A strategic plan is a roadmap to where the company wants to be in the future and how it plans on achieving this goal. It takes into consideration continual changes within the organization and its external environment. It includes a visual of which products and services will be provided, organizational design changes, performance goals and resources that will be needed.
Suggestions
Develop your mission, visual and values statement. If the business already has these statements, then revise them to reflect any changes for where you want to take the business in the next five years.
Conduct an external analysis. An external analysis is simply looking at anything outside of the company that can affect its performance within the next five years, such as societal trends, new technology, political climate, competitive landscape and demographic trends.
List the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This is often referred to as a SWOT analysis, which is useful in determining how to overcome weaknesses and threats, plus taking advantage of its strengths and opportunities.
Note major issues the business must overcome in the upcoming five years. Brainstorm a list of major obstacles of issues that the business faces and what could be done to overcome each of these obstacles.
Establish a plan to overcome obstacles. This plan should include general approaches on how to overcome these obstacles and create goals for employees to accomplish. Do not feel that you must overcome all these obstacles at once, as since this is a five-year plan, spread out the goals so that you can realistically accomplish each.
Assign responsibilities. Appoint someone to be responsible for each goal and provide that person with an action plan. The action plan includes the objectives that should be achieved, their responsibilities and a timeline for completion. Be as precise as possible for the first year, while years two to five can be generalized for now.
Create an operating budget for each year. List the resources that you will need for each goal, what it will cost and how the resources will be obtained. The first year should be as precise as possible, while the remaining four years can be estimates.
Specify how progress will be monitored and evaluated. This is an important section of the plan, as management should be keep up-to-date on whether goals are being met throughout the five years or if any issues or delays arise. Even if goals are no expected to be achieved for years, making sure that the company is on track regularly is key is achieving them.
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