The move to strategic planning has been driven by a number of convergent trends:
* The need for more frequent, accurate and accountable reporting.
* The evolution and development of business intelligence and financial technology by vendors, and the investment in it by clients: with billions having been spent on transaction systems, the foundation has been laid.
* The pace of the world is intensifying, with change keeping organisations under pressure: accordingly, management needs to be able to fulfil key business activities faster than ever before.
* With globalisation and Internet purchasing systems, competition has intensified.
* With economic uncertainty, organisations know they have to drive down costs and increase effectiveness.
Whatever the value to the business, strategic planning does require some profound organisational changes.
Marc Scheepbouwer, CEO, GBI
Strategic planning resolves many of the problems businesses face today. These range from IT to senior executives, from customers to partners. All of them can be positively impacted by the application of strategic planning. Strategic planning, as driven and fulfilled off a single view of the truth, can have a profound bearing on the business:
* CEOs and FDs can enjoy greater accountability and easily set and maintain the direction of the company.
* Strategic planning allows the business more rapidly to identify and interpret the effects of bad news: it also ensures that plans aren`t developed once and then forgotten, but seen through to execution.
* Planning managers are freed up from being number-crunchers to actual planners: from being manually intensive workers who are unhappy and liable to work late as they crunch detail, they can become truly strategic and add value to their process.
* The entire supply chain can be positively influenced: with strategic planning a way of life, the system can be opened up to customers to provide accurate buying forecasts, and to suppliers to negotiate better procurement deals.
This is not wild conjecture or wishful thinking. Strategic planning is the technology-enabled process whereby all key stakeholders drive planning, budgeting and forecasting off a central view of the truth. Event-based, it includes collaboration and process flows. Vitally, because it automates much of the process, strategic planning is done in a fraction of the time, freeing up management to engage in scenario-setting and the asking of complex "what-if" questions, typically beyond the reach of executives with conventional planning, budgeting and forecasting.
Whatever the value to the business, strategic planning does require some profound organisational changes. Not everyone enjoys this much transparency, so a big culture change needs to take place. People will resist the new way unless they see the value. For instance, in a normal cycle the sales team will under-declare their prospects, and cost centres will over-declare their expenses. You have to change the culture through change management so as to ensure ownership and buy-in. When that happens, the benefits can be dynamic.
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