The Planning Process

Goals

The goals you set should be achievable within the next business year. Ideally, your goals should:

Precisely define a desired state you want your company to reach, based on the success factors from the previous analysis.
Be measurable so that you know whether or not the company has achieved the desired objective.
The scope for each goal should be between 0-12 months.

For example, expand to the outer London area, create a low-cost product line to fight the recession.

How to set goals

Enter your goals into the text boxes provided.
If you need to enter additional goals, click on Add Goal on the bottom right of the text box.
To delete a goal, click the red Delete button next to the respective goal.
Click Next to proceed to the Actions page once you have entered your goals.

You have now created the company goals and are ready to proceed to the next step.

Actions

The goals you created in the previous section should be broken down into actions. These are steps that need to be completed in order to reach the goals.

Try to formulate the actions as precisely as possible. For example, instead of having an action called "Status meeting", "Arrange status meeting with the Sales department" is more accurate and easier to understand.

It is also a good idea to limit the size of an action. For example, "Up-sell to existing customers" can be improved by narrowing down the scope to "Up-sell to 50 existing customers". The first action lets you know what to do, but does not communicate when you are finished. The latter is more specific regarding when the action is to be completed.

Example:

Goal:

Expand to the outer London area

Actions:

Conduct market research
Look for two new sales consultants
Buy a new car

How to add actions

Enter your actions into the text boxes provided below the relevant goal.
If you need to enter additional actions goals, click on Add Action on the bottom right of the text box.
To delete an action, click the red Delete button next to the respective action.
Click Next to proceed to the Timing page once you have completed your actions.

You have now assigned actions to each of the company goals.

Timing of actions

In the timing section you can formulate a plan for when your actions should be carried out. This will give you a better overview of the different actions. You can also assign the action to the person who will carry out the action or oversee the completion of the action.

How to set the timing of actions

Click the field in the matrix for when the action is supposed to be implemented.
To delete the timing, click on the field again.
To assign the action to a person, click the Responsibility column and enter the name of the person in charge of the action.
To attach a note to an action, click on the name of the action in the left column and a note window will appear.
Click Next to proceed to the Revenues & Costs page once you have completed the timing of your actions.

The timing for your specified actions has now been planned and an overview will be available in the Timing calendar.

Revenue and Cost Forecast

The Revenue and Cost Forecast ensures that your Year Plan is financially feasible. Set up a very simple cost and revenue prediction and enter the numbers into the highlighted rows. For additional help, the actions are displayed below so that you can decide whether they affect the costs.

How to enter Revenue and Cost Forecast

Enter your forecast for the Operating Revenues into the highlighted row by clicking on the field provided.
Enter your cost forecast into the highlighted row for each month of the year.
Follow the same procedure for entering the Operating costs.
Click Next to proceed to the Year Plan report page.

You have now completed the revenue and cost forecast. The totals will be displayed in the Total field on the right-hand side. This is the final step in the process and you are now able to create a report.

Tip! To save time during entering the numbers, you can distribute the number entered for January across the other months by clicking the fast-forward button, which copies the number to the remaining months.