BEGIN YOUR STRATEGIC PLANNING NOW
Business owners have a lot on their plate, and one thing that often slips through the cracks is strategic planning. This is an important task within a company. So stop and take the time to plan your goals for the upcoming year. You can start by evaluating the following areas.
The company’s financials
Your business’ financial statements will let you know what areas your company is excelling or failing in (according to your own standards). The numbers will be able to show you your gross profit, calculations in your current ratio, and the strength of your cash flow. All of these things will allow you to decide how financially careful or bold you can be the next year.
Analyzing other departments
Strategic planning encompasses more than just financials. By analyzing your Human Resources department, you will be able to see what your employee turnover rate was within the past year. If the turnover was high, this could lead to the discovery of issues within the company. This may hamper the strategic goals you have in mind.
Your marketing and sales department is also an important area to examine. Ask yourself if your investment in your company’s marketing tools paid itself off the previous year. Look at your volume of sales and your new customer rate to see if you hit the targets you set for that year as well.
In addition, you should be tracking your metrics in your production and operations departments. If you’re in a service business, these could take the forms of customer satisfaction and customer reject rate. Both of these are helpful in showing where improvements are needed. Also what kind of timetable you’re looking at to move forward with your strategic goals.
Update your goals
Once your reassessment of your company is complete, you can move into setting goals for your business through your strategic planning. Like with all new goals, make sure they are achievable. If you want to increase your gross profit from 25% to 35%, plan for ways you can lower costs or increase efficiency to make that happen. If you want to retain more employees, think of different things that you can implement within training and management. This will help your business keep employees that will, in turn, help to grow your company.
Be proactive
Don’t wait for next year to come before sitting down and reviewing key aspects of your business performance. The sooner you have your strategic plan in place. The sooner you will be able to lay the foundations to achieve next year’s targets. Contact us for help choosing the best metrics for your company, reviewing your financials, and creating a solidified strategic plan to help you reach your goals.
