Strategic planning is essential to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) because it provides a sense of direction and outlines short and long term goals for a business. A Business Strategic Plan guides you in your daily decision-making process and in evaluating the progress you have made within a specific period.
It also determines the changes you have to make to meet your set goals within each financial year. For example, right now, the Australian Dollar is performing poorly in the exchange market. If you are in the imports business, then you will likely make losses unless you come up with a flexible solution to counter this problem.
Here are some of the tips on how to create an effective business strategy plan:
1. Define your company vision
You should create a company vision that has a maximum of 100 words. This statement should be made available to all your employees and be present in every room within the company. It should answer what direction your company is heading as well as what your company wants to be.
2. Define your vision
Your vision is as critical as your company’s vision. However, it should not be made known to your employees like the company’s vision. Your vision should have similarities with company’s vision so that you can harmonize your plans.
3. Know your business
Conduct a SWOT analysis for your business to know its current position in the market and its potential growth per year. A SWOT analysis enables you to identify your company’s weaknesses and make improvements to them before they cause huge losses.
4. Establish Short-term goals
It is essential to divide your goals into short, mid, and long term as a small or medium business. Short term goals should lead to mid and long term targets. Short term targets are the things for you to achieve within the next one year in your business. These goals should be specific, measurable, actionable, reasonable, and timely.
5. Outline Strategies
Once you have a defined a goal, you need to determine the things you will do to accomplish it. These are the strategies of a target. For example, if you intend to create a new product within the year, your strategy could be:
- Researching the unique quality missing in all the other existing competitor products
- Consulting consumers, suppliers, and vendors
- Formulating a development plan
6. Create an action plan
An action plan is critical for the success of your goals because, without it, all your strategies would have been a waste of time.
An action plan should be clear and specific about what is to be done at a particular time and by whom to achieve a goal. A competent action plan should be adaptable because changes will be made once in a while due to prevailing circumstances.
7. Foster strategic communication
To achieve your goals, you need to have fewer meetings with a specific topic to be analyzed. It is important to include how, when, why each time you are preparing to communicate with your team members about a project.
Creating a strategic plan is challenging and time-consuming, but that is why only a few companies accomplish their long-term goals. Implement these tips when designing your business strategy plan, and you see a positive difference.
