Karen, Strategy Specialist at GBC, 5 min read
On a daily basis, people get many different ideas for their business, and the number of people who actually put these ideas into action are less than 2%. From this number, unfortunately, only 1% of these ideas get to see the light of day and only 0.5% get to survive and thrive. Why is that? People often think that most businesses fail because of two main reasons: lack of capital, and zero motivation. Have you ever heard of “Failing to Plan, Is Planning to Fail?” Well, here’s the honest truth; the main reason why businesses, regardless of established or startup, fail to survive is the absence of strategic planning. Consequently, businesses that do go on to survive and stay at the top, have been able to incorporate effective strategic planning into their business.
Whilst being able to navigate your business with a meaningful, realistic and effective strategic plan is fundamental to business success; strategic planning software has become integral to maintaining course, sharpening focus and anticipating changes in light of new or actual information. Strategic planning software gives you the less-burdensome tools and strategic planning framework that will empower you to guide your action plans, enable you to organize your resources, keep track of your strategy and allow you to communicate the plan easily to other members of staff and stakeholders.
Here’s just 8 Reasons Why Strategic Planning software is a key enabler to the strategic planning process:
1. The first reason as to why strategic planning software enables and helps in the strategic planning process, is that it helps you develop and/or confirm your business foundation statements. It helps you articulate you company vision, mission and values statement of your business a clear and believable way. Having this constant reminder will help keep you stay on track of what you set out to achieve and provide clear guidance to top level managers, supervisors and staff. Importantly, it guides staff on what the business will not engage in along with what it will.
2. Most entrepreneurs have lofty dreams for their business, but they do not have a clear understanding of their destination or even how they’re going to get there. Strategic planning software helps concretize the destination of your business and the path it will take to get there. Good strategic planning software will help you craft a realistic and meaningful vision, and empower you to establish a clear path helping you stay the course of your intended destination.
3. Strategic planning software helps you to thoroughly scan and evaluate the external environment in which your business is operating within. Not only is it important to understand your business purpose and the ‘market-gap’ your business aims to fill, it is equally important to understand the external and uncontrollable pressures facing your business. Environment scanning can empower you to understand the external threats facing your business, helping you to navigate the unforeseeable and uncontrollable external events.
4. With strategic planning software, you can easily negotiate pivots or change in direction with new or actual data. The strategic course of your business is laid within a consistently changing environment, meaning, business owners, managers and CEO will be constantly making decisions to either: stay the course or pivot and change direction. Changes are inevitable and great strategic planning software, empowers you to make changes seamlessly.
5. In every strategic plan, the strategic outcomes, outputs and inputs that are needed to bring a plan into existence need to be articulated. Strategic planning software articulates your company vision, mission, values and strategic objectives in a clear and concise strategic map. A strategic map is powerful when communicating with stakeholders, investors, top management and staff. The strategy map shows the vital things that you need to achieve your corporate/company objectives in a succinct and clearly drawn out way. With the help of the good strategic planning software, you can develop your strategy map that will help you bring your strategy into workable reality.
6. Having successfully carried out the first 5 stages, the next step is to have measures of success and “SMART” targets. Strategic planning software will enable you to have a solid set of data about the progress of your strategic objectives and action plan at any given point in time. Here you will also be able to observe how your performance matches your objectives and ensure that everyone is on the same page and pulling in the same direction.
7. Over time, the organization changes as it takes on projects. Every organization, regardless of type or size, needs to identify strategic initiatives as these are the projects that will help to achieve the company’s strategic objectives. These objectives are what will expand the scope of your organization and businesses will have around 5-10 strategic objectives linked to the strategy. Strategic planning software aids the delivery of projects in strategic alignment to the company’s overall objectives.
8. Above all other things, strategic planning software makes strategic planning efficient by incorporating meaningful monitoring and reporting tools. The best strategic planning software comprehensively monitors your performance and gives a detailed and meaningful report down to an action plan tracking level. This helps you have a constant idea of what your performances are on a regular basis.
Strategic planning software makes strategic planning easy and it enables quick and efficient analysis. It helps guide strategic thinking in your business without the complexity and high costs.
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