ExpiredEffective Business Planning and Execution

Welcome to the Effective Business Planning and Execution Program which includes the following topics: Preparing a Business Plan, Performing Key Analyses, Preparing for Implementation, Understanding the Fundamentals of Business Execution, Crafting a Business Strategy that Execute, Linking Strategy to People and Operations and Monitoring and Evaluating.

1. Business Planning

You will learn here how to prepare a Business Plan, perform Key Analyses for Business Planning and how to Prepare the Implementation of a Business Plan.

Preparing a Business Plan

There are many important reasons to create a business plan. If your business is just starting out, business plans can help you attract investors. For new and established businesses alike, business plans map out how they’ll negotiate opportunities and challenges.

At a departmental level, business plans are developed to address medium-term planning needs and to secure approval and resources from senior management for new ideas and initiatives.

This course will help you develop your own business plan. It starts with an introduction to business plans that illustrates the benefits of business planning and describes the main elements of a plan.

It continues on to discuss the six preparatory steps you should take before developing a business plan and provide examples of each of these steps. And finally, it details how you can create your own plan by following a number of key guidelines.

Performing Key Analyses

Organizations have always had to plan for the future. Currently, however, the ability to develop and implement strategic plans is more important than ever. Managers need to look at the big picture to better understand what will and won’t work for their companies. They must determine where potential obstacles might exist, and how a proposed initiative – no matter how big or small – would support a company’s vision and objectives.

Say you want to plan your department’s future activities to support your organization’s strategic objectives. What would a good business plan look like? It should include a thorough review of the internal and external environment to determine how your idea fits in the business and market contexts.

An internal analysis examines your organization’s strengths and weaknesses. An external analysis tries to anticipate opportunities and threats in the political, economic, societal, and technological environment – for instance, a PEST analysis. You need to conduct internal and external analyses regularly. This will help promote creativity, uncover opportunities and challenges, and ensure a more effective review process.

This course looks at how to use internal and external analyses of your company to guide you in developing business plans. An internal analysis involves assessing your company’s market strategy and resources, evaluating organization and management strategy, and evaluating your organization’s financial position. You’ll then learn about the factors to consider when analyzing your external environment. This includes a PEST analysis and scenario planning. You’ll then learn how to conduct a SWOT analysis of your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Preparing for Implementation

As a manager, you’ll probably need to create business plans from time to time. For example, you may want to set out the strategies your department will follow for the next 12 months.

Or you might need to develop a plan for a new product, service, or process. Although creating a successful business plan is a significant achievement, implementing it effectively is not without its challenges.

Implementing a business plan requires the development of action plans. It also involves assigning responsibility for carrying out the necessary actions to individual employees and departments.

You should review and evaluate the results achieved on an ongoing basis. If things go wrong and you don’t get the expected results, it’s important to be able to modify your plans and take corrective action to get back on track.