Passion and a good idea are great starting points for a business. But, success is guaranteed only by a well-thought-out strategic plan for business. In 2025, businesses will need to anticipate the future and mould it to their advantage. From technology to working styles, everything is evolving. Keeping pace is all about planning ahead. We’re talking about more than just a list of targets to be achieved.
A good plan will help you set goals and draw out a route to achieving them. So, how can you create a winning strategic plan? Let’s find out.
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Business plans and strategic plans for business may seem interchangeable. There are similarities but also differences. A successful business has both.
A business plan focuses on a specific project or the current state of the company. It describes the company’s structure, the market it operates in, the industry and how it plans to generate revenue. Business plans include sales and marketing plans and day-to-day operational plans. For example, you would need a business plan before launching a new product or setting up a store in a new city.
A good business plan will answer questions like:
Strategic plans focus on the future. These long-term plans assess the current state of the company and its environment and establish goals with specific timelines. They also define the actions required to achieve these goals. It answers questions like:
Here’s an example. Nike’s strategic plan for 2021-25 included 29 targets that reflect the company’s commitment to people, planet and play. The plan defines each target and lays out the steps required to achieve it as well as measurable metrics.
The responsibility of designing a strategic plan usually falls to the top management team. That said, the SEO, CFO and other executives may also involve department heads, human resources and other employees. Companies may also ask external stakeholders, industry experts and even customers for their input.
Now, let’s look at a few key steps.
The first step of strategic planning is to assess where you want to be by the end of 2025. Your mission defines the company’s core purpose while your vision defines what you want to achieve. This will act as a compass for all other business decisions.
Your mission and vision for 2025 must be aligned with your overall goals for the future. For example, a company focused on sustainable innovation may set a mission to achieve carbon neutrality by the end of 2025.
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This analysis helps identify internal and external factors that may affect your business in 2025. Some businesses may also conduct a PESTLE analysis to study the effect of broader external elements. PESTLE stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental analysis.
This situational analysis creates a realistic picture of the company’s current market position. In turn, it serves as the foundation for plans to address the risks and opportunities identified. Take a bicycle manufacturer for example. The growing demand for e-bicycles could be an opportunity to partner with battery manufacturers.
Having identified a mission and conducted a SWOT analysis, you can move on to setting goals for the year. These goals must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). They must also be aligned with the company’s overall vision to ensure that everyone focuses on a common objective.
Let’s look at a few goals the bicycle manufacturer may set for 2025.
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Next, you need to break down each goal into actionable steps. This involves:
For example, if your brand could connect with 10,000 people in the last year, reaching an audience of 500,000 may not be realistic for 2025. Reaching 100,000 people may be a more achievable KPI. You could define the steps to achieve this as:
No matter how big a company may be, resources like funds, people, technology and so on, are always limited. Hence, you need to divide and allocate assets.
This begins with prioritizing initiatives. Giving your teams too much to do can overwhelm them. Ideally, consider about 4 initiatives per goal. Next, determine the resources each team requires to complete their tasks and see how you can accommodate them.
For example, the design team may need to consult with an expert. Rather than hire a full-time specialist, you might choose to take on a remote consultant who can work out of a coworking space.
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To be implemented, you will need to break down your action plans further into weekly and monthly tasks. All employees must also have defined responsibilities that know their role in achieving the overall mission. This step-by-step approach makes it easier to implement initiatives as well as track them.
For example, let’s say you aim at achieving sales worth Rs 5,000,000 in 2025. The average value of an order is Rs 2,000. This means you need to make 2,500 transactions in the year. This is about 209 transactions in a month, 48 transactions in a week and 10 per day.
Breaking initiatives down into such micro-level plans makes them easier to plan and achieve. They also serve to keep employees motivated toward reaching the overall target for the year.
Strategic planning is not a one-time exercise. This needs to be regularly evaluated and adjusted to stay effective. You may choose to assess what’s working and what isn’t on a weekly or monthly basis.
Assess the performance of each initiative against the KPIs and overall strategic goals. There may be a new opportunity or an unforeseen challenge. Regular assessments help identify such changes and allow you to adjust your plans accordingly.
For example, a competitor may go out of business. You could leverage this to tweak action plans to increase your market share.
Having an annual strategic plan for business helps establish near-term goals and lay out a practical route to achieve them. Strategic plans work across all levels of the organization. It can help manage finances effectively and increase profitability while giving you a sustainable, competitive advantage.
A good strategic plan must define a mission for the organization as well as strategic goals and action plans. That said, it must also be flexible. You might need to expand your team for a project or move a few people to another city temporarily. Partnering with coworking spaces like The Office Pass (TOP) supports this agility. You can manage team sizes and locations without worrying about going over your budget.
Partnerships like this can make your strategic plans more effective and bring your business closer to its goals for the year. To know more, reach out to us at 89998 28282.
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