If you fail to plan your business properly, you risk planning to fail. To improve both planning and business outcomes, consider these steps:

I Identify the main trends, salient data, limiting factors, key variables and future objectives – in essence, everything that may have any bearing on your business plan (BP).  

M Marshall the above factors while taking advice as to ‘format, financials & funding’ [FFF] as distinct from the core content regarding products, services and markets, which you must own.

P Prepare your plan in draft, using a mix of your headline inputs informed by external suggestions. There are many good checklists available to help you and we can assist with FFF.

R Run your business using the draft plan as a working bible, while refining it in line with actual results. Allow the plan to evolve into a filter for your main decisions, so that you won’t go off plan unknowingly.

O Objective Set your way forward, using SMART criteria (specific, measurable, ambitious, realistic & timelined). Don’t fudge missed targets, and do update the BP to reflect their impact.

V Value the process more than any results it depicts. This is about planning rather than any one plan - which will never be more than a ‘series of snapshots taken from the movie’ of how you see things going.  

E Ensure that the core assumptions & objectives are regularly reviewed. Material performance variations must be reflected back into the process to avoid that becoming redundant.

Remember that preparation & planning will prove as vital to the production of useful plans as they will to successful business outcomes. Plans that are subject to real scrutiny and regular updating will be more likely to win over funders/investors.

“You have an uncanny grasp of both detail and overview - it is unusual to have both.”

Chris Rowlands
CEO
Group 1 Software Europe.