Setting goals and planning business strategies

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Setting goals and planning business strategies - By: Lalit Yadav, Posted on: 2008-07-03

Ever done a business without any goal setting and real planning on business strategies, and still got success. Then, you should be applauded, but the irony is you never know when will you fall in trouble and your business will flounder.

Till the time everything is smooth, you don’t realize the bumps of downturn that you may face later. In any case, short-term/long-term goal setting and business strategy planning should be an essence to a start-up or a prosperous business. Once you set your goals, you also need to follow them.

Goal-Setting

Goal-setting in itself is a part of strategic planning process and business strategies are planned and developed depending on the goals.

You should be questioning yourself the following when setting goals.

· How I want my business to look like? Or what should be my annual turnover?

· How much investment and capital requirement will be there?

· How much manpower will I need?

· What marketing strategies do I need to adopt and implement?

If you already have a settled business, you can think of goal-setting for future prospects and ever-booming business. Depending on the business resources that you have, you need to set long-term or short-term goals. The goals must be reviewed every once/twice/thrice a month. Further, the goals need to be explained to your employees too. If they are clear about the business goals, your business gets a solid platform.

These goals must be written down in the form of a specific schedule. You must remember that there should be enough clarity in your statements and it is better to mention the time required to act upon the goals and in how much time is needed to accomplish these goals. Once you know about the time-frame in which the goals to be acted upon, it will let you save upon lot of costs.

Above all, the goal–setting should be realistic, specific (in terms of figures and time) and feasible. If you have a capital of around 10 lakh and you want your business to triple or become four-fold, it may be unrealistic goals for you.

Planning Business Strategies

Once you have set your goals, you need to chalk out plans for business strategies. A good plan is like a mini-reward for you for only this, if implemented properly will lead you in the right direction and make you the leader in the market.

Having a good business strategy plan is not the ultimate solution to your business but it is the foundation on which your building blocks of business lies. The strategic planning takes place at the corporate level where the strategies can take a more defined form at the level of SBUs (Strategic Business Units).

Now, what is a strategic business plan. “It is the guide to a successful business which includes plans in order to differentiate one’s business from its competitor’s by way of product offerings, brand value, services, target segment etc.” Or it can also be defined as “ a document of the company which guides an organization towards a particular direction with a definite purpose which includes a SWOT analysis”.

The constituents of a good strategic plan will always have plans of proper allocation of resources which can be reviewed later to make necessary adjustments. A good strategic business plan will always serve as an outline to take future decisions and set the benchmarks for the company. It differentiates itself from the day-to-day operational or short-term plans as it has more to do with vision and mission of a company rather than the plans which guides you to manage the day-to-day affairs by analyzing and measuring them.

A strategic business plan is always taken up at the higher level by the owner or the Board of Directors. Again, it should be achievable and realistic.

When writing or designing a vision statement, you should be clear about how you want your business to look like in the next few years, and when designing a mission statement, you know where you are, in what business you are in and it should indicate the purpose of your business. The plan should also contain objectives, values and programs. Also do a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Oportunities and Threats) analysis of your business which helps you to design effective business strategies. When you are planning, you will get to know of the government compliance, industry practices, legal and administrative requirements.

Once you have made your plans, you should know how to implement them by utilizing your all your valuable resources such as capital resources and human resources.