Business Planning | Strategic Plans | BW&A Planning Services | Sales & Operations Planning

Business Planning

There can be several reasons for creating a business plan, including:

• a new business start-up

• expansion planning or moving into new product areas

• a business acquisition

• as part of the process of reassessing your existing plans in light of changing business or economic conditions

Most often, the need for a business plan results from the process of raising financing from outside investors, or to support a loan application to a financial institution. But preparing or updating a business plan on a regular basis can be an effective way of ensuring that your business keeps moving in the right direction. The planning process forces thinking about the business, consideration of options, recognition of opportunities and risks, and testing of expectations.

Whatever the purpose, BW&A can assist you in your planning process. We can help you create the plan and provide guidance on how best to structure the planning documents. We can also assist in developing the supporting financial data, including cash flow projections – often the most important, and the most difficult, elements of the plan.

Strategic Plans

Strategic planning focuses on developing the high-level goals and strategies of a business. It’s generally the first step in the overall planning process, and it is here that the fundamental direction of the business is defined.

Essentially, the strategic plan forms the base on which the business plan is created. In some companies, strategic planning is a distinct and separate process, to be followed by the business planning stage, but many companies approach it as an integral part of creating the business plan.

In contrast to a strategic plan, the business plan is a much broader and more detailed “roadmap” of how you plan to get to each stage en route to the company’s overall goals. It also gets into more detail in terms of quantifying the financial issues and planned results. Nevertheless, it must also incorporate the company’s strategic plans, which is why many companies do not create a separate strategic plan document. The distinction between the two really depends on what is best suited to your company.

In practice, regardless of the actual process used, the important issue is to document the overall business goals and strategies so that investors, lenders and employees get a clear understanding of what the business is planning to achieve: in other words, where you want to get to and how you plan to get there.

BW&A Planning Services

It is important that, as the owner-manager of the business, you make the decisions about the goals and objectives and how you will achieve them; it must be your plan. Our role is act as facilitators of the process – helping you to formulate an approach to the key issues and assisting you and your managers and staff in preparing some or all of the financial segments of the plan. If needed, we can coordinate each stage from start to finish, and we can also prepare the actual planning documents from your initial drafts, all the way through to assisting you in your presentations to lenders and investors.

We can also organize half-day or full-day planning workshops for you and your key personnel. These workshops will be structured for your particular circumstances. They can be orientation sessions to ensure that everyone is “on the same page” and understands the overall purpose of the planning process and the approach; they can also be brainstorming sessions.

Group workshops can be an excellent way to get everyone focused on the key issues and can be very productive; inclusion in the planning process makes the participants feel they really are part of the business and inspires a greater sense of “ownership” in the issues and goals. This in turn leads to greater accountability and a stronger commitment to achieving those goals.

A good business plan can go a long way towards convincing investors and lenders of the credibility of your business. BW&A is very experienced in this area. Contact us for a no-obligation discussion of your planning needs.

Related planning issues:

Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) has always been an important process for manufacturers. It has been getting a lot more attention recently because new studies of manufacturers show that the highest performing companies all have an effective S&OP process. Much of the increased attention has come from software providers, although some of this has only tended to complicate the process with terms like “continuous S&OP” and “real-time S&OP”.

Essentially, S&OP is a monthly planning process to balance production plans with sales plans/forecasts, within the constraints imposed by the company’s production capacity and available resources. The process can involve a review of sales and production plans up to a year ahead but, typically, it looks in detail at the next three to six months.

The most important outcome of any S&OP process is that sales and production communicate their forecasts on a regular basis, so that steps can be taken to ensure their respective expectations are compatible. How much detail should be reviewed during this process depends on the nature of the business. BW&A can assist you in deciding how to structure the planning process, who should be involved, and how best to prepare the necessary forecasts and estimates on a regular basis.

One thing that will make or break any S&OP process is the availability of reliable management information. Some of the key requirements are up-to-date sales and production reports showing actual vs. plan comparisons, current sales forecasts, and the latest production plans and schedules.

Any missing data – for example, not having reliable estimates for the completion dates of current production jobs – makes for very difficult planning at best. This is what our manufacturing execution systems are designed to address, in conjunction with the company’s management information systems. Click here for more information.  

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