Business Consulting Services
Business Planning Services for Businesses and Not-for-Profit Entities
Introduction
There is a well-known saying that any road will take you there if you don’t know where you are going.
Our Strategic Planning Services will help your organisation reach its true potential. The planning process is about discovering and then building consensus around where you want to go and then finding the best way to get there.
Once the goals and objectives are well documented and action plans developed around them, everything becomes much clearer and your team can get on with doing what needs to be done to bring about the desired future.
Strategic and Business Planning is much more than preparing a nice-looking document. It’s a process that requires creativity, innovation, strategic thinking and most of all teamwork.
Our approach to Strategic Planning starts off at the Board level to get an appreciation of their expectations, priorities, vision and core values. Once we have a thorough understanding of these matters, we move on to working collaboratively with the management team in bringing about the desired outcomes.
Having a trusted, objective and independent team facilitating the planning process results in the best possible outcomes from the planning process and ensures that the process remains on track and is completed within the agreed time frames.
We facilitate the planning process from commencement to completion and provide the framework, methodology and support to create value for our clients. We support your team to ensure that they are able to not only develop the plan but also ensure its implementation in the future.
Our approach encourages the management team to develop a regular process for review and monitoring on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis as an ongoing business process.
It is essential that your senior team is actively engaged in the planning process and takes responsibility for the development of the plans for their respective Business Units/Departments with our guidance and hands-on support. This engenders a true sense of ownership amongst the team and leads to the group taking responsibility for the plan and its implementation.
Benefits
In the rapidly changing business environment of today, it is becoming increasingly important to have a clear, effective business strategy along with clearly defined goals and objectives.
We aim to provide strategic and business planning services to ensure your organisation is operating effectively and is well prepared to deal with any potential threats and to take advantage of opportunities that may arise.
We believe that it is essential to keep the team engaged throughout the planning process and for the strategy and action plans to cascade down the organisation to achieve the best results.
We adopt the Now, Where and How approach to the strategic planning process.
Strategic Planning Process
This involves taking a strategic look at:
- Where the organisation is “Now”;
- “Where” our clients want their organisation to be in the long, medium and short term; and
- “How” to get our clients to their destination.
The Process
Now – Strategic Visioning and Values
The initial part of the planning process is to develop and fine-tune the vision and values to build consensus amongst the entire team. We work with you to help in developing and articulating the vision.
It’s critical that everyone within the organisation knows and buys into the vision, believes in and adopts the core values and understands what you stand for as an organisation. We believe that once the BIG things have been agreed upon, everything else follows.
We will help you to:
- Manage strategic priorities and focus
- Analyse market trends and articulate scenarios
- Ensure vision alignment and documentation
- Agree on and build consensus around core values
Where – Goals & Objectives
The second part of the planning process is to define what success looks like to our clients. We believe in engaging the board and management team to articulate and prioritise their key ambitions. This is then cascaded through the team, who often provide crucial insights into the strategic planning process.
For effective strategic planning, it is important to explore where our clients want their organisations in various time horizons. We believe that each has a different goal and requires different approaches, whether that be the long, medium or short term.
We engage with our clients to:
- Outline strategic goals and objectives
- Compile the required framework to facilitate the planning process
- Define time horizons and related goals
- Development of strategies and Implementation plan
- Provide hands-on support for implementation
How – Strategy Development and Plan Implementation
The final stage of the planning process involves the development of strategies and action plans aimed at getting to your destination stage.
Throughout the strategic planning process and its implementation, we believe your team should be actively engaged and take responsibility for delivering the required outcomes. We believe this is a key aspect for success in the implementation of the strategy.
Based on our experience, it is extremely important to invest time and effort in the implementation stage through ongoing monitoring and review of the plans.
The reviews should generally be conducted through a combination of monthly, quarterly and annual cycles. This instals the needed discipline and holds team members accountable for the implementation of the strategic plan.
During this part of the process we will:
- Document the strategy and action plans
- Review plans prepared by your team and provide feedback
- Provide guidance and support
- Facilitate communication across departments/functions
- Review and Revise plans if needed