How You Can Implement An Intelligent Strategic Business Plan

Having a strategic business plan is essential if you want to take your business to the next level. Compiling one is an important process that you should complete thoroughly if you’re serious about the long-term growth of your company.

If this is your first time creating a strategic business plan, it can be hard to figure out where to start. A plan needs to include information about your business, the products you offer and the business’s financial health. Having a well-thought-out plan ensures that your team and strategy are united in delivering the company’s aims.

At Keystone Training, we recognise how important it is for businesses to put intelligent strategic business plans into action. Our Business Leadership and Strategic Planning Consultancy service ensures that you use your resources effectively to achieve the goals set out in your plan.

In our latest blog, we’ll cover how you can effectively implement an intelligent strategic plan. From learning what a strategic business plan is to writing and developing its content, it will give you a plan to help your business achieve your long-term goals.

What is a strategic business plan?

A strategic business plan explores your aims and objectives and details how to achieve them. It also focuses on the best way to use and maximise existing resources to help grow your business.

Companies that are established are more likely to use strategic business plans over start-ups. This is predominantly down to the value that has been placed on continuity and growth while drawing on market experience. The main objectives of any plan are to lay out the company’s growth strategy and detail how it aims to get there.

Having a solid plan in place can be a key factor in your business’s long-term success. A well-defined plan will enable you to identify the right moment to grow your business. If the time is not right, an intelligent plan is flexible enough to adapt. Whether that is through downsizing your product range, the scale and scope of your business or any other method.

How do you develop a strategic plan for your business?

Developing a strategic business plan first involves setting out overall goals. You need to ensure that the success of these is measurable through key metrics and realistic actions that can be used to create key performance indicators (KPIs).

Depending on where your business is in the market, you can develop a short or long-term strategic business plan. It’s also important to remember there is no one-size-fits-all approach; an intelligent plan is one tailored specifically to your needs that is flexible enough to help you meet your goals.

It’s important that when writing and developing an intelligent strategic business plan you include these key concepts:

Your mission statement

Forming your mission statement is crucial when it comes to putting together your strategic business plan. The mission statement serves as an overall reminder of what your business is trying to achieve while aims, objectives and goals are shorter-term milestones that can help you get there.

Writing an action plan

Having a section focused on your action plan will enable you to decide who is accountable for implementing specific parts of your strategy. A detailed action plan will give your business the best chance of success. It’s also worth revisiting the action plans a few months later to measure effectiveness and performance.

Measure KPI performance

As a business owner, you want to see if the objectives you’ve set out in your plan have performed. It’s important to spend the time analysing the data and seeing if those strategies have delivered a good return on investment. This will help when adapting your plan to suit changing business functions or market conditions.

Things to avoid when putting together a strategic business plan

There are a few things that you should avoid when putting together a strategic business plan. By avoiding these mistakes, it’ll ensure that you create a clear strategic business plan that sets out your mission and vision for long-term success.

Not using SMART goals

Not using the SMART method (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound) to set and complete goals can leave your business directionless. It’s important when creating goals that one or more people are responsible for their delivery. By ensuring this accountability, it’s easier to track success and adapt if needed.

Having too many goals

Including a strategic business plan that has too many goals can lead to confusion and micromanagement. Less is more when it comes to the number of goals you’ve listed in your plan. Rather than have 20 goals that are unrealistic, we recommend having four to five achievable, realistic ones.

How can a business implement its intelligent strategic business plan?

Once you’ve gone through the process of writing up an intelligent strategic business plan, it’s time to implement it. You want to make sure that the time and energy spent putting the plan together starts driving growth immediately.

There are plenty of tips that you can use while implementing the plan, but we’ve drilled down to focus on a few. By putting these tips into practice, it’ll avoid poor implementation and help to improve your business quickly.

Allocating resources to deliver goals

While implementing the strategic business plan, you should allocate the right amount of human and financial resources. This should be laid out in your action plan section so your employees are confident and capable of working towards your goals effectively.

Schedule regular performance reviews

Having regular review meetings is crucial to the successful implementation of a strategic business plan. It means that you can monitor progress, recognise milestones and rectify problems your employees may be facing. The key to any good review meeting is having a clear agenda, making it efficient and ensuring there are actionable outcomes.

Conclusion

Creating and implementing an intelligent strategic business plan takes time, but it can be worth it. At Keystone, we recognise how important it is for your business that you have an effective plan for long-term growth. It means that everyone who works for you invests in the mission and vision statement to ensure the plan translates into long-term success.

If you have any questions about how we can assist and help with producing an intelligent strategic business plan for your business, please feel free to contact us.