This is the time of year when we throw ourselves into full on planning for next year. Businesses large and small need an annual plan to understand where they are, where they want to go, and how they might get there. Sounds simple but we all know, there’s a lot of background work to be done at every stage.

Whether business, strategic or tactical planning, there are sales targets to be met, profit expectations and volume budgets. And at each stage of planning comes a huge amount of information gathering.  However you choose to analyse your business (SWOT, CATWOE, MOST, PESTLE, BPM, or Six Hats thinking), there needs to be an understanding of your current environment and the impact of your decisions upon that environment.

When the ‘where we are’ and ‘what we want to do’ parts have been agreed. The tactical plan outlines how you are going to accomplish the projects and what actions will be taken as well as how they will be measured.

And when the final plan is complete and signed off, many of them are relegated to a shelf or a folder on a computer.  Failure to implement is a big issue for many organisations that do not have the resource to put the plan into action or do not know where to start! A great plan can fail if it is not resourced and allocated to people who can achieve it.  It needs to be measured and reviewed and be able to flex if the market changes.

Analysis, idea generation and performance metrics are key to, not just the business planning phase, but the full financial year, and that’s where we can help. For analysis, we can assist you with understanding where your brand/company stands at the moment, (with Net Promoter Scores or other research) we can identify the status quo. And for those tactical plans that will help you to deliver the projects, we are here to recommend activities that span digital marketing (newsletters, social media, SEO etc) through to PR and content generation, all tailored to the project and your brand. We can identify and measure KPIs as well as help with regular review meetings to ensure projects are on track or suggest ways to change and improve.

Fancy a chat?