Understand why your company’s success needs a well-structured Strategic Planning, and know the ideal tool to help you achieve this goal.

When you open a business, you start to live with two things hammering in your head all the time: success and failure. Generally, you cannot accurately measure whether you are on your way to glory, or close to disaster, but some situations can tell you a lot about your business and how it is being run.

To prevent your business from going into failure, you cannot have the following characteristics:

Ignorance about the company itself – You need to know by heart what your strengths and weaknesses are, as well as how to differentiate opportunities and threats to your business.

Unaware of the target audience – This causes you to end up spending more money on things that will not bring you the expected return, which affects your cash flow. All because you don’t know who you’re talking to when selling your product.

Inadequate pricing – Losing control over your spending, the price you charge may become inappropriate, especially if you try to meet the costs and make a profit. This ends up driving potential customers away.

Sales volume below potential – Due to a lack of organization and planning, the consequence is that your product sells much less than it is capable of. And because you do not know your audience, you are unable to establish strategies that are effective in attracting customers and selling.

All of these problems are caused by the lack of an essential item for the success of any business: Strategic Planning.

How does Strategic Planning work?

Have you ever felt lost? Not knowing where you were, or where you could go? I bet that at that moment, your goal was at least to be able to go home or maybe retrace the path that took you to that place. If you had a GPS always working, you would never have been lost, right?

Well, now we are going to create a situation similar to the one in the last paragraph, but now exchanging the lost character (you) for another: your business. Imagine that your business ended up getting lost in a path previously traced. And now, what to do? Do you have a GPS to guide you back to the axis? Or at least for a more familiar trail?

The GPS for your business is Strategic Planning!

It is through it that you define where you want to go with your business, so you can build a route and calculate the route until you reach the final destination: the objective defined there at the beginning of the journey. It is imperative to remember that you cannot reach a destination on the GPS without plotting a route. Much less create a route without knowing where you want to go, or which destination to reach.

Ok, but what is Strategic Planning?

He is responsible for indicating the best path to the goal you have set for your business, functioning basically as a GPS. It is through Strategic Planning that the company recognizes its current situation and makes a projection for the future.

In other words, Strategic Planning is the process where the company recognizes its current situation and makes a projection of the future with a destination, that is, where it wants to be in 5, 10, or 20 years from now. And if there is an obstacle that is very difficult to overcome in the middle of this path, you must stop and recalculate the route.

Why is Strategic Planning important to my company’s success?

In addition to serving as a guide for all actions that will be taken from the moment the destination or the vision of the future is defined, Strategic Planning also helps to manage the amount of time, resources, and energy used in the strategy.

And to ensure that the efforts made by all employees are not in vain, planning is changeable. That is, it can adapt to obstacles and closed paths during the journey towards the destination, but it never changes the purpose of achieving what is most important to the company.

But for it to work perfectly, it must meet important requirements, such as:

Summarize the organization’s purpose – The planning serves to summarize the purpose of the organization and then allow a common reading of the company, which is very favorable for the assertiveness of the adopted strategies.

Facilitate the understanding of the strategy – A good strategy needs to be simple to understand. And with well-structured planning, it is possible to increase the employees’ understanding of this strategy, which allows even greater engagement and participation of people with the company’s objective.

Detail strategy execution – Planning divides the strategy into objectives, indicators, and strategic initiatives, making planning easier to execute, transforming the abstract into practical action.

Motivate people in the search for the future vision – Strategic planning relies on people at all stages. Therefore, everyone needs to be motivated in their roles, and believe in the potential of the strategy outlined.

Provide for a flexible execution model – Flexibility is one of the main characteristics of a Successful Strategic Planning, as this gives the ability to adapt to social and market changes that cannot be predicted, such as the situation we are in at the moment: the New Coronavirus pandemic.

Ok, but how do I set up my Strategic Planning?

1 . Choose the people who will be involved

It is important to have a trust and competence strategy team to define paths and goals for your business. The first qualified person needs to be you, as there are cases in which you may be the only one responsible for leading and implementing Strategic Planning.

2 . Prepare the strategic committee meeting schedule

It is important to reserve a date in the week or at least in the month to hold a meeting with those involved in planning to analyze the current situation of the current strategies, what works, what is not working, and how to change to improve. If you are working remotely, make use of Conference Management Software or similar tools for the smooth conduct of the meeting.

3 . Choose the right tools

All strategic planning requires the use of some tools in its construction, which serve to address issues such as market intelligence, performance management, document management, and project management.

When choosing the tools for planning your business, be careful, and keep in mind what you expect from this tool.

Here is the ideal tool for your Strategic Planning.

The Adnia Solutions Excel Strategic Plan Model is a spreadsheet designed to establish and monitor the objectives and the action plan that drives the performance of your company or business

Through this model, you can drive the growth of your business and manage risks or opportunities with KPIs (key performance indicators).

How can this tool lead me to successful strategic planning?

This template will transform your strategic vision into meaningful results for your business, in all sectors of your company. All this in a practical way and in professional Excel spreadsheets with impactful design and easy to understand.

Through this professional spreadsheet model, you can:

Organize the strategic areas and stakeholders of your organization;
Define your vision, mission, and values;
Establish strategic goals and key performance indicators to track them;
Implement a clear and result-oriented action plan;
Follow accurately your achievements and the trends of your business;

See how to optimize your strategic planning today, using the Excel Strategic Plan Model.

Conclusion

Strategic planning is a continuous organizational effort for you, who are business leaders, to be able to develop an organizational strategy capable of creating a unique competitive advantage for your business.

This strategy needs to have concrete initiatives that involve all sectors of your business on the same path towards success.

What did you think of the article?

Leave your comment. Share with us any questions or problems with your business so that we can create more content in search of the solution to your problem.

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Why is Strategic Planning so important to your company’s success?