Monday, 4 July 2011

You have a business plan - so use it.

So you have built your business plan.  What now?

Assuming that you built the plan in order to provide a routemap to your business goals then the plan should form the basis for your management reviews from now on

-          In order that you can use it to manage the business the plan should contain

o   A detailed month-by-month budget for the first year

o   Monthly sales targets

o   Monthly marketing targets

o   A small number of other monthly KPI targets covering customers, operations and staff

-          The monthly management review should

o   Be attended by the staff responsible for the above areas

o   Follow a set agenda

o   Be scheduled and diarised for the year ahead

o   Take place as soon as possible after the month end once the necessary figures have been produced for the previous month and year to date

§  Management accounts

§  Sales figures

§  KPI performance

o   Identify variances from plan, identify causes and specify remedial actions

o   Record actions against an owner and deadline

o   Review progress against previous agreed actions

-          The quarterly plan review should

o   Revise the forecast outturn for the year based on performance to date

§  In bigger businesses this may result in a revised budget against which to measure in future management meetings

o   Identify any significant remedial actions required to align with the new forecast, such as redundancies or new premises

o   Be scheduled, minuted and followed-up as per the monthly meetings

-          The annual strategic review should prepare the new business plan

If you'd like to know more about developing a business plan then this event is for you.
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