Business Planning Support

Successfully climbing a mountain requires careful planning. Typical considerations may be:

• Do we have the skills and fitness to make it?
• When is the right time to go?
• What do we need to take with us?
• How are we going to get there?
• and what happens if something goes wrong?

Unfortunately when it comes to business we often don’t spend the same amount of time and energy on planning for it and yet “the plan” forms the most essential tool to guide the success of our business in the future.

Historically, a business plan was a formal documentation of the activities of the business, detailing strategies, marketplace dynamics and competitor analysis, guidelines for how the business should go about achieving its goals, organisation structures, financial/operational risk analysis, etc, etc. The plan was usually supported by a set of projected financial statements and/or a complex implementation roadmap.

Unfortunately things are moving far too rapidly these days and putting your plan down on paper just seems like too much hard work when you know it won’t be relevant in a few months time anyway.  …but this is one of the biggest mistakes you can make!

You still need a plan – it doesn’t have to be something you use to tie the boat up to – it should be concise, action-focussed and only include things you need to know, totally aimed at helping you reach your goals. Its job is to help you focus on what’s important NOW and then provide a way to measure your progress as you go to see if things need any adjustments along the way.
 

The Old Way

The old way was to spend some time (usually a very small amount of time) thinking about all the possibilities (marketers call this Blue Sky thinking) and then work through a very rigid linear process to move from strategy to objectives to products to markets to pricing & promotion to systems to actual implementation, so as to ensure the required activities were recorded and processes defined to secure the right resources, mitigate all the risks, manage the budgets, etc, etc.

 …but things are changing so quickly we could spend all our time revising the plan and never getting down to actually doing anything. …you have to be ready to see opportunities that fall outside that narrow scope of linear thinking you used to develop the original plan or be prepared to go to the market with something you haven’t done before, often this can be in partnership with someone who has.
 

Planning - The New Way

The plan should include specific goals, the conditions needed to reach the goal, identified obstacles to success and practical ways to overcome those barriers. It should be easy to update as things change, easy to scale as needed and easy to communicate with your team, customers and partners.
 

Take a minute to consider these thoughts as they might apply to the future of your business…

• Change is now the normal way of doing business – it’s not a project that you can “get someone in” to do it for you
• Your competitors will come from different sectors and probably even different markets
• Your current customers and suppliers may not exist next year – even the really BIG ones!
• You simply can’t afford to spend time on traditional planning and development cycles
• What you do next year will be different to what you did last year and possibly even different to what you thought you would be doing
• You will have to work in collaboration with people you don’t employ

We work alongside our clients in their businesses to:

• Measure the health of your business & identify where you need some help
• Address a specific problem or look at the whole of your business model
• Provide simple tools to help understand & manage all-important cash flow
• Guide you on what level of systems, controls and processes you need to introduce as your business grows
• Authentic partnering & hands-on support to help make it all happen

...talk to us today, we can help.

Contact Us now to discuss our successful 7 step worksheet-based process for building your business plan and creating a roadmap which will guide you towards achieving your goals.