Friday 24 October 2014

Business Planning Solutions

Outline your business plan for management review and assessment.


Business planning solutions provide a strategy for getting people in the company to discuss its strategic direction. These solutions also help the company's department heads to select specific strategies to meet that direction in their business units. Look for a business solution that enables you to study business planning issues throughout your company.


Retreats


One way to get the executives, managers and other professionals to work on business planning away from the pressures of work is to invite them to a business planning retreat. You plan a specific format for getting the right people into the right planning groups. After initially meeting as a group and reviewing the company's mission, objectives and values, everyone breaks out into smaller groups. Each group must address specific issues in its session. At the end of the retreat, compile the results of planning sessions and use a senior planning team to revise the results and develop a final business strategy.


Baseline Planning


Another way to approach strategic planning for a business is the baseline approach. The executive team approaches the future knowing that it is unpredictable and therefore plans for achieving just about anything. The baseline approach involves defining the present business situation, analyzing the risks to the company, developing an action plan and monitoring performance by comparing it to the baseline.


Information Technology


Another solution begins with using an information technology platform to track all business activities. You hire an IT firm to build the solution to match the specific business activities in your company. Managers have the ability to add new projects, planning tools and initiatives into the IT platform. Managers can make small operational changes and adjust their part of the IT platform accordingly. Any company wide changes in business planning will require reorganizing the arrangement of business activities in your IT solution. Look for an IT solution flexible enough to change with sudden changes in the business environment, such as a system that accommodates new, multiple uses of mobile technologies in business activities, perhaps employees performing their work tasks on their own Smartphones.


Integration


Another business planning strategy requires integrating all business planning solutions into a comprehensive strategy. If you use baseline planning as your model and an IT solution to get all business strategies recorded in a format that can be manipulated, getting employees to contribute at retreats and meetings, you can produce a great business strategy. This strategy requires recognition of the true conditions in the business environment and must be followed up with implementation by a competent management team that gets results.

Tags: business activities, business planning, business planning, activities your, baseline approach, business activities your, business environment