Effective 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.

In this course, you'll learn how to coordinate and manage all implementation-related activities in an effective way. You'll discover how to develop action plans to help you implement your strategies and ideas.

And you'll find out how to ensure your implementation efforts can be supported in your organization. You'll also determine how to create a reporting system to help you monitor progress, how to control and modify your action plans, and how to assess the resulting outcomes.

After taking this course, you should be in a better position to implement your business plans effectively. This can help you achieve your own goals as a manager – as well as support your organization's strategic objectives.

2. Business Execution

This course includes the following sections: Understanding the Fundamentals, Crafting a Business Strategy that Execute, Linking Strategy to People and Operations and Monitoring and Evaluating.

Understanding the Fundamentals

There is a substantial difference between strategy planning and execution. Creating strategy is a lot easier than executing it. You'll learn about the cornerstones of effective business strategy execution – correct leadership behavior, having people in the right roles, and creating a culture of execution.

You'll begin by reviewing the reasons why executing business strategy is difficult. First, you'll become familiar with the drivers to strategy execution. Then you'll review some common barriers to strategy execution.

You'll also learn to recognize leadership behavior that's conducive to delivering results. And you'll determine if an organization – leaders, middle management, and the workforce – is displaying characteristics that support strategy execution and has people in the right roles.

Then you'll learn what a culture of execution entails and the four steps to create a culture that promotes business execution. With this knowledge, you'll be able to determine if your company meets the conditions that facilitate strategy execution.

Crafting a Business Strategy that Execute

The process used to execute strategy links strategy formulation and planning with operational execution.

First, you define and develop the strategy. Next, you align people and operations with the strategy. And finally, you monitor and revise the strategy. This course focuses on the first stage – defining and developing executable strategic plans.

This course will give you the tools you need to define and develop strategy that executes. You'll learn how to define the strategy by clarifying the mission, vision, and values.

You'll explore how to review the current situation and create strategy direction statements. Then you'll find out how to select strategic initiatives based on themes and assign accountability to those initiatives.

Finally, you'll learn how to translate initiatives into strategic targets and allocate resources to initiatives.

Linking Strategy to People and Operations

Without a focused plan, a business strategy will remain a vision. But by clearly defining what you want to achieve and developing strategically executable initiatives, you can bridge the gap between vision and execution.

In this course, you'll learn the principles for communicating your organization's strategy to help get your employees' buy-in. You'll also find out how to align people and work processes throughout your organization by translating high-level strategies into individual tasks.

Finally, you'll discover how to analyze and develop the critical competencies that your employees need to execute your organization's strategy. Following the guidelines in this course can help your organization communicate its strategy and get the support of its employees.

And by linking strategy to people and operations in your organization, you can improve your business execution to ensure your plan succeeds.

Monitoring and Evaluating

Monitoring and evaluating are not the same thing. Monitoring measures progress, checking whether the implementation is on track and aligns with your objectives. Evaluating your execution is about measuring success.

It allows you to adjust your plans and improve performance. Even the best- designed and best-implemented strategies can sometimes become obsolete as business circumstances change. It is essential, therefore, that strategy is systematically monitored and evaluated – and revised if required.

This course takes you through the steps involved in monitoring execution of your strategy. It then outlines the process for evaluating the results of your execution. Finally, you will learn how to effectively revise strategy once you have determined that change is needed.

That’s it! Now go ahead and hit that “Take this course!” button and see you on the inside!