it determines the actions to be taken. It ensures that the actions being taken reflect the mission of the organization. 

 

The strategy that will work for your organization varies wildly according to the market and target demographics which are decided using the 4Ps of marketing. 

 

 

4. Tactics

 

Tactics are the set of actions performed in order to implement the strategies. These actions are simple enough to be understood and carried out even by people who don’t have a high-level overview of the MOST analysis or were not involved in the whole process. 

 

Tactics should be specific, simple, and S.M.A.R.T. because effective tactics are implemented successfully which eventually leads to the achievement of objectives. 

 

 

Case Study - MOST Analysis for Reliance Jio

 

Being a popular analysis tool, MOST Analysis is extensively used by businesses. 

 

Reliance Jio is an interesting example of a business that has leveraged MOST analysis to enhance its platform’s prospects. Jio has also used SWOT analysis very efficiently. 

 

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MOST Analysis for Reliance Jio

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1. Mission- Reliance Jio was started with a mission to transform India with the power of the digital revolution. The company writes its mission statement as, “Jio’s vision is to transform India with the power of digital revolution - to connect everyone and everything, everywhere – always at the highest quality and the most affordable price”.

 

2. Objective- The company announced its objective when Mukesh Ambani in the 42nd Annual General Meeting said that “By March 2017, we will cover 90% of India's population”.

 

3. Strategy- To accomplish their objective, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. adopted a low-cost strategy while launching their services. Jio formed all its marketing strategies on a single concept- free is always better. 

 

4. Tactics- The tactics used by the company included providing free data to all its customers, free voice calls in any part of the country, and free-roaming services were also given to the users. 

 

And the outcome of the MOST Analysis are

 

• As a result, Jio added 100 million customers to its platform in a short span of 170 days. 

• Jio users made more than 200 crore minutes of voice and video calls.

• Jio users consumed more than 100 Cr GB of data on the Jio network! 

 

Check also: Reliance Jio’s growth in lockdown.

 

MOST Analysis Example For a SEO Services Company

 

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MOST Analysis for an SEO Company

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For instance, you can suppose you are an SEO company then you can perform the MOST Analysis. 

 

1. Mission: You can state that your mission is that ‘We provide the best SEO Services across the country’. This sounds impressive and may attract people but also seems over-ambitious.

 

However, rather than stating the above statement, you can modify it a bit and write it as, “Our mission is to provide the best SEO Services across the city”.

 

This statement does not reflect over-ambitiousness. Providing the best SEO service across the country should remain as the main mission while doing it within the city first can be the sub-mission/objective. 

 

2. Objective: To become the leading SEO company in the country, the firm should set small and achievable objectives; such as providing the best SEO service in a particular city. 

 

This would prove to be helpful to remain aligned with the mission. The company can look to increase the number of clients, earn some revenue etc. Basically, these measurable small goals will constitute the objective of being a leader in SEO services in the city.

 

3. Strategy: For the SEO company, a strategy can involve the ideas and set of actions that would help it to achieve its objective. The company can plan on hiring some SEO specialists who will work to rank their clients.

 

4. Tactics: The SEO company can then perform tactics like interviewing applicants for the post of SEO specialist, hire one from them, brief them about the client’s work. The employees will then perform the task and it will also be counted as a tactic.

 

 

Conclusion

 

All the four elements work in coherence with each other to make the process of MOST analysis successful. One step builds on the next and this consistency factor makes it such a valuable tool. 

 

MOST analysis is used by organizations for better business success. Organizations can apply this analysis to many areas of a business, from the most obvious department of sales, marketing, and business growth to internal processes and human resources.