Reviewing your Business Plan

Whilst business planning normally begins mid-year, with final drafts circulated amongst teams in winter, there are those that leave the entire process until year end. November and December therefore become the months when busy business owners plan for the coming year.

When the business plan is completed and hopefully shared with the team, that’s it, done and dusted for another year. Or is it?

The Perfect Time to Review and Update Your Business Plan

When serious effort has been put into such an important and valuable document, what a waste that it should gather dust in a draw until it’s reviewed and updated for the next year.

Maybe reviewing at the same time as future planning has worked in the past, particularly if there’s been no significant opportunity or major threat to factor in, but... the pandemic (not to mention other global challenges) has without doubt caused turbulent times. Whether your business has seen an upturn or downturn, or even if things have been on an even keel, now is absolutely a good time to review your business plan. In fact, why would you not review things regularly.

With renewed enthusiasm some might say, blow the dust off the document and reconnect with the inspiration and motivation you felt when you wrote it - but the point here is, don't let it become dusty in the first place.

4 Things That Warrant Reflection

1. Re-articulate your business services

It is one thing documenting in your business plan the services or products you offer and who you offer them to. It is another entirely to be able to express them clearly, so that your potential customers understand the benefits and feel sufficiently informed. Marketing copy, from packaging to telephone sales scripts are often improvable.

Getting your sales copy to a place where it reliably encourages prospective customers to email or pick up the phone, to make the purchase or place the order - is a game of ongoing optimisation. Now is the perfect time to review your marketing material and all of your customer touch points, to check that your offerings are fully understood.

Have you added new services recently? If so, has your brand kept pace with these changes? Does your brand lend itself sufficiently to knew offerings or is there any lingering confusion to address as a result of these changes? Are your resource now stretched in new ways, borne from unintended consequences.... Do you need to recalibrate the operation as a result?

2. Re-evidence and validate the business need

Your business plan should already include basic information about your market, such as whether it growing, shrinking and the scope for you to scale up. You will want to make sure you are conducting trend analysis so that you can evidence these things. On an ongoing basis your considerations should include...

• Ideas based upon research / results
• An understanding of how profitable a product or service might be
• Knowledge as to what it is about a product or service that satisfies the demand
• Clear details or assumptions around the resources required to deliver any offerings and whether or not those resources are available (or requirements are changing).

3. Re-determine business delivery resources

If you factored in employing more people so that your level of service isn’t compromised as the business grows, review whether or not this is on track. Is the need still the same?

Can your current team cope without changing the structure?

If the need remains, can you promote internally?

You may need to list the required component resources, specifically so that you can cost out accurately. Growth invariably requires investment. From training to technology, whether it be new software licences, hardware or plant machinery. You need to consider grow to the same degree as a business start-up might consider its launch or any other product launch. It can be useful to produce a separate budget for the changes in isolation. What do you need to spend to deliver the your product or service, before adding your target profit. Do not forget to include an allowance for marketing.

This is definitely an area that should be reviewed monthly. Changes, as we are forever experiencing, throw up opportunities to be considered as well as new threats to be mitigated against. Consider the implications of such changes and their impact upon your business. Actions to harness the opportunities or steps to safeguard your business from the threats will influence your finances, so remember to update your budgets and forecasts regularly.

Take the time to do so sooner rather than later. It is easy to get taken out by metaphoric financial hurricanes, you could have seen coming or easily have anticipated with regular reviews. This is how some businesses are able to take decisions that seem like perfect timing. The truth is, it is just prudent - good old fashion regular performance reviews, and a 'no surprises', close-eye upon any changes in the underlying numbers.

Conclusion