Strategic planning and outsourcing - The future of Croatian public utility companies

A firms strategic approach to any problem starts from a clearly set goal in business operations, pointing out before all the unquestionable fact that success needs special preparation. In its appearance on the market, any firm needs to take into account the actions of forces outside an inside the organization because this is the only way to build a successful concept for the appearance on the market, which is very important in today's extreme competition and globalization. The majority of organizations is today exposed to both outside and inside influences. In the field of the development of public utility infrastructure and environment protection, the modern public utility companies apply the philosophy of a continuous and harmonious development of their field of action (municipalities, cities, regions), which requires a close co-operation of state and local institutions, the economy and public utility companies with the aim to create an appropriate economic policy and satisfy the needs of all their users. The peculiarity of public utility companies is in the kind of services they provide - these services are the foundation of the city's urban life. In that respect we have set the hypothesis for this paper: In the public services sector, public utility companies can increase their efficiency and better their services to the end users through the introduction of strategic planning and by giving up part Of their activity (outsourcing). In short, the aim of this paper is to research on the level of the Republic of Croatia whether there is a trend to apply the concept of strategic planning, if so in which phase, and see whether there are the necessary preconditions for the outsourcing of part of public utility services today performed public utility companies. Furthermore, after additional research and data processing and on the basis of the collected data, build and suggest a future unitary model of application of the principle of strategic planning and outsourcing in Croatian public utility companies, which could be used in our country as well as in other neighbouring transition countries. This paper and the presented research results pave the way to the right conditions for the understanding of the importance of strategic planning and the benefits arising from the outsourcing of certain services in Croatian public utility companies. This would later be the base of the model of application and data collecting from practice in order to share experience and increase the total efficiency of the public utility companies. In view of the above and through strategic planning as the foundation for the application of marketing and marketing conception, as well as outsourcing in general, it is later attempted to present and develop a new approach for the public utility companies on all levels of their activity, starting with simple and already proven market approaches sucecssfully applied by market oriented economies for years.