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Strategic Planning and Implementation

Why is a strategic plan so important?

There’s just no denying it. A plan or strategy is generally the key to success.

Just ask the All Blacks, or Richard Branson, or  … As Benjamin Franklin said “Failing to plan is planning to fail”

A Business Plan usually documents all aspects of a new/er business. A Strategic Plan is more for established businesses whose owners are serious about growing the business. It provides focus and direction by establishing where the business wants to be. And, it provides the detail on what action is required to get it there.

Developing a Strategic Plan for your business enables you to:

  • Get clarity on the direction you are taking your business;
  • Evaluate opportunities and make decisions quicker and easier;
  • Use your business’ resources (time, money and people) efficiently;
  • Establish a prioritised action plan for what needs to be done by when;
  • Minimise your business risks so you sleep better at night;
  • Increase your control over the business rather than being a slave to it;
  • Motivate your team because you all know why, how and what you have to do to get the business where you want to be;
  • Do marketing more efficiently because you know what your niche is;
  • Improve customer service because the business will be resourced properly and will have a detailed process to ensure nothing is missed; and
  • Improve the profitability, value and saleability of your business.

As a business owner, you need to be able to answer three vital questions

1. Where is your business now?
2. Where do you want to be?
3. How are you going to get there?

These seem like no-brainers. And the fact is most business owners do understand the importance of business planning but many feel that they don’t have the time and/or the skills to organise a Strategic Plan.  Even the business owners who do manage to prepare a Strategic Plan sometimes fail to follow through with full implementation so need someone to hold them accountable and help tweak the strategies as they progress.

That’s where we come in. We can facilitate a strategic planning day with you and your executive team.

As your facilitator, we will guide you through the planning day and help you build the Strategic Plan step by step to achieve your business goals.  But we don’t stop there because we can also follow up with you to make sure your implementation doesn’t falter by helping you tweak the strategies as necessary.

How do we do this?

Let’s find out where you are now.

We are going to start by talking to you about your values and business purpose to set any parameters. We help you analyse where your business is currently by identifying your:

  • strengths & opportunities – what can we build on?
  • weaknesses & threats – what challenges and risks can we try to resolve?

Let’s look at where you want to be.

What are your goals? What do you want to achieve?

We will help you develop goals for your business. These goals could be any combination of targets that would reflect growing your business, improved customer service, improved quality of products/services and/or simply resolving challenges that have been frustrating your business for too long.

We will make sure that these business goals are consistent with your personal goals as well as your business values and purpose. We can also provide insight into industry benchmarks and best practice KPIs.

Lodging your Tax Return

This is where we brainstorm all the activities that could take advantage of your existing strengths and possible opportunities as well as activities that can help resolve or mitigate your weaknesses, challenges or external threats.

We identify what business resources (people, time & money) will be required to ensure successful implementation of your strategic plan. We also look at the impact of various activities on other aspects of your business like your finances, your customer service, your team and your systems.

We help you identify which strategies to pursue as well as how to prioritise them and develop the specific action plan to implement your strategic plan including who’s going to do what and by when.

Let’s look at your structure, skills & capabilities.

We understand a particular strategy will impact multiple aspects of a business including the

  • financial perspective
  • customer perspective
  • internal systems perspective, and
  • team perspective

 

We help identify and avoid unintended consequences of a strategy in one area – impacting on another area – that would undermine the successful implementation of your plan.

We can also help assess how much value a strategic option creates compared to the resources, time and energy that needs to be expended to implement it.

Let’s keep you on track

DFK Everalls can assist you in the development process of your strategic plan, as well as the implementation. We can have followup meetings with you to ensure you stay on track. Not all strategies achieve the results we were hoping for but we’ll make sure that you are measuring the right things so that you can identify hitches ASAP and tweak the strategies or find the extra resources where necessary.

We will be with you each step of the way, celebrating as you achieve your goals and help fine tune things when necessary.

Let’s host a Strategic Planning Day for your business.

This is what Laurence from BNS Group had to say about letting us facilitate a Strategic Planning Day for his business and co-directors.

“The day was fantastic value! It renewed and defined our business direction and goals, helped us achieve clarity amongst the directors about what we should be doing next to get there, and who would be doing what.

Laurence Buchanan, BNS Group

Contact us today if you want help from the experts to devise your strategic plan.

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