Strategic planning is not a glamorous process, but if a business wishes to have any resemblance of success, its leaders will need to be as comfortable with it as breathing. A clear and concise strategic plan aligns all the team’s independent work funnels back to the greater goals of the company. Building a durable strategic plan is easier said than done. This is why the team at Elate has created this guide on the importance of strategic planning in hopes of helping business leaders down the road to a long future of success. Let’s start with the basics.

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What Is Strategic Planning?

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Simply put, strategic planning is the process a business’s leaders go through to document its large goals and purposes. These aims and actions to achieve them will be implemented throughout the organization to align everyone towards these common elements. It is crucial to understand that strategic planning is not a one-and-done type of project. Think of the strategic plan as a living, breathing document that will evolve just as the business does. 

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What Are the Benefits of Strategic Planning?

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The team at Elate fully believes in the impact of strategic planning, but we understand that a business needs a tailored plan in order to reap the rewards of all the hard work. Here are some of the greater benefits of strategic planning.

• Track Progress Efficiently: With each department operating independently, having the ability to track individual and company-wide progress is invaluable. One way to achieve this is by identifying the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) in the strategic plan. The easiest path is to label the most vital KPIs at an organizational level and then create smaller, departmental ones that will help funnel progress toward those larger objectives. 
• Have a Clear Direction: This is one element of a strategic plan that must continue to be driven home. A company needs to have one strong vision. Tracking the right metrics is great, but everything that the organization does should be pushing towards a clearly defined goal. For the best results, metrics are often in alignment with the goals. If your goal is to transform an industry, you might be more concerned with the number of new logos and adopters vs upselling existing users.
• Increase Profits: More of an indirect benefit, strategic plans can lead to increased overall profits. How? The right strategy can enable your team to take a deeper look at the market to identify areas that sales and marketing can hit harder to increase overall profitability. 

Above all, strategic planning is directly responsible for creating a purpose-driven organization. Ensure that all necessary team members have access to the plan so they can refer to it as often as possible. Also, it should be repeated and lived in day-to-day actions and processes in order for any of the benefits to take effect. 

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What Is a Strategic Planning Process?

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Once you are aware of the power and benefits present from creating a cohesive strategic plan, the next obvious question is how to create one. The good news is that the process is not as difficult as it might seem, especially when you partner with an organization that specializes in strategic planning like Elate. Each strategic plan is unique to the company building it, but there are a few key steps that should take place in every process: 

1. Your Current Strategic Position: This helps you understand where your company sits among its competition and the goals outlined by the leadership team. At this stage, it would be helpful to use a SWOT analysis to get the information necessary to start the plan. The SWOT analysis identifies a company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Once the analysis is complete, you can define the goals you wish to achieve through the help of a strategic plan. 
2. Objectives and Goals: Not every goal is as vital to the company’s health as others, so it is important to define what needs to be achieved right now and what are long-term objectives to keep in mind as the business progresses. When creating and organizing these goals, leadership should think about how they align to the overall vision of the company.
3. Development of the Plan: Once all of the prep work is done, the plan itself can start to take shape. You have an abundance of options at this stage, and making the wrong choice can significantly hurt a company’s progress by wasting time and resources. Elate offers three all-encompassing services around strategic planning. The first, which is perfect for this step, is about Building Your Plan. The other two lend themselves to the final steps perfectly. 
4. Launch and Management of the Plan: If you don’t launch the plan and operate within its parameters, then no change will come. Ensure that all departments have the necessary access to the documents so everyone can be on the same page moving forward with the new plan. Elate’s Executing Your Plan service is just what you need during this phase of the operation. This single platform allows you to hit your goals and exceed your plan by easily seeing objectives, metrics, blockers, and key wins in real-time. 
5. Review and Update of the Plan: As we mentioned earlier, a strategic plan is not something you implement to never look back on or change. You should be regularly monitoring your performance once the plan is launched to see if everything is on track and identify areas that can be improved in the next iteration. Elate has you covered here as well with the Reviewing Your Plan service. 

In the end, the purpose of a strategic plan is to help a company stay true to itself and its goals even as growth and change occur.

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Elate: Take Your Strategic Plan to the Next Level

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Your business is unique, and the different types of strategic planning mean you will need the proper support to create, implement, and revise your perfect plan. Partnering with Elate ensures that you get a dedicated team to work alongside you as you go from the formulation of the strategic plan to making revisions on your final product. 

Our platform is able to seamlessly integrate with any tools you already work with surrounding strategic planning. If you are ready to discover the full potential of strategic plans, request a demo today.