corporate planning is

6 Elements of Successful Corporate Planning

No matter if you are a brand new business looking to sign their first client, or an industry leader looking to target a new audience, corporate planning is crucial to meet your goals.

What Is Corporate Planning?

Corporate planning is a process that is used by businesses to map out a course of action to grow, increase profits, gain exposure, or strengthen brand identity. Corporate planning is a tool that successful business use to leverage their resources more wisely than their competitors.

No matter the size of your business, it is crucial to have a plan. A plan is not only beneficial to keep your business organized, but it can also help increase

Clarity & Direction

Ensure efficiency use of resources

Provide a way of measuring progress

Support effective decision-making

Coordinate activities

Allocate responsibilities

Motivate and guide staff

Six Key Elements of a Successful Plan

As a business, you must take many factors into consideration before you begin planning a business strategy. You must take a step outside of your position in the business and look at the following elements as if you were a competitor or a consumer. To create a successful corporate plan, you will need to

Gather Information

Set objectives of the plan

Devise strategies to meet goals

Implement your plan

Monitor plan performance

Evaluate the effectiveness/success of your plan

Gathering Information

The first and most important step in creating a successful corporate plan is to gather information. Take the good, the bad, the ugly and the pretty that regard to your specific goals. Not only should you gather this information about your own company, but also your biggest competitors. No matter if you are a small business or large, it is important to look at the strengths and weaknesses of the leading companies in your industry. This can help shape your plan to avoid the costly mistakes of others.

Creating Successful Objectives & Strategies

Goals and strategies are often confused, but they couldn’t be more different. An objective is a broad primary outcome that can be measured. A strategy is the approach you take to reach that goal.

Some sample objectives that you can use to better shape your business’s plan are:

Increase Sales by 20%

Increase followers on social media by 200

Respond to customers within 3 hours of inquiries

You can accompany these objectives with strategies will help your company “get there”. For example:

Objective: Make Product X a category leader in sales revenue by year, 2020.

Strategy: Persuade buyers that Product X is the best on the market by associating with large well-established Product X related manufacturers.

Establishing quantifiable objectives and strategies will set your business up for success. The objective of your plan should answer, “Where are we going?” while the strategy should answer, “How are we going to get there?”.

By setting out a plan for your business, you will be able to be confident in every action you make. There will be a road map laid out in front of you that you can feel confident following, because you have one the research and calculated the numbers. If you are struggling to detail the legal implications of your plan, an estate planning attorney will be able to better assist you. Failing to plan can quickly result in planning to fail.

Corporate Planning

Corporate planning is crucial to any professional’s or business’s success as it sets a vision for daily operations. With corporate planning, businesses prepare a detailed road map for all their activities. By understanding corporate planning, you can effectively lead and manage a business. This article delves into the nitty-gritty of corporate strategic planning, its varying types, and the stages involved in creating a comprehensive corporate plan.

Defining Corporate Planning

Corporate planning is a detail-oriented process aimed at helping businesses craft solid strategies to achieve their goals. Companies can thrive by mapping out a clear direction, making informed decisions, identifying obstacles, and efficiently allocating resources to support business activities. 

The corporate planning process also helps align teams with a shared mission and overcome challenges to achieve established objectives. It is an ongoing, dynamic, and continuous process that continually adapts to shifting business dynamics throughout the lifespan of a company.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Corporate planning consists of extensive future-oriented preparations that provide businesses with a better approach to handling various situations. 

However, like everything, there are advantages and disadvantages to the continuous corporate planning process that need to be considered. Below, let’s explore the advantages and disadvantages of corporate planning in detail:

Advantages:

Reduces Uncertainty: Running a business comes with constant uncertainties and risks . An excellent corporate plan goes beyond merely setting objectives. It helps the company by forecasting the value of risks in the future, thereby minimizing the risk of uncertainty and unplanned contingencies.

Unity: Corporate planning helps the employees understand their roles more explicitly. Employees who know what’s expected of them are less likely to engage in conflicts, leading to higher levels of unity within the organization.

Aids Growth: With employee cooperation and constant development of processes within the company’s scope, corporate strategy, and plan objectives are easier to implement, resulting in a higher success rate.

Disadvantages:

Rigidity: Following a strict set of rules as part of a plan can create an inflexible environment that can lower employees’ morale, which can ultimately interfere with productivity.

Time: Corporate planning can take quite some time before the company begins to see results. The process involves collecting data, devising a plan, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating.

Ambiguity: Although corporate planning provides a reference point for business decisions, it is based on predictions of a mutable future. As a result, the plan may only sometimes be foolproof, and unexpected situations can occur, leaving businesses caught off-guard.

The Different Types of Corporate Planning

Corporate planning is a vital aspect of any business, and it involves a variety of planning types, including:

Strategic Planning:

Strategic planning is a crucial process that requires closely examining a company’s missions, strengths, and weaknesses. Its goal is to define the company’s current status, determine where it wants to go, and how it can get there. Although strategic planning and corporate planning share some overlapping areas, corporate planning has a broader scope.

It is particularly useful in functional planning and guiding complex organizations with various subsidiaries and businesses. The corporate plan also includes the same critical components as the strategic plan, focusing on the broader company and any related services used by the departments, such as marketing and human resources. Corporate planning also considers tools for achieving individual business steps such as countering challenges, employee training, and objectives.

Tactical Planning: 

Tactical planning is the subsequent step businesses take after formulating a strategic plan. Tactical planning involves defining goals and determining the necessary steps and actions required to achieve them. With it, you can subdivide the strategic plan into smaller objectives and goals. It is a short-term planning process and strategy that can aid in working towards medium or long-term goals.

Operational Planning:

Operational planning is a specific, detailed plan that outlines the business activities’ day-to-day workings for a specific period, generally lasting more than a year. It specifies employees’ and managers’ daily responsibilities and tasks and the workflow. Operational planning is useful in allocating the available financial, physical, and human resources to reach short-term strategic objectives that support an organization’s growth.

Contingency Planning:

Contingency planning is the process of developing strategies that help businesses respond effectively to unexpected disruptive events. It is intended to ensure that the practices return to standard operating procedures after a disturbance or natural disaster. Contingency planning is an effective tool for handling both adverse and positive events, such as an unexpected financial boost that can impact the organization’s operations.

By incorporating these types of business planning, businesses can ensure success in the short term and achieve long-term growth.

Examples of Corporate Planning :

Audacity Corporation, a renowned studio, and live performance microphones manufacturer, wanted to ensure that their range of microphones for streamers and gamers were market leaders by the end of the financial year. 

Their CEO, Brendon, decided to study their competitors’ practices and strategies to achieve this target. They discovered that most of their competitors produced these microphones in-house, and their costs of raw materials were high.

To counter this, Audacity collaborated with companies in China and Taiwan to obtain raw materials at reduced prices and trained their employees to assemble the products more efficiently. As a result, their streaming and gaming microphones became the top-selling product in the market, with 20% more sales than their nearest competitor.

ExxonMobil, one of the largest oil and gas companies operating internationally, announced its corporate plans in 2022. One of their declarations was the plan to increase investments in emission reduction solutions. 

They have decided to invest $17 billion by 2027 in this domain to achieve this objective. This investment will enable them to gain a competitive advantage over their contemporaries in the market and help them tackle climate change and carbon emissions in the long run.

The Benefits of Corporate Planning

Providing clear objectives.

Not only does corporate planning provide a sense of direction for professionals within an organization and corporate management, but it also ensures that every action taken has a purpose. Executing tasks with a clear plan can help achieve business objectives efficiently.

Formulating Better Strategies

In the context of business, a strategy is an approach taken to achieve a specific goal or objective. For example, if the objective is to make a product the category leader in sales revenue by the year 2023, a potential strategy could be to persuade buyers that the product is superior to other options on the market by investing in large advertising campaigns. Corporate planning is integral to helping an organization create operational plans and execute strategies in a logical and methodical manner, easing the decision-making process.

Increasing Communication

Corporate planning allows group participation in scenario planning, improving communication between employees and employers. Active involvement ensures that tasks are executed efficiently, and everyone remains on the same page.

Allocating Resources Efficiently

In the context of business, a strategy is an approach taken to achieve a specific goal or objective. For example, if the objective is to make a product the category leader in sales revenue by the year 2023, a potential strategy could be to persuade buyers that the product is superior to other options on the market by investing in large advertising campaigns. Corporate planning is integral to helping an organization create and execute strategies in a logical and methodical manner, easing the decision-making process.

Communicating Brand Messaging

A well-defined corporate plan can help communicate a brand’s message to key stakeholders like shareholders, investors, creditors, customers, and employees. By aligning mission and vision statements, core values are clearly established, helping to convey the brand message cohesively.

By implementing corporate planning, organizations can enjoy these benefits and ultimately operate with enhanced efficiency and productivity.

The Six Stages of Corporate Planning

Start with a vision and mission statement.

A vision statement showcases future expectations for a company, such as a goal to offer innovative mobility solutions on a global scale.

On the other hand, a mission statement outlines the organization’s purpose, including target audience, product offerings, and distinguishing factors from competitors. For instance, our company is dedicated to facilitating low-interest healthcare loans to those with poor credit, specifically for low-income households.

Establish Clear-Cut Goals and Objectives

Although people sometimes use the terms interchangeably, goals and objectives have significant distinctions. Fundamentally, a goal defines the aspiration of a company or business over a specific period, while an objective is a measurable and actionable step that propels you toward your goal.

While general goals may suffice for organizations, departments need detailed and specific ones to achieve targets. 

For example, a business objective to boost profits would require more specific departmental goals, such as, “We will generate an additional $8,000 in revenue by November 15.” You can create a shared future vision by setting company goals and objectives. This allows everyone to work together towards common goals, making their daily activities more purposeful.

Identify your Organization’s Strengths and Weaknesses

Once you’ve established your business goals and objectives, analyzing the organization’s strengths and weaknesses is a good idea. The most commonly adopted approach for this is the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis.

To perform a SWOT analysis, list the characteristics corresponding to each category. Based on this evaluation, you can capitalize on the strengths identified and leverage your opportunities to counter or neutralize the weaknesses and potential threats to the organization. 

This kind of analysis will enable you to determine any potential challenges impeding the business goals and help you develop strategies to overcome them. In summary, incorporating a SWOT analysis into your business strategy is an effective way to better understand the organization’s internal and external environment, helping you achieve business growth and success.

Consider Short-term and Long-term Goals

Short-term goals are ones you can achieve in the near future, usually between six months and two years. Long-term goals require more time, usually three to five years. By integrating these two types of goals, you can achieve your goals with ease.

Implement the Plan

After clearly understanding your goals, the next step is to proceed with the plan’s implementation. At this stage, an action plan is usually created with specific responsibilities and an expected timeline for achieving each objective. Regular meetings should be set up to monitor this plan effectively to review progress on the action plans and key performance indicators (KPIs). It’s important to note that during implementation, setbacks or challenges may arise, which is why regular check-ins are necessary. These reviews also allow for recognizing successes and making any necessary corrections.

Evaluate Performance

After implementing all plans, the subsequent critical step involves evaluating their performance. Its purpose is to align your overall expectations with the actual contributions of your plans. Evaluating plan performance is necessary because it helps you measure progress and surface possible areas of weakness. Therefore, to ensure continual improvement towards your goals and maximize impact, evaluating implemented plans’ outcomes is a must.

Corporate Planning Tips :

Share your plan broadly.

For a corporate plan to succeed, the entire company’s involvement is crucial. It’s essential to guarantee that every team member is given access to the business plan and encouraged to participate. Additionally, sharing the plan with board members and department leaders can ensure accountability and commitment and help maintain a clear pathway to achieve the plan’s objectives.

Divide Yearly Plans into Quarters

To simplify a plan, break it down into manageable priorities with deadlines. You can assess the plan’s progress more easily by increasing the frequency of check-ins. If you encounter a challenge, you can make necessary changes to the quarterly plans to keep yourself on track.

Utilize Action Plans

Action plans keep you motivated and on target toward achieving your goals. They help you complete short-term goals in a reasonable amount of time, keeping you moving toward your final objective.

Hold Regular Meetings

Regular check-ins to revise your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) are crucial. Make necessary adjustments to your corporate plan, find solutions, and achieve your KPIs promptly and efficiently.

To learn more about corporate planning, corporate visions, and more, contact Strategy Capstone !

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The Ultimate Guide to Corporate Strategic Planning

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Corporate strategic planning is essential to businesses and one of the basics of a business plan. It allows you to proceed toward your objectives with direction and focus. However, setting strategic goals is more complex than writing them down during a board meeting. The process requires careful evaluation and analysis to garner the best business results. 

Corporate strategy includes all the steps in strategic planning that turn your high-level goals into actionable objectives, maintain and elevate your competitive position and provide quantifiable feedback to keep a flexible and workable strategic framework. 

In This Article

What Is Corporate Strategic Planning?

Objective setting, allocating resources, making strategic trade-offs, why is corporate strategic planning important, what is the difference between corporate strategy and business strategy.

• Formulation
• Implementation
• Modification
• Establish the Your Corporate Strategic Objectives
• Develop Strategies for Achieving Goals
• Implement Your Corporate Strategy
• Monitor Your Strategic Plan’s Performance
• Analyze the Plan’s Success

How AchieveIt Helps With Strategic Planning

Sharpen your corporate strategy with achieveit.

Corporate strategic planning is a branch of strategy that focuses on the organization. A corporate strategic plan manages a business’s objectives and overall direction, and the associated processes are critical to the organization’s strategic objectives.

The corporate strategic planning process includes defining companywide strategic goals from the top tiers of an organization and implementing them throughout every level. For many businesses, corporate strategic planning is the first step and strategic planning goals define annual budgeting and allocation of resources. 

Corporate strategic plans can be external, focusing on business objectives and the overarching direction for the organization, or internal, such as corporate diversity and inclusion strategic plan.

A corporate strategy — in terms of business planning basics — has four main components, each providing valuable insight through self-evaluation. The four elements of corporate strategic planning include the following:

The Four Elements of Corporate Strategic Planning

Visioning involves creating a high-level direction for your business, including business plan basics like corporate values and vision and mission statements. Setting a vision for your company’s future is a robust tool in corporate leadership. In general, companies plan between three and five years ahead. 

Your vision and values will guide your daily operations and procedures, and involving key team members fosters engagement throughout the organization. 

Aligning your strategic objectives with the overarching vision for your business is the key to successful objective setting. Strategic objectives are the high-level goals of your business and describe what your team needs to do to fulfill its mission over the next three or five years.

The objective setting takes your qualitative goals into measurable objectives , which is critical to get your ideas into an actionable format. In the context of goal setting in an organization, the most effective strategic goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound (SMART). Communication is also vital in the objective-setting phase. It ensures that team members are focused on priority tasks and operating in a unified manner, aiming towards furthering the company in the future.

With your objectives outlined, you now have a clear list of priorities to allocate human and capital resources. With a clear and actionable overview of your strategic goals, you can plan, manage and assign resources to facilitate reaching them. Determining how best to allocate resources to teams and business units is integral to your overall planning process. 

Also known as prioritization is one of the most challenging core elements of corporate strategy. Taking advantage of every opportunity may not be possible, and almost all business decisions contain an element of risk. Anyone who manages strategic plans and initiatives in an organization must consider all these factors to determine the optimal strategy when setting strategic goals. 

Businesses must balance risk and reward and pay close attention to risk management processes to maximize returns and minimize threats to operational procedures. 

Strategic plans are more than just abstract ideas conceptualized in a board room. When actualized correctly, they power organizational alignment and allow teams to direct their efforts in the most productive places. Strategic planning communicates your mission and vision throughout your organization to effect strategic change at every level and prioritize your most important objectives in your daily operations. 

Strategic planning can highlight your shortcomings and biases and present new opportunities to streamline your operations. Then, you can track your goal process with actionable key performance indicators (KPIs) and align them with your business processes. 

Most importantly, a well-conceived strategic plan provides a competitive advantage in your industry, allowing you to anticipate competitors’ next moves and stay one step ahead. With actionable strategies in mind, your business can accomplish goals ahead of the competition and ensure you provide the best possible results for your customers. 

There is a marked difference between business-level strategy vs. corporate-level strategy. Corporate strategies operate at a higher level than business strategies and focus on growth and profits. A business strategy, on the other hand, focuses on competing in the marketplace. Organizations should develop their business strategies with their corporate strategy in mind. 

Stages of Corporate Strategic Planning

Like any successful strategic plan or initiative, teams must tackle corporate strategic planning in four stages. The four stages of corporate strategic planning include the following:

1. Formulation

For an actionable strategic plan, you must take the time to create a roadmap of your most profitable action to achieve your strategic objectives. In this phase, you and your team will set your strategic plan goals and explore the best means to achieve them. Consider conducting a SWOT analysis — strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats — for your business to reveal growth opportunities and areas within your operations that require attention. Consider looking into successful corporate strategic plan examples as part of your research. 

Before you start, ensure you have a purpose for formulating your strategy based on your core vision and mission. You’ll consider current events and trends as part of your SWOT analysis. Ensure you set actionable and measurable goals in the formulation phase of strategic goal setting and communicate them effectively throughout your organization. 

Often, organizational leaders formulate a corporate strategy. Every team member adds a different perspective to the process, so drawing on their input could illuminate and provide a more pronounced competitive edge for your business. 

2. Implementation

Implementation is the phase where your corporate strategies become corporate actions . Your team has designed and communicated your strategy, so that all members understand their roles and responsibilities. Setting up KPIs aligned with your strategic objectives is critical in the implementation phase, as it provides quantifiable feedback on positive impacts and information on opportunities for change. 

During implementation, your team must focus on details and day-to-day processes to implement quick changes. Corporate strategy is a fluid process that requires daily attention to succeed.

3. Evaluation

Evaluating the strategies you executed in the implementation phase provides you with valuable feedback on the efficacy of your corporate strategy. Some businesses  perform a gap analysis to identify the need for new products or additions in the gap between their current and desired future positions. 

At this stage of the process, your data is vital. An   integrated plan management software allows you to track resources, changes, schedules, and the quality of your corporate strategic initiatives. With actionable data on team members and projects, you can make changes and refine your corporate strategy.

4. Modification

In the modification phase, your team can correct and refine underperforming elements of your corporate strategy. You have identified your strongest areas, which your team could leverage to assist in further implementation in areas that need further attention. 

How to Create a Successful Corporate Strategic Plan

You and your team may be used to taking a reactive route where you only deal with problems as they arise. However, this can stifle your vision and make it difficult to see the big picture or prepare for obstacles along the way. By following the fundamentals of strategic planning, your company can gain a better understanding of common issues that complicate your short- and long-term goals and make you more proactive in resolving them.

A progressive approach is critical to corporate strategic planning success, so you can pay attention to each step and garner the best results. The five steps in the strategic management process include the following: 

1. Establish the Your Corporate Strategic Objectives

Corporate strategic objectives must be clear, achievable and easy to communicate. Consider what business objectives your team needs to achieve and communicate these objectives throughout all levels of your organization. Foster collaboration, allow everyone in your organization to think strategically and offer suggestions for achieving your corporate strategic initiatives. 

Employees throughout your organization can provide valuable input to drive your objectives forward. Gather as many insights as possible and set your objectives with as much information as possible. At the end of this step, you should have a broad view of what your business wants to achieve and how the various teams can contribute. 

2. Develop Strategies for Achieving Goals

From your broad overview, you can now break your objectives into specific projects and courses of action within those projects. Include metrics and KPIs to quantify the success or failure of each. Establish objectives and key results (OKR) framework so each goal has quantifiable key results to measure the initiative’s success. 

Pay attention to your human resources during this critical step. Think outside the box, eliminate silos within your teams, and ensure every team member has roles and responsibilities aligned with their strengths. 

3. Implement Your Corporate Strategy

It’s time to take your strategic plan off the boardroom table and implement it into your business workflow . Making your corporate strategy successful requires focus and input from every team member. Ensure everyone in your organization can clearly see and understand their role within your strategy and how their actions move your plan forward. 

You can reply heavily on your OKR framework here for each individual to have a solid view of their roles. When team members see their impact on your overall strategy, they will be more engaged and productive in their efforts to achieve your objectives. Team engagement comes from management and managers should focus on managing outcomes, not people, for the best results. 

Partnering with an integrated planned management specialist is essential for maximizing employee productivity and engagement. Strategic planning software can give you a competitive edge. User-friendly interfaces, clearly defined goals, and change management will make implementation smoother, faster and easier for team members.

4. Monitor Your Strategic Plan’s Performance

Remember that your strategic plan is fluid and needs regular monitoring for your organization to maintain a competitive position. Again, use your valuable human resources and consult everyone who owns a strategic objective. Foster an environment where you can receive honest input on the strategic plan’s progress so your management doesn’t feel more comfortable concentrating their team’s efforts in weak areas. 

Ensure your plan is flexible enough to catch it early if your organization’s efforts go off course. If there’s an opportunity to produce better results, you can stay ahead of the competition and execute it immediately. Measuring your team’s performance with employee performance metrics is an excellent method of assessing where you’re achieving your outcomes and where you may need to rethink the allocation of resources. 

Consider organization performance reporting to analyze how your business performance compares with your goals and initiatives. You can assess your successes and make adjustments when necessary. 

5. Analyze the Plan’s Success

Analyzing the impact of your corporate strategy is vital to set a benchmark for what elements to continue with and change. It clearly shows areas to improve and strengthens your teams’ engagement and commitment to your strategic initiatives. Include team members from across your organization when you conduct your analysis and foster open and thorough communication so they can share their insights and experiences. 

Together, you can define your plan’s strengths and opportunities for improvement . Once you have gathered input from across your teams, your strategic team can apply this insight to your new strategic initiatives and amplify your successes. 

Organizations that struggle to get their important initiatives from the boardroom into reality and keep their performance on track may falter with their objectives. With AchieveIt, your business can improve visibility, uniformity and accountability within your strategic planning process.

Our automated platform and strategic planning software enable your teams to connect, execute your goals and evaluate how your essential plans are performing. Integrated plan management solutions from AchieveIt can revitalize how your organization reaches for its goals with dashboards, reporting, updates and more strategic planning tools.

Some of the many ways AchieveIt can help you with your corporate strategy include the following:

• Streamlining your corporate strategic execution:  Create alignment and organize your strategic initiatives with our process-focused software to integrate and execute corporate strategies. 
• Using automated updates:  AchieveIt focuses on the end user, integrating process updates from different sources for a seamless automated update system. 
• Consistent expert support and training:  AchieveIt conducts regular business reviews, so you can measure your return on investment (ROI) and access quantifiable data about how your corporate strategy aligns with your progress. Your strategic expert is there to provide feedback if needed, and on-site training allows for excellent change management, improved adoption rates and better team engagement. 
• Data-driven insights and accessible results:  You can filter and create outcome-specific reports aligning with your corporate strategy with a holistic view of your strategic business progress to combine your data with applicable contexts. This actionable information gives you a clear picture of what works and what needs work. 

Many businesses use outcomes-based corporate strategies to drive them towards goals, benefit their bottom line and motivate their teams. With AchieveIt, your organization can improve the execution of key plans and initiatives , increase visibility and improve accountability from a centralized, integrated plan management platform. 

Whether you have an existing corporate strategy, want an implementation partner, or like some help streamlining your corporate strategy, you can use AchieveIt’s two-pronged approach to strengthen your competitive position . The combination of our management software and an experienced consultant ensures your initiatives are correctly set up for effortless execution.

Schedule a demo today if you would like to learn more about AchieveIt strategic management software. Alternatively, take a self-guided tour and experience the magic of AchieveIt firsthand. Together we can connect, manage and execute key plans and initiatives with innovative corporate strategic plan management. 

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Corporate Planning: An Essential Guide to Strategic Management

Table of Contents

Corporate planning is a vital component of strategic management, as it helps organizations identify their objectives and allocate resources to achieve them. In this blog, we will explore the nature and scope of corporate planning, the steps involved in the planning process, and the benefits of effective corporate planning.

What is Corporate Planning?

Corporate planning is the process of defining an organization’s mission, objectives, strategies, and tactics for achieving its goals. It involves assessing the current state of the organization, identifying opportunities and threats in the external environment, and developing a plan to guide the organization towards its desired future state.

The Steps Involved in Corporate Planning

Effective corporate planning requires a structured approach, which typically involves the following steps:

• Situation analysis: Assessing the internal and external environment of the organization to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis).
• Mission and objectives: Defining the organization’s purpose and desired outcomes.
• Strategy development: Identifying and evaluating strategic options, and selecting the most appropriate strategy for achieving the organization’s objectives.
• Action planning: Developing a detailed plan of action, including timelines, resource allocation, and performance metrics.
• Implementation: Executing the plan and monitoring progress towards the desired outcomes.
• Evaluation and control: Assessing the success of the plan and making adjustments as needed to ensure continued progress towards the desired outcomes.

The Benefits of Effective Corporate Planning

Effective corporate planning can provide a range of benefits for organizations, including:

• Clarity of purpose: Clearly defining the organization’s mission and objectives can help align all stakeholders around a common goal.
• Resource optimization: Identifying and prioritizing strategic initiatives can help organizations allocate resources effectively.
• Risk management: Assessing potential risks and developing contingency plans can help organizations prepare for unexpected challenges.
• Continuous improvement: Regular evaluation of progress and making adjustments as needed can help organizations continuously improve their performance and achieve their goals.

Corporate planning is an essential component of strategic management, as it helps organizations clarify their objectives and allocate resources effectively to achieve them. By following a structured approach to corporate planning, organizations can improve their performance, manage risks, and continuously improve their operations.

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Advanced Strategic Management

1 Corporate Management: An Overview

• Nature and Scope of Corporate Management
• Corporate Planning
• Implementation of Corporate Plan
• Review and Evaluation of Corporate Plan
• Approches to Corporate Management
• Strategists and their role in Corporate Management
• Need for Corporate Management
• Corporate Management in Non Business Organisations

2 Corporate Policy

• Concept and Meaning of Corporate Policy
• Features of Corporate Policy
• Determinants of Corporate Policy
• Scope of Corporate Policy
• Policy Formulation Process
• Classification of Corporate Policy
• Importance of Corporate Policy

3 Intensive Growth Strategies

• Nature and Scope of Corporate Strategies
• Nature of Stability Strategy
• Expansion Strategies
• Expansion through Intensification
• Expansion through Integration
• International Expansion

4 Integrated and Diversification Growth Strategies

• Diversification
• Related Diversification (Concentric Diversification)
• Unrelated Diversification (Conglomerate Diversification)
• Rationale for Diversification
• Alternative Routes to Diversification
• Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A)
• Merger and Acquisition Strategy
• Reasons for Failure of Merger and Acquisition
• Steps in Merger and Acquisition Deals
• Mergers and Acquisitions: The Indian Scenario

5 Strategic Alliances

• Strategic Alliance Trends
• Factors Promoting the Rise of Strategic Alliances
• Types of Strategic Alliances
• Benefits of Strategic Alliances
• Costs and Risks of Strategic Alliances
• Factors Contributing to Successful Alliances
• Planning for a Successful Alliance
• Corporate Social Responsibility

6 Internationalization Process

• Reasons for Internationalization
• Stages of Internationalization
• Operating Advantages and Disadvantages of MNCs
• Models of International Trade

7 Evaluation of Markets and Risk Assessment

• Political, Financial and Economic Risks in International Business
• Risk Assessment
• Causes of Risk
• Risk Management Techniques

8 Entry into the International Markets

• Entry Strategies
• Government Involvement in Trade Restrictions and Incentives

9 IT and Strategy

• IT and Strategy
• Use of IT in Strategy Implementation
• IT for Innovation and Performance
• IT in Service Sector

10 Technology and R&D

• Technology and R&D in Organisations
• Features of Technology Package
• Competitive Strategy and Competitiveness
• Competitive Advantage and R&D
• Value Chain and Value Chain Analysis
• Development of R&D Strategy
• Steps Involved in Developing R&D Strategy
• Progress of R&D Organizations in Strategy Development

11 Knowledge Management (KM)

• Knowledge and Knowledge Management
• Sources of Knowledge
• Knowledge Creation
• Knowledge Management Framework
• Benefits of Knowledge Management
• Pioneers in Knowledge Management
• KM Initiatives in Indian Organizations
• Software for Knowledge Management
• Trends and Challenges in Knowledge Management

12 Innovation

• Concepts of Innovation and Creativity
• Factors Influencing Creativity and Innovation
• Characteristics of Innovative Organizations
• The Individual and Innovation Culture
• Fostering Creativity and the Creative Process
• Techniques for Enhancing Creativity
• Building Creative Organizations
• Company Programmes to Enhance Creativity

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• What is strategic planning? A 5-step gu ...

What is strategic planning? A 5-step guide

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. In this article, we'll guide you through the strategic planning process, including why it's important, the benefits and best practices, and five steps to get you from beginning to end.

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. The strategic planning process informs your organization’s decisions, growth, and goals.

Strategic planning helps you clearly define your company’s long-term objectives—and maps how your short-term goals and work will help you achieve them. This, in turn, gives you a clear sense of where your organization is going and allows you to ensure your teams are working on projects that make the most impact. Think of it this way—if your goals and objectives are your destination on a map, your strategic plan is your navigation system.

In this article, we walk you through the 5-step strategic planning process and show you how to get started developing your own strategic plan.

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What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a business process that helps you define and share the direction your company will take in the next three to five years. During the strategic planning process, stakeholders review and define the organization’s mission and goals, conduct competitive assessments, and identify company goals and objectives. The product of the planning cycle is a strategic plan, which is shared throughout the company.

What is a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is the end result of the strategic planning process. At its most basic, it’s a tool used to define your organization’s goals and what actions you’ll take to achieve them.

Typically, your strategic plan should include: 

Your company’s mission statement

Your organizational goals, including your long-term goals and short-term, yearly objectives

Any plan of action, tactics, or approaches you plan to take to meet those goals

What are the benefits of strategic planning?

Strategic planning can help with goal setting and decision-making by allowing you to map out how your company will move toward your organization’s vision and mission statements in the next three to five years. Let’s circle back to our map metaphor. If you think of your company trajectory as a line on a map, a strategic plan can help you better quantify how you’ll get from point A (where you are now) to point B (where you want to be in a few years).

When you create and share a clear strategic plan with your team, you can:

Build a strong organizational culture by clearly defining and aligning on your organization’s mission, vision, and goals.

Align everyone around a shared purpose and ensure all departments and teams are working toward a common objective.

Proactively set objectives to help you get where you want to go and achieve desired outcomes.

Promote a long-term vision for your company rather than focusing primarily on short-term gains.

Ensure resources are allocated around the most high-impact priorities.

Define long-term goals and set shorter-term goals to support them.

Assess your current situation and identify any opportunities—or threats—allowing your organization to mitigate potential risks.

Create a proactive business culture that enables your organization to respond more swiftly to emerging market changes and opportunities.

What are the 5 steps in strategic planning?

The strategic planning process involves a structured methodology that guides the organization from vision to implementation. The strategic planning process starts with assembling a small, dedicated team of key strategic planners—typically five to 10 members—who will form the strategic planning, or management, committee. This team is responsible for gathering crucial information, guiding the development of the plan, and overseeing strategy execution.

Once you’ve established your management committee, you can get to work on the planning process. 

Step 1: Assess your current business strategy and business environment

Before you can define where you’re going, you first need to define where you are. Understanding the external environment, including market trends and competitive landscape, is crucial in the initial assessment phase of strategic planning.

To do this, your management committee should collect a variety of information from additional stakeholders, like employees and customers. In particular, plan to gather:

Relevant industry and market data to inform any market opportunities, as well as any potential upcoming threats in the near future.

Customer insights to understand what your customers want from your company—like product improvements or additional services.

Employee feedback that needs to be addressed—whether about the product, business practices, or the day-to-day company culture.

Consider different types of strategic planning tools and analytical techniques to gather this information, such as:

A balanced scorecard to help you evaluate four major elements of a business: learning and growth, business processes, customer satisfaction, and financial performance.

A SWOT analysis to help you assess both current and future potential for the business (you’ll return to this analysis periodically during the strategic planning process). 

To fill out each letter in the SWOT acronym, your management committee will answer a series of questions:

What does your organization currently do well?

What separates you from your competitors?

What are your most valuable internal resources?

What tangible assets do you have?

What is your biggest strength? 

Weaknesses:

What does your organization do poorly?

What do you currently lack (whether that’s a product, resource, or process)?

What do your competitors do better than you?

What, if any, limitations are holding your organization back?

What processes or products need improvement? 

Opportunities:

What opportunities does your organization have?

How can you leverage your unique company strengths?

Are there any trends that you can take advantage of?

How can you capitalize on marketing or press opportunities?

Is there an emerging need for your product or service? 

What emerging competitors should you keep an eye on?

Are there any weaknesses that expose your organization to risk?

Have you or could you experience negative press that could reduce market share?

Is there a chance of changing customer attitudes towards your company? 

Step 2: Identify your company’s goals and objectives

To begin strategy development, take into account your current position, which is where you are now. Then, draw inspiration from your vision, mission, and current position to identify and define your goals—these are your final destination. 

To develop your strategy, you’re essentially pulling out your compass and asking, “Where are we going next?” “What’s the ideal future state of this company?” This can help you figure out which path you need to take to get there.

During this phase of the planning process, take inspiration from important company documents, such as:

Your mission statement, to understand how you can continue moving towards your organization’s core purpose.

Your vision statement, to clarify how your strategic plan fits into your long-term vision.

Your company values, to guide you towards what matters most towards your company.

Your competitive advantages, to understand what unique benefit you offer to the market.

Your long-term goals, to track where you want to be in five or 10 years.

Your financial forecast and projection, to understand where you expect your financials to be in the next three years, what your expected cash flow is, and what new opportunities you will likely be able to invest in.

Step 3: Develop your strategic plan and determine performance metrics

Now that you understand where you are and where you want to go, it’s time to put pen to paper. Take your current business position and strategy into account, as well as your organization’s goals and objectives, and build out a strategic plan for the next three to five years. Keep in mind that even though you’re creating a long-term plan, parts of your plan should be created or revisited as the quarters and years go on.

As you build your strategic plan, you should define:

Company priorities for the next three to five years, based on your SWOT analysis and strategy.

Yearly objectives for the first year. You don’t need to define your objectives for every year of the strategic plan. As the years go on, create new yearly objectives that connect back to your overall strategic goals . 

Related key results and KPIs. Some of these should be set by the management committee, and some should be set by specific teams that are closer to the work. Make sure your key results and KPIs are measurable and actionable. These KPIs will help you track progress and ensure you’re moving in the right direction.

Budget for the next year or few years. This should be based on your financial forecast as well as your direction. Do you need to spend aggressively to develop your product? Build your team? Make a dent with marketing? Clarify your most important initiatives and how you’ll budget for those.

A high-level project roadmap . A project roadmap is a tool in project management that helps you visualize the timeline of a complex initiative, but you can also create a very high-level project roadmap for your strategic plan. Outline what you expect to be working on in certain quarters or years to make the plan more actionable and understandable.

Step 4: Implement and share your plan

Now it’s time to put your plan into action. Strategy implementation involves clear communication across your entire organization to make sure everyone knows their responsibilities and how to measure the plan’s success. 

Make sure your team (especially senior leadership) has access to the strategic plan, so they can understand how their work contributes to company priorities and the overall strategy map. We recommend sharing your plan in the same tool you use to manage and track work, so you can more easily connect high-level objectives to daily work. If you don’t already, consider using a work management platform .  

A few tips to make sure your plan will be executed without a hitch: 

Communicate clearly to your entire organization throughout the implementation process, to ensure all team members understand the strategic plan and how to implement it effectively. 

Define what “success” looks like by mapping your strategic plan to key performance indicators.

Ensure that the actions outlined in the strategic plan are integrated into the daily operations of the organization, so that every team member's daily activities are aligned with the broader strategic objectives.

Utilize tools and software—like a work management platform—that can aid in implementing and tracking the progress of your plan.

Regularly monitor and share the progress of the strategic plan with the entire organization, to keep everyone informed and reinforce the importance of the plan.

Establish regular check-ins to monitor the progress of your strategic plan and make adjustments as needed. 

Step 5: Revise and restructure as needed

Once you’ve created and implemented your new strategic framework, the final step of the planning process is to monitor and manage your plan.

Remember, your strategic plan isn’t set in stone. You’ll need to revisit and update the plan if your company changes directions or makes new investments. As new market opportunities and threats come up, you’ll likely want to tweak your strategic plan. Make sure to review your plan regularly—meaning quarterly and annually—to ensure it’s still aligned with your organization’s vision and goals.

Keep in mind that your plan won’t last forever, even if you do update it frequently. A successful strategic plan evolves with your company’s long-term goals. When you’ve achieved most of your strategic goals, or if your strategy has evolved significantly since you first made your plan, it might be time to create a new one.

Build a smarter strategic plan with a work management platform

To turn your company strategy into a plan—and ultimately, impact—make sure you’re proactively connecting company objectives to daily work. When you can clarify this connection, you’re giving your team members the context they need to get their best work done. 

A work management platform plays a pivotal role in this process. It acts as a central hub for your strategic plan, ensuring that every task and project is directly tied to your broader company goals. This alignment is crucial for visibility and coordination, allowing team members to see how their individual efforts contribute to the company’s success. 

By leveraging such a platform, you not only streamline workflow and enhance team productivity but also align every action with your strategic objectives—allowing teams to drive greater impact and helping your company move toward goals more effectively. 

Strategic planning FAQs

Still have questions about strategic planning? We have answers.

Why do I need a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is one of many tools you can use to plan and hit your goals. It helps map out strategic objectives and growth metrics that will help your company be successful.

When should I create a strategic plan?

You should aim to create a strategic plan every three to five years, depending on your organization’s growth speed.

Since the point of a strategic plan is to map out your long-term goals and how you’ll get there, you should create a strategic plan when you’ve met most or all of them. You should also create a strategic plan any time you’re going to make a large pivot in your organization’s mission or enter new markets. 

What is a strategic planning template?

A strategic planning template is a tool organizations can use to map out their strategic plan and track progress. Typically, a strategic planning template houses all the components needed to build out a strategic plan, including your company’s vision and mission statements, information from any competitive analyses or SWOT assessments, and relevant KPIs.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. business plan?

A business plan can help you document your strategy as you’re getting started so every team member is on the same page about your core business priorities and goals. This tool can help you document and share your strategy with key investors or stakeholders as you get your business up and running.

You should create a business plan when you’re: 

Just starting your business

Significantly restructuring your business

If your business is already established, you should create a strategic plan instead of a business plan. Even if you’re working at a relatively young company, your strategic plan can build on your business plan to help you move in the right direction. During the strategic planning process, you’ll draw from a lot of the fundamental business elements you built early on to establish your strategy for the next three to five years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. mission and vision statements?

Your strategic plan, mission statement, and vision statements are all closely connected. In fact, during the strategic planning process, you will take inspiration from your mission and vision statements in order to build out your strategic plan.

Simply put: 

A mission statement summarizes your company’s purpose.

A vision statement broadly explains how you’ll reach your company’s purpose.

A strategic plan pulls in inspiration from your mission and vision statements and outlines what actions you’re going to take to move in the right direction. 

For example, if your company produces pet safety equipment, here’s how your mission statement, vision statement, and strategic plan might shake out:

Mission statement: “To ensure the safety of the world’s animals.” 

Vision statement: “To create pet safety and tracking products that are effortless to use.” 

Your strategic plan would outline the steps you’re going to take in the next few years to bring your company closer to your mission and vision. For example, you develop a new pet tracking smart collar or improve the microchipping experience for pet owners. 

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. company objectives?

Company objectives are broad goals. You should set these on a yearly or quarterly basis (if your organization moves quickly). These objectives give your team a clear sense of what you intend to accomplish for a set period of time. 

Your strategic plan is more forward-thinking than your company goals, and it should cover more than one year of work. Think of it this way: your company objectives will move the needle towards your overall strategy—but your strategic plan should be bigger than company objectives because it spans multiple years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a business case?

A business case is a document to help you pitch a significant investment or initiative for your company. When you create a business case, you’re outlining why this investment is a good idea, and how this large-scale project will positively impact the business. 

You might end up building business cases for things on your strategic plan’s roadmap—but your strategic plan should be bigger than that. This tool should encompass multiple years of your roadmap, across your entire company—not just one initiative.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a project plan?

A strategic plan is a company-wide, multi-year plan of what you want to accomplish in the next three to five years and how you plan to accomplish that. A project plan, on the other hand, outlines how you’re going to accomplish a specific project. This project could be one of many initiatives that contribute to a specific company objective which, in turn, is one of many objectives that contribute to your strategic plan. 

What’s the difference between strategic management vs. strategic planning?

A strategic plan is a tool to define where your organization wants to go and what actions you need to take to achieve those goals. Strategic planning is the process of creating a plan in order to hit your strategic objectives.

Strategic management includes the strategic planning process, but also goes beyond it. In addition to planning how you will achieve your big-picture goals, strategic management also helps you organize your resources and figure out the best action plans for success. 

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What is Corporate Strategic Planning?

Corporate Strategic Planning is a companywide approach at the business unit and corporate level for developing strategic plans to achieve a longer-term vision. The process includes defining the corporate strategic goals and intentions at the top and cascading them through each level of the organization. Many organizations confuse the annual budgeting process with corporate planning. Corporate strategic planning should come first and annual budgeting should be driven by the strategy, not by prior year’s budget spend.

Why is Corporate Strategy Important?

A corporate strategy can focus every employee and resource in a company on the same objectives, and it aims to use them all efficiently. It gives every employee a set of guidelines they can use in their everyday work to move toward certain targets, which promote the vision and mission of the company. Corporate level planning can also improve efficiency within the organization and help identify unseen bottlenecks or pain-points.

The corporate strategy gives leaders and employees ideas to use for the improvement of distinctive activities (processes and operations) that create a competitive advantage. The strategy can also help executives to protect the company from entering into costly or irrelevant opportunities. What are the steps involved in strategic corporate planning? Corporate strategic planning begins by clarifying the vision and mission of the organization and the space the business chooses to compete in. Clarifying the organizations position will help you develop and effective strategic planning framework.

1) Competitive Analysis

A competitive analysis needs to be conducted, to understand the trends that could impact the success of your strategy. Common factors that could be analyzed include political, legal, social, environmental, technological. There may be other factors you may want to consider that are relevant to your business and industry.

2) Strategic Goals & Priorities

Once you have completed a competitive analysis, the corporate leadership team will set the overarching strategic goals and priorities for the organization.

Once the strategic goals and priorities are finalized, each business unit needs to define its strategic goals and plans on how it can contribute to the overall direction of the enterprise. That includes not only what is to be accomplished, but how it will be accomplished including high level plans, budgets, human resources, etc.

3) Communication

Once business unit plans and directions have been set, the information needs to be communicated and shared with leadership inside the business unit so that priorities and plans can be aligned and integrated within a single budget.

What is Strategic Business Planning?

At the corporate level, an enterprise develops a portfolio of businesses they choose to compete in. This is a high-level analysis of a business’s competitive and core capabilities, and how each business contributes to the overarching corporate goals. Supported by the corporate strategic business planning process, these businesses are then set up, sponsored, and supported as business units at the operating level.

What Are The Types of Corporate Strategy?

When looking at the types of corporate strategy, it is important to consider a positioning grid that looks at the source of competitive advantage as well as the space where the business competes (markets, geography, size, etc).

Strategy 1: Low Cost Strategy

This type of strategy is one in which your source of advantage is simply competing on cost and being the low-cost provider. With this strategy an organization must exploit all sources of cost advantage. This includes things such as:

• Economies of scale
• Cost of inputs
• Operations excellence to help drive down costs
• This type of strategy requires an organization to compete more broadly (markets, geography, size)

Strategy 2: Differentiated Strategy

In a Differentiated Strategy, the focus is on competing by being unique or distinctively different in your industry. A differentiated strategy provides a product or service in more of a niche market where customers see the importance of offerings and are willing to pay a premium price. While this strategy still has a broad focus on how and where it competes (markets, geography, size), it serves its customers in a differentiated way. Differentiation can include factors such as:

• Technical superiority
• Customization
• Products or services that are difficult to copy
• Customer Service

Strategy 3: Segmented Strategy

A segmented strategy is one in which you have clearly differentiated yourself from the competition. The space in which you compete has a narrow focus. You serve a distinct group of customers with specialized needs. In this space, there are few product or service substitutes that can be offered and while you may not have the volume of customers, profit margins tend to be higher because of the lack of substitutes. and there are few substitutes for your offerings. It is important for every organization to understand where on a strategic position grid it currently sits and where it may want to be — adapted from Michael Porter

What Is the Difference Between Corporate Strategy and Business Strategy?

Corporate strategy, in contrast, involves the plans that a larger enterprise must form when it is composed of multiple smaller businesses or entities. For example a business unit may need to examine factors unique to the industry or competitive landscape that is fundamentally different than its corporate parent.

As a large enterprise, company, or private equity group takes on more acquisitions, it must work with its respective businesses to craft a business strategy and plan that is unique to them and drive competitive advantage through their products, services, and market positioning.

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Corporate Planning Definition – Strategy, Importance, Objectives and Elements

March 30, 2021 | By Hitesh Bhasin | Filed Under: Management

Corporate planning is a type of strategic planning , responsible for mapping out a course of strategies and their implementations to empower top- management . It optimizes exposure, reach, leads, sales, profits, credibility, loyalty, sustainability , and opportunities of a business .

With the help of corporate strategic planning, a business can efficiently channelize corporate management by leveraging its resources with better acumen than the other market players.

Businesses of any size should incorporate such strategic planning, as it offers-

• Clarity & Direction
• Efficient use of resources
• A way of measuring progress
• Optimized decision-making
• Better coordination in business activities
• Effective allocation of responsibilities
• Motivation and guidance to members
• Analysis Strengths and weaknesses along with opportunities and threats via SWOT analysis , etc.

All in all, corporate planning empowers any kind of business to accomplish its business goals in a more effective and organized manner.

Table of Contents

Corporate Planning Definition

Corporate Planning is defined as forming long-term goals and objectives within the organization’s strengths and weaknesses in the existing and prospective environment.

This is done to ensure the achievement of their plans by combining their short-term and long-term objectives or bringing amendments in the structural working in the organization’s composition.

In the words of David E. Hussey, writer of the book- Corporate Planning: Theory and Practice-

Corporate planning includes the setting of objectives, organizing the work, people and systems to enable those objectives to be achieved, motivating through the planning process and through the plans, measuring performance and so controlling progress of the plans and developing people through better decision-making, clearer objectives, more involvement, and awareness of progress.

What is Corporate Planning Strategy?

Corporate Planning is a strategic process applied by several business organizations to form a roadmap to grow in the market, enhance profits, gain industrial exposure, and strengthen brand identity.

It is a vital tool that successful business organizations use to leverage their existing resources better and more analytically than competitors.

It is the determination of business goals, formulation of diverse strategies for attaining objectives, transforming the goals into tactical plans, implementing and reviewing it to find out the progress of strategies, and finding out loopholes.

Different factors around which corporate planning is channelized via effective SWOT analysis and process of corporate management are-

• Creation of long-range corporate goals and objectives.
• Analysis of Macro and Micro Environments .
• Analysis of Strengths and weaknesses of the business
• Coordination between short term and long term business plans
• Structural changes in the business
• Implementation of the strategic plan as per business goals
• Adept use of scarce financial resources.
• Right evaluation of performance as well as feedback for purposeful corporate planning

Importance of Strategic Corporate Planning

In the current modern era, corporate planning holds a crucial position in a business organization, be it large-sized, medium, or even a new entrant.

The importance of corporate planning can be justified because some companies even hire departmental corporate managers to check the industry’s current scenario and the current status of the organization in the market.

Some of the points that describe the need and importance of corporate planning are mentioned below:

1. Long-term goals

Corporate Planning broadly focuses on long-term goals and sets a blueprint to achieve them in a stipulated period. Long-term goals help an organization keep its core focus on maintaining its efforts, workforce, and efforts on a pre-decided target .

Corporate Planning keeps the employees engaged in their respective tasks with deadlines and ensures effectiveness and efficiency . It also brings harmony, peace, and cooperation among the employees and supervisors in a firm as they all smoothly work towards a common objective.

A strategic business plan helps a business organization provide a focal point not to get deviated or distracted from its end goal. The first and foremost step of corporate planning involves devising a mission statement that tells the world its roles and objectives.

Formulation of a mission statement aids the firm stick to its focus, do all the requisite tasks, assign responsibilities to the employees, and evaluate their work to achieve that final destination.

3. Better Decisions

Developing a strategic plan helps a company make better decisions that are beneficial and helpful in attaining the mission statement. A corporate plan should be structured to spell all the information in the organization’s interest, like the skills required with the employees, machinery or equipment required, etc.

Forming a roadmap to achieve the final goal helps the business people hire the best personnel for their form, arrange funds according to the tasks, and further invest in the most viable propositions.

4. A Measure of Success

Corporate planning also acts as a yardstick to determine an organization’s success in achieving its goals. A firm shall periodically analyze its work to check its progress and make further amendments like replacing personnel, hiring more employees, arranging more funds, upgrading the machinery, etc.

Finding, evaluating, and analyzing the loopholes periodically that block the ways of achieving the mission statement helps in the upgradation of the work and ensure efficiency and effectiveness of the tasks devised. The touchstone function of corporate planning works best in the organizations that devise plans that allow for changes in attaining the tasks.

5. Saves money

The extra benefit associated with corporate planning is that it forms budgets that help save substantial sums. Budgeting allows a firm to allocate its financial resources to the projects that require it the most by cutting out unimportant expenses.

Having a detailed budget tells how much cash is earned, spent, or lent. This wipes out confusion regarding the amount of money allocated to different projects.

Objectives of Corporate planning in Management

Following are the basic objectives of corporate plans:

1. Setting a strategy

The fundamental objective of framing a corporate plan is setting a business strategy . At this stage, companies should look at the opportunities and analyze the threats in the market. For this, they can make a SWOT analysis and select viable propositions for investing their funds.

2. Planning the operations

Once a firm knows its mission statement, it can use these objectives and find ways of attaining them. The sole purpose of corporate planning is to help a firm plan and prepare a list of resources it requires to deliver to achieve its goals.

3. Monitoring and Control

There should be measurable indicators present in a strategic plan to evaluate the progress of the work rate vis-à-vis the initial plans. It mainly includes financial theory related to accounts, the value of output, etc.

Establishing and forming well-devised instruments to devise annual reports is a crux to a successful corporate plan. Since the market environment constantly changes with events happening in the economy, a company regularly needs to review its plans, policies, and even rules and regulations associated with the operations.

Elements of Successful Corporate Plan

There are six elements in a successful corporate plan:

1. Gathering information

Having all the information related to the firm, industry, and competitors are the primary step towards a well-defined corporate plan. Either a business is big or small, it should be aware of the happenings in the market in its sectors, find out opportunities, grab them at the right moment and beware of the threats.

2. Set the objectives of the plan

Having a well-devised mission statement helps a firm stick to its focus of achieving it and keeps all the strategic work smooth in operations. Setting objectives helps form a clear mind about the work done, and the purpose of doing the work makes it fascinating.

3. Devise strategies to meet goals

Having a blueprint helps in effectively achieving the objectives. Forming strategies define the work to be done by the employees. Managers and leaders mainly devise strategies considering the funds available, personnel in the organization, and the deadline to achieve the requisite target. It brings efficiency to the operations of a business.

4. Implementing the plan

The next step is to implement the plans effectively. It involves the execution of the assigned tasks by the personnel within the guidelines and deadlines set. It involves the execution of the assigned tasks by the personnel within the guidelines and deadlines set.

5. Monitor plan performance

An organization should monitor its work by forming progress reports, finding the drawbacks, and work on them immediately.

6. Evaluate the effectiveness of the plan

In the end, a firm should see if the corporate strategy devised by it is competitive or up to the market standards. A plan should be challenging to achieve. A plan that is easy to achieve may not be a viable option in the existing scenario. This may require the organization to reset its plans and considering the market standards.

What to include in a Strategic Corporate Plan?

1. vision statement.

The vision statement of a business talks about business goals that it is supposed to achieve. While planning your corporate strategy , it is important to focus on your vision statement. You should also plan as per your short as well as long term goals. Your goals should be backed for your strategic planning, plus your goals should also be SMART.

2. Mission statement

Next thing upon which you should pay heed while making corporate planning is a mission statement. It tells you how you are going to achieve your vision statement. It will let you know what you are planning to offer, the target market , and the USP of your company. It will offer an elevator pitch to your corporate planning just in a few lines.

3. Resources and scope

Your corporate planning should also pay attention to things that you have in your organization such as your systems, structures, employees, products, accounting, assets, divisions, programs, finance, etc that play a key role in accomplishing your goals. You need to map the current structural existence of your organization to have a proper view of things incorporated and associated with your organization.

4. Objectives

You should also include different business objectives and the ways you are going to measure success in your corporate planning strategy. Here, your objectives need to be measurable, strategic, realistic, achievable, and time-driven. Including vague objectives in your corporate planning statement is of no use here. Different types of objectives might include financial objectives, customer objectives, internal objectives, learning , and growth objectives.

5. Strategies

Finally, you should include strategies that will help you accomplish your business objectives. Such strategic planning can be for launching any new product , or decreasing labour costs by a certain percentage, but your strategies have to directly address the associated objectives. You should also chalk out a proper plan for implementing those strategies.

Here is a video by Marketing91 on Corporate Planning.

Corporate planning vs. Business Planning

Business planning involves strategies that a business uses and applies to attain its goals and objectives. Corporate planning consists of strategies that the employees follow to meet the objectives of an organization. The following points highlight the difference between corporate planning and business planning:

1. Interdependency

A business plan may exist without a corporate plan, but its strategies are linked with corporate plans. Without business planning, the goals and objectives of a firm would be ambiguous. Thus, both business plans and corporate plans are complementary to each other.

A planning process aids a business to succeed in the market and suggests new directions and amendments as per the industry’s short as well as long-range requirements. Thus, there can be several diversified effects on business and corporate plans.

3. Considerations

Corporate planning reviews each step of the working of an organization devised for achieving the mission statement. However, a business plan focuses on the organization’s overall goals, objectives, and progress. To evaluate the tasks, a business should consider several factors such as progress rate, personnel performance, requisite funds for further operations, and many more.

Corporate Planning Jobs in an Organization

Corporate Planning jobs fall under the broader career category of Chief Executives. Corporate planners are responsible for determining and formulating policies and strategies to offer an overall direction for the companies as per the guidelines suggested by the board of directors .

Strategy planning in such jobs revolves around planning, directing, and coordinating different activities at the top-most level of management by taking the services of staff managers and subordinate executives. Corporate planner jobs are also understood as strategic planner jobs.

Common corporate planning jobs are-

• Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates
• Getting Information from all relevant sources
• Communicating with Persons Outside Organization
• Directing, Guiding, and Motivating Subordinates
• Developing and Building Teams
• Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships
• Developing Objectives and Strategies
• Monitoring and Controlling Resources
• Analyzing Data or Information
• Judging the Qualities of Things, People, and Services
• Resolving Conflicts and Negotiating with Others
• Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with Standards
• Identifying Objects, Actions, and Events
• Interacting With Computers
• Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing Work
• Interpreting the Meaning of Information for Others
• Updating and Using Relevant Knowledge
• Compiling, categorizing, coding, calculating, auditing, tabulating, or verifying information or data
• Coordinating the Work and Activities of Others
• Coaching and Developing Others
• Thinking Creatively
• Staffing Organizational Units
• Selling or Influencing Others
• Monitor Processes, Materials, or Surroundings
• Provide Consultation and Advice to Others
• Estimating the Quantifiable Characteristics of Products, Events, or Information
• Scheduling Work and Activities
• Performing Administrative Activities
• Training and Teaching Others
• Performing for or Working Directly with the Public
• Documenting/Recording Information

Wrapping Up!

The corporate planning process is an activity that involves a series of steps to be followed to achieve the end goal. Specifically, it involves a process that personnel in an organization does to achieve the mission statement.

The process to attain the end goal involves strategies at each level or department with clear and detailed tasks assigned to them within stipulated deadlines. The employees then execute the tasks assigned by their leaders and mentors following some guidelines.

Then managers and leaders analyze the work, make amendments to that, and suggest further improvement guidelines. The organization then check the viability of its plan in terms of its difficulty, market standards, and check whether it is practically achievable or not. Further changes to plans are made after evaluating previous plans to upgrade the formation of plans.

On the concluding note, we hope you would have understood what corporate planning is and how crucial it is for an effective business plan to get favorable outcomes.

Liked this post? Check out the complete series on Management

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About Hitesh Bhasin

Hitesh Bhasin is the CEO of Marketing91 and has over a decade of experience in the marketing field. He is an accomplished author of thousands of insightful articles, including in-depth analyses of brands and companies. Holding an MBA in Marketing, Hitesh manages several offline ventures, where he applies all the concepts of Marketing that he writes about.

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What Is Corporate Strategy? The Four Key Components

What Is Corporate Strategy?

Corporate strategy refers to the overall plan or direction of an organization in pursuit of its long-term objectives. It includes defining the company's mission, vision, values, and goals, as well as identifying the markets and products it will focus on, the competitive advantages it aims to build, and the resources and capabilities it needs to achieve its objectives.

Corporate-level strategy involves developing a strategic roadmap for the organization to guide its actions. By doing so, the organization stays focused on its long-term strategic objectives while remaining agile enough to respond to changes in the business environment.

What Are The 4 Components Of Corporate Strategy?

Understanding the components of corporate strategy will help you formulate a well-thought-out strategy that’s easy to follow and execute.

Visioning involves setting the high-level direction of the organization—namely, the vision, mission, and corporate values.

Objective setting

Objective Setting   involves defining specific and measurable outcomes you want to achieve over a chosen timeframe.

Resource allocation

This is the practice of allocating human and capital resources to support objectives.

Strategic trade-offs

This is an essential part of corporate strategic planning since companies can’t always take advantage of all feasible opportunities. Leaders must learn how to determine the optimal strategic mix that will balance risks with returns.

👉 Use this free corporate strategy template to quickly start the development of your own company-level strategy.

The Corporate, Business, And Functional Level Strategies

A complete organizational strategy has three levels :

Corporate-level strategy

Corporate-level strategy is the highest level of corporate strategic planning. (We’ll dive deeper into it in this guide).

Business-level strategy

Business-level strategy connects the strategic goals of the company strategy with the needs and capacities of the business unit level.

It turns a corporate-level strategic goal into a practical strategic goal based on business-level knowledge and experience.

Functional-level strategy

Functional-level strategy refers to the specific plans and actions developed by individual departments within an organization to achieve the goals and objectives set out in the corporate-level strategy. These strategies are more detailed than corporate strategies, and they focus on the day-to-day activities of the organization.

Functional-level strategies are developed based on the company's overall goals and objectives. Their aim is to ensure that each functional area of the organization contributes to the company's success in a coordinated and strategic way. 

For example, let’s say a company has set a corporate-level goal to reduce costs. One of the functional-level strategies that the operations team can set is to streamline the supply chain to reduce the cost of inventory and raw materials. Another functional strategy would be to optimize the use of technology to reduce costs.

Corporate-Level Strategy vs. Business-Level Strategy

Corporate-level strategy and business-level strategy are two different levels of strategic planning that organizations use to achieve their goals and objectives.

Corporate-level strategy involves making decisions about the overall direction and scope of the organization. This includes deciding which industries and markets to compete in, how to allocate resources across different business units or product lines, and how to diversify the company's portfolio of products or services. This strategy level focuses on long-term goals and objectives and often involves mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, vertical integration, or other strategic alliances.

Business-level strategy , on the other hand, focuses on how individual business units or product lines will compete in their respective markets. This involves making decisions about product differentiation, pricing, marketing, and resource allocation to achieve specific goals and objectives. This strategy level deals with shorter-term goals and objectives, often involving product development, marketing campaigns, and operational improvements.

Both levels of strategy are crucial for organizational success and should be aligned with each other. 

📚 Read more: The 7 Best Business Strategy Examples I've Ever Seen 

How The 3 Strategy Levels Relate To Each Other

The three levels of strategy are interdependent and must be aligned to achieve an organization's overall goals and objectives.

For example, a corporate-level strategy of diversifying a company's portfolio by acquiring a new business unit would require a business-level strategy to integrate the new business and align it with the company's existing operations. The functional-level strategy would then focus on optimizing processes, allocating resources, and developing capabilities to support the new business unit's operations and ensure its success.

Understanding how the three strategy levels communicate helps you build a solid strategic plan .

What Are The Benefits Of A Corporate-Level Strategy?

The benefits of a well-defined corporate strategy for an organization increase as the organization scales . It’s possible for small or even medium-sized businesses to get by without investing time in developing their corporate strategy. However, as the needs of an organization grow, it becomes increasingly necessary to develop the strategic planning process in a way that reflects the complexity of that organization.

In the end, corporate strategy benefits any organization, regardless of size .

The three main benefits of having a solid corporate strategy are:

1. Provides strategic direction

By implementing a corporate strategic plan, an organization can establish its desired direction and provide clear guidance to leaders, stakeholders, and employees on how they prioritize decisions, making strategy execution and goal achievement much easier.

2. Helps you stay flexible and adapt when needed

In a dynamic world, organizations need to keep pace with changes as they happen.

By continually defining corporate strategies and strategic goals in relation to opportunities or threats as they appear, your organization will be able to consistently perform optimally.

3. Improves decision making

Without clearly defined strategies at a corporate level, business, and functional level units will perform sub-optimally.

The abstract level of decision-making at the corporate level will translate to better results at other decision-making levels and help employees feel that their organization has a clear direction and purpose.

📚 Recommended read:   Strategic Control Simplified: A 6-Step Process And Tools

The Common Problem With Corporate Strategy

One of the most common problems with strategy, especially corporate strategy, is that it gets stuck in the boardroom. Leaders are the experts, they’ve climbed the ropes, and they have the scars to prove it. It is obvious that they are best suited to make strategic decisions and put together a plan that steers the company in the right direction. 

That statement seems reasonable, but it contains a lie.

Creating a static PowerPoint document is not a strategy, no matter how long or beautiful it is. As Mike Lardner, former Director of Corporate Strategy at Whirlpool points out in Cascade’s state of strategy report : "The main problem with the strategy is that it's usually not even strategy. It's just the first pass at next year's budget!"

There is an annual cycle of secret meetings that exhaust resources and no one can figure out where, why, or what to do. Often, the strategy is left in a PowerPoint until the next year, and it's so manual to synthesize that it's not even updated or tracked on regular basis.

Types Of Corporate Strategy And Examples 

Your corporate strategy must reflect an optimal approach that responds to the needs and the environment of your business. Thus, it’s helpful to divide corporate strategy into four classifications based on external and internal factors.

Growth strategies

These are strategies that focus on a company’s growth and might include entering new markets, increasing or diversifying existing ones, or using forward or backward integration to take advantage of economies of scale.

Growth strategies are typical with most tech companies like Facebook ( Meta ), Google, and Amazon , which consistently take advantage of new opportunities. 

When Facebook launched in 2004, it was a small social media network among several competitors. Using a market penetration growth strategy aimed at Harvard college students and eventually a tech acquisition strategy that purchased emerging technology, Facebook grew from that small campus social network into the ubiquitous company it is today.

Stability strategies

These are designed to consolidate an organization's current position, with an eye toward creating a strategic environment that will provide greater flexibility for the future employment of growth or retrenchment strategies.

Stability strategies are more conservative strategies, focused on preserving profit, reducing costs, and investigating future strategic possibilities.

Steel Authority of India adopted a stability strategy focused on increasing efficiency rather than increasing the number of plants. This move helped address the over-capacity in the industry and retain the company’s position as the third-fastest growing steel producer in the world.

Retrenchment strategies

These are a response to unprofitable or damaging elements of a business or organization, such as eliminating unprofitable assets or product lines.

General Motors (GM) , once the world’s largest automaker, started implementing retrenchment strategies as it pulled out its brands from major global markets like Russia, India, and Western Europe. Declining sales and profitability were the main culprits as its competitors consistently took the top sales spots. 

📚 Recommended read: Strategy study: The Journey of General Motors 

Combination Strategy

Sometimes, organizations combine the above-mentioned strategies even if they appear contradictory. 

For example, a company may utilize a stability and retrenchment strategy to keep profits growing while preserving capital. Or they can continue taking risks to pursue growth while keeping certain portions of the enterprise stable. 

A combination strategy is useful when organizations are large and operate in complex environments, such as having several enterprises operating in different industries with different needs. 

For example, McDonald’s continues to pursue growth by expanding to new markets worldwide while maintaining a profitable core menu and focusing on improving operational efficiency. 

Another example is the move by Hewlett-Packard to split the company into two in order to pursue a stability and growth strategy at once. HP Inc., the stagnant arm that sells personal computers and printers, focuses on a stability strategy to maintain profitability. Meanwhile, HPE, the exciting business that sells industrial-grade server computers to enterprises, focuses on a growth strategy as it taps an underserved market segment. 

📚 Want to study strategies of leading global companies, including Heineken, Coca-Cola, and Unilever? Click here to check out our Strategy Factory with 100+ strategy studies. 

What Should My Corporate Strategy Model Look Like?

There are a number of different models you can apply to the strategic planning process, each with its own merits. We’re going to show you how to build your corporate strategy model based on our tested and proven strategic planning model—the Cascade model, used by +20,000 teams worldwide.

Corporate strategy planning is the highest level of strategic planning within a business or organization and must take into account a huge number of variables.

1. Defining a vision

Reducing complexity is a must . The basis for corporate planning is defining an abstract vision or overarching goal based on the current organization and its environment.

The vision will provide a point of reference for your mission, and the mission will serve as a benchmark for measuring goals and evaluating strategies.

Follow our guide for an in-depth explanation of the process of writing a vision statement . 

2. Describe your company’s values

Your company’s vision statement is a destination. Company values describe how you will arrive at this destination.

The values that you outline should be clear, concise, and, above all, real. To get a good sense of how to define your company values, read our guide .

3. Choose focus areas

Think of focus areas as the foundation for your corporate planning. They are strategic priorities that your organization will be focusing on within a given timeframe. 

4. Define objectives

Once you’ve defined a clear vision and selected your focus areas, you must outline the strategic objectives .

These objectives will represent a more concrete example of what you want to achieve, with stated deadlines and milestones.

5. Establish KPIs

The corporate planning process ends with the definition of KPIs that will allow corporate strategists to track and adjust the strategic objectives based on results.

📚 Dive deeper into each element with this comprehensive guide on how to write a strategic plan . 

Get A Blueprint For Corporate Strategic Planning

Corporate strategic planning gives your company the essential conceptual tools to succeed in competitive markets. Taking the time to plan a well-structured corporate strategy will quickly yield benefits that are quantifiable and provide insights into your operations .

Get your free corporate strategy template to follow a structured approach and create a highly effective corporate strategic plan that keeps everyone aligned with the business objectives. 

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Corporate Planning: What Is It and How Is It Important?

by Go Together DMC | nov 17, 2023 | DMC Brazil | 0 Comments

Business success doesn't happen by chance. It requires a well-thought-out strategy, meticulous execution, and a keen understanding of the corporate landscape. This is where corporate planning comes into play. As an essential element of organizational success, corporate planning shapes the direction, goals, and future of a company. In this blog post, we'll delve into the various aspects of corporate planning, emphasizing its importance in the modern business environment. Furthermore, we'll explore the role of incentive travel, specifically with a focus on DMC Brazil, as a powerful tool in boosting employee morale and achieving organizational goals.

Understanding Corporate Planning:

Corporate planning is a strategic process that involves defining an organization's objectives and developing plans and policies to achieve them. It involves strategy definition, strategy direction, decision-making and resource allocation and is a roadmap that guides decision-making at all levels of the organization, ensuring that every action contributes to the overall success of the company. This process encompasses various facets, including financial planning, market analysis, risk management, and resource allocation. It can also help you identify potential challenges in meeting goals, so you can provide methods to overcome them. Corporate planning is a continuous and dynamic process that lasts throughout the life of the business

Key Aspects of Corporate Planning

Strategic Vision: Lies at the core of corporate planning and involves setting long-term goals and defining the steps needed to reach them. The corporate strategic planning process evaluates the resources available to the company and identifies gaps that you will need to fill to drive business results. These could be gaps within tangible resources (inventory, technology, or headcount) or intangible (institutional knowledge or role-specific skills). A well-defined vision provides clarity to the organization, aligning the efforts of employees towards a common purpose.

Financial Planning: It is the process of assessing the current financial situation of a business to identify future financial goals and how to achieve them. The financial plan itself is a document that serves as a roadmap for a company's financial growth. It reflects the current status of the business, what progress they intend to make, and how they intend to make it.

It also enables a business to determine how it will afford to achieve its objectives and strategic goals. A business typically sets a vision and objectives, and then immediately creates a financial plan to support those goals. The financial plan describes all of the resources and activities that the company will require-and the expected timeframes-for achieving these objectives.

Market Analysis: Understanding the market is essential for staying competitive. Corporate planning includes a comprehensive analysis of market trends, consumer behavior, and competitor activities, allowing companies to adapt and innovate. A market analysis also provides insights into potential customers and your competition, and its core components are:

• Industry analysis: Assesses the general industry environment in which you compete
• Target market analysis: Identifies and quantifies the customers that you will be targeting for sales
• Competitive analysis: Identifies your competitors and analyzes their strengths and weaknesses.

Risk Management: Every planning process and every planning usually ends in a calculated future variant. From the infinite possibilities of future developments, the most probable variant (or most relevant entrepreneurial variant) must be found in the planning process. Often only single risks are considered in the planning process. Often the planners try to plan the "least risky" or "safest" variant. The planning process should encourage creativity and spur the organization on to new top performances. So, identifying and mitigating risks is an integral part of corporate planning.

Benefits of a well-developed corporate plan

We can summarize why planning is key to managers and their businesses with a quite simple reason: it provides direction for daily actions. Understanding corporate planning can help you successfully manage a business or help you work more effectively. Here's just three of its many fundamental reasons:

• It provides clear objectives for the organization

Corporate planning creates a sense of direction for professionals working at an organization. It lets you take every action with certainty since there's a plan guiding every action. You can also easily understand when you're working towards business objectives.

• It helps formulate better strategies using a logical approach

A strategy is an approach you take towards achieving a business goal or objective. For instance, if your objective is to make a product a category leader in sales revenue by the year 2023, the strategy might be to persuade buyers that the product is the best in the market by investing in large advertisement campaigns for the product. Corporate planning helps you ease the process of formulating strategies since it follows a logical and methodical approach. It also eases the decision-making process.

• It increases communication between employees and employers

Corporate planning eases the group participation process for planning decisions. This leads to a better understanding of the plans and the strategies, which ensures that employees perform the tasks better. It also ensures that you get feedback from your team. Understanding the areas where they need help increases efficiency and improves overall workplace culture.

Now, Enters Incentive Travel as a Motivational Tool

While corporate planning sets the foundation for success, employee motivation plays a crucial role in achieving organizational goals. Incentive travel is a powerful tool that can significantly boost employee morale and contribute to goal achievement. Go Together DMC Brazil recognizes the importance of incentive travel as a means to reward and motivate employees.

• Recognition and Appreciation: Incentive travel serves as a tangible reward for employees who contribute to the success of the organization. It is a way of recognizing their efforts and expressing appreciation for their hard work.
• Team Building: Travel experiences create opportunities for team building and bonding. Shared adventures and experiences contribute to stronger team cohesion, fostering a positive and collaborative work environment.
• Enhanced Productivity: Motivated and engaged employees are more likely to be productive. Incentive travel acts as a catalyst for increased productivity by providing employees with a sense of purpose and accomplishment.
• Goal Alignment: Incentive travel programs can be designed to align with organizational goals. This ensures that the rewards offered are not only motivating but also contribute to the overall success of the company.

Corporate planning is the backbone of organizational success, providing a roadmap for sustainable growth and adaptability in a rapidly changing business environment. But incorporating incentive travel into corporate planning can be a game-changer for employee motivation and goal achievement.

Incorporating incentive travel into corporate planning transforms employee motivation from a mere concept into a tangible, transformative force. By recognizing the individuality of employees, fostering team collaboration, and aligning rewards with personal and organizational goals, business can create a motivated, engaged, and high-performing workforce. This, in turn, becomes a driving force behind the achievement of corporate objectives and long-term success.

Seeking advice from DMCs is a strategic move for companies looking to optimize their events and travel-related activities. Our team at Go Together DMC possess Brazil in-depth knowledge and expertise and a team skilled to offer invaluable solutions when it comes to navigating cultural nuances, understanding local regulations, and recommending unique experiences that may not be apparent to outsiders.

Contact us and let's start crafting an incentive travel perfectly aligned with your corporate plan. Brazil, with its unique blend of natural beauties, hospitality and cultural relevance, can be the game changer you and your company were looking for.

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What Is the Meaning of Corporate Planning?

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Corporate planning is an effective way for you to plan the direction of your small business to boost revenue and profit margin. Although you may not have the budget to devote an entire department to corporate planning, you can still become proficient by learning basic concepts that will help you create a comprehensive plan.

The Process of Planning

Effective planning requires gathering data about the projected growth of the industry and information about competitors – their strengths, weaknesses and the strategies they are deploying. You must also identify the best opportunities for your company to pursue.

You can begin this process by analyzing customer needs and determining how to create products and services to meet those needs. You can then set goals for your company, which may include revenue targets and productivity goals such as the gross margin percentage you want to achieve. The next step is designing strategies and action plans – the specific steps you and your team will take to reach company goals.

End Products

You need to prepare an annual business plan that includes a narrative discussion of the opportunities your company intends to pursue and the strategies you will implement. Forecast financial results – the projected revenues, expenses and profit for the company – are also part of the plan. Some companies prepare a separate strategic plan, which focuses mainly on the strategies the company will use to beat the competition and the logic behind the strategies. You can also prepare a long-range capital plan, which describes large projects such as building a new manufacturing facility.

Value of Planning

When you commit to corporate planning, you can also identify emerging opportunities by continually gathering information about changes in the business environment, including changes in customer needs. Planning lets you use your human and financial resources more wisely. The strategies you choose have a greater probability of success when based on a more complete understanding of your customers and competitors.

Challenges of Planning

One of the challenges you will face is that your company’s actual results may not match forecasts because it is very difficult for you to anticipate the direction the economy will take and whether your competitors will find success with their own strategies. Predicting how readily your company’s target markets will accept your products or services is difficult as well. The cost of introducing a new product or entering a new market may be significantly higher than you expected.

Making the Process More Meaningful

The plan will be more valuable – and accurate – if you ask your team members for their input. Employees who deal with customers on a daily basis, for example, can provide insight regarding customers’ most pressing needs – and what aspects of its operations the company needs to improve in order to attract more customers. Companies that gather information about competitors on a systematic basis, called competitive intelligence, are better able to identify threats to the business from changes in competitors’ strategies. You should consider revising the financial forecast in your plan during the year if business conditions materially change.

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Brian Hill is the author of four popular business and finance books: "The Making of a Bestseller," "Inside Secrets to Venture Capital," "Attracting Capital from Angels" and his latest book, published in 2013, "The Pocket Small Business Owner's Guide to Business Plans."

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Who's Responsible for Strategic Planning?

• 20 Dec 2022

A business thrives when its leaders can define its vision, execute its strategy, and measure its performance. Strategic planning is key to this process. According to intelligence services company IntelliBridge , however, only 10 percent of organizations successfully implement and execute strategic planning, and 50 percent of leadership teams dedicate little to no time to it.

So, what does strategic planning entail, and who’s responsible for it? The short answer is that it requires involving everyone within an organization, regardless of their career level or experience.

Below, you’ll learn what strategic planning is, how it impacts an organization at every level, and how to successfully create a strategic vision.

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What Is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is the ongoing, long-term organizational process that defines a company's goals by using available knowledge to document its intended direction. It’s leveraged to prioritize efforts, allocate resources, align stakeholders and employees on goals, and ensure that data collected supports those goals.

Strategic plans help guide projects’ execution and the daily actions that lead to an organization’s overall success.

According to the online course Business Strategy , taught by Harvard Business School Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee, strategic plans require four key perspectives: financial, customer, internal, and learning and growth. These perspectives should ask and define the following questions:

• How do our customers view us?
• Where should the company excel?
• Where can we continue to improve and create value for our customers?
• How do our shareholders view us?

In Business Strategy, Oberholzer-Gee says these questions prompt organizations to focus on creating value for customers, employees, and suppliers.

Who Should Be Involved in Strategic Planning?

Leaders and board members execute strategic planning by tying it to their organization’s vision. Managers, individual contributors, and stakeholders also play pivotal roles in decision-making as businesses strive to increase employee engagement .

This process is referred to as “Hoshin Kanri,” a strategic deployment method that helps ensure strategic goals drive success throughout an entire organization. According to Business Strategy , “Hoshin” loosely translates to “purpose” or “direction,” and “Kanri” to “management” or “control.”

“The company’s goal should be to drive widespread employee engagement, so management communicates strategic objectives throughout the organization,” Oberholzer-Gee says in Business Strategy. “By setting short-term goals within a longer-term framework, Hoshin Kanri allows companies to tackle bigger challenges in achievable ways.”

Stakeholders can influence decision-making around operations, sales, and investments, while managers can provide direction and guidance to their direct reports. Individual contributors work toward company goals daily and can offer perspective, insight, and analysis related to ongoing projects.

Here’s a more comprehensive overview of how different roles are involved in an organization’s business strategy .

Senior Leadership & Management

When it comes to strategic planning, senior leaders and managers—such as the CEO, executive team, and board of directors—set the early stages in motion by determining their organization’s vision and the guiding principles behind its mission, ethos, and operational goals. Once those are defined, they set strategic priorities and measure success using key performance indicators (KPIs) .

It’s recommended that leadership teams review their company’s vision and its guiding principles annually and update them every five years. They should also assess and shift smaller goals and KPIs yearly, depending on strategic priorities and performance.

Employees at all levels play critical roles in strategic planning and execution. For instance, department leaders and managers may not be as involved in defining the company’s vision, but they establish goals and KPIs that support it. They must also communicate business strategies and track their success to ensure their team members are aligned.

Individual contributors are essential in strategic planning, too. They help their organization achieve its goals by executing critical day-to-day operations. They’re often tasked with creating action plans that, with guidance from their managers, are rooted in company milestones that directly support strategic planning goals .

Individual contributors are uniquely positioned to offer feedback and data on which daily, monthly, and quarterly tactics are effective. As a result, managers should ask for their feedback and perspective to inform future strategies and ensure they feel valued and empowered.

Related: 7 Ways to Empower Your Employees

Stakeholders

Stakeholders have a vested interest in strategic planning. They can be internal (such as customers, employees, board members, and contractors) or external (such as stock owners, suppliers, vendors, and even governments or local communities).

To determine which stakeholders should be part of strategic planning, leaders must consider who has the greatest “investment” in the company’s success, along with the most influence and interest. For example, a CEO has a high degree of interest and influence, while a department manager may have a high degree of interest but a low level of influence.

Keeping open lines of communication with highly influential and interested stakeholders during the strategic planning process is essential. Since a business strategy must address stakeholders’ needs, company leaders should understand their goals and select the right metrics and KPIs to capture past organizational achievements and predict future performance. Keep this in mind when considering short- and long-term wins for stakeholders.

Strategic Planning Is an Organizational Effort

A company's success often hinges on its leaders, employees, and stakeholders understanding and effectively implementing a strategic plan . Using a strategy that leverages all positions within an organization can create an environment of continuous improvement and customer value .

Are you interested in learning more about strategic planning? Explore our online course Business Strategy and download our free e-book on strategy formulation .

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What is Corporate Planning and Why is it Important?

Corporate planning is a strategic process that enables organizations to achieve long-term goals by setting objectives, devising strategies, and monitoring performance It is crucial for making better decisions, measuring success, and saving money A successful plan includes a vision and mission statement, resources and scope, objectives, and strategies Corporate planning differs from business planning in terms of interdependency, effects, and considerations It is a vital aspect of management and requires specialized professionals to execute effectively

• Corporate Planning Definition
• What is Corporate Planning Strategy?
• 1. Long-term goals
• 3. Better Decisions
• 4. A Measure of Success
• 5. Saves money
• 1. Setting a strategy
• 2. Planning the operations
• 3. Monitoring and Control
• 1. Gathering information
• 2. Set the objectives of the plan
• 3. Devise strategies to meet goals
• 4. Implementing the plan
• 5. Monitor plan performance
• 6. Evaluate the effectiveness of the plan
• 1. Vision statement
• 2. Mission statement
• 3. Resources and scope
• 4. Objectives
• 5. Strategies
• 1. Interdependency
• 3. Considerations
• Corporate Planning Jobs in an Organization

Strategic planning within a corporation is crucial for mapping out effective strategies and their implementation to empower top management. This process optimizes various aspects of a business such as exposure, reach, leads, sales, profits, credibility, loyalty, sustainability, and opportunities. By utilizing corporate strategic planning, a business can efficiently allocate resources and gain a competitive advantage over other market players.

Businesses of any size should incorporate such strategic planning, as it offers-

Clarity & Direction

Efficient use of resources

A way of measuring progress

Optimized decision-making

Better coordination in business activities

Effective allocation of responsibilities

Motivation and guidance to members

By conducting a SWOT analysis, businesses can identify their strengths and weaknesses, as well as potential opportunities and threats. This helps them to plan more efficiently and achieve their objectives with greater success. Ultimately, corporate planning is a valuable tool for any business looking to optimize its operations and achieve long-term success.

Corporate Planning is defined as forming long-term goals and objectives within the organization’s strengths and weaknesses in the existing and prospective environment.

Organizations undertake this approach to guarantee the realization of their goals by integrating their immediate and future targets or introducing modifications to the internal framework of the company.

Corporate planning involves not only setting objectives, but also organizing the necessary resources such as people and systems to achieve those objectives. Motivating individuals through the planning process and the resulting plans is essential, as is measuring performance and controlling progress towards those objectives. Additionally, corporate planning should focus on developing individuals through better decision-making, clearer objectives, increased involvement, and a heightened awareness of progress.

Successful business organizations leverage Corporate Planning as a vital tool to strategically form a roadmap for growth in the market, enhance profits, gain industrial exposure, and strengthen brand identity. Through this process, they analyze their existing resources more effectively than their competitors.

The process of corporate planning encompasses the determination of business goals, the creation of diverse strategies for achieving these goals, the translation of these goals into tactical plans, and their implementation and review to assess progress and identify areas for improvement. This process is guided by effective SWOT analysis and corporate management techniques, which focus on various factors relevant to corporate planning.

Creation of long-range corporate goals and objectives.

Analysis of Macro and Micro Environments.

Analysis of Strengths and weaknesses of the business

Coordination between short term and long term business plans

Structural changes in the business

Implementation of the strategic plan as per business goals

Adept use of scarce financial resources.

Right evaluation of performance as well as feedback for purposeful corporate planning

Importance of Strategic Corporate Planning

Corporate planning plays a vital role in today's business world, regardless of the size or age of the organization. In fact, many companies hire dedicated corporate managers to assess the current industry landscape and evaluate the organization's position in the market. This highlights the significance of effective corporate planning.

Some of the points that describe the need and importance of corporate planning are mentioned below:

In essence, Corporate Planning involves setting a strategic vision for an organization and charting a course of action to accomplish it within a specific timeframe. By establishing long-term goals, it enables businesses to remain steadfast in their pursuit of achieving their objectives while maintaining focus on their resources and workforce. In addition, Corporate Planning fosters collaboration and teamwork, helping to create a cohesive and productive work environment where employees and managers work together towards a shared goal.

A well-crafted strategic business plan serves as a roadmap for a company, keeping it on track to achieve its ultimate objective without getting sidetracked by distractions along the way. The initial phase of corporate planning entails developing a mission statement that clearly conveys the organization's roles and goals to the world.

A well-crafted strategic plan is essential for a company to make informed decisions that align with its mission statement. This plan should encompass all aspects of the organization's interests, including the necessary employee skills and required machinery or equipment.

By creating a roadmap to achieve the ultimate goal, business owners can effectively hire top talent, allocate funds based on project needs, and invest in the most promising opportunities. This approach ensures that the business is well-positioned for success.

Corporate planning serves as a crucial tool in measuring the success of an organization in accomplishing its objectives. It is essential for a company to conduct periodic evaluations of its work to assess progress and make necessary adjustments, such as replacing personnel, hiring additional employees, obtaining more funds, or upgrading equipment.

Regularly identifying, assessing, and addressing any obstacles that impede the fulfillment of the mission statement is crucial for enhancing work processes and ensuring optimal efficiency and efficacy. Corporate planning that allows for flexibility in achieving objectives is essential for successful implementation.

Corporate planning provides an added advantage of creating budgets that result in significant savings. Through budgeting, a company can efficiently allocate its financial resources towards the most important projects while eliminating unnecessary expenses. A comprehensive budget also sheds light on the amount of money earned, spent, or lent, thereby reducing confusion and ensuring transparency in the allocation of funds towards different projects.

Objectives of Corporate planning in Management

Following are the basic objectives of corporate plans:

When creating a corporate plan, the primary goal is to establish a clear business strategy. This involves evaluating the potential opportunities and risks present in the market. Conducting a SWOT analysis can assist companies in identifying viable options for investing their resources.

Knowing its mission statement, a firm can use its objectives as a guide to determine how to achieve them. The main focus of corporate planning is to assist a company in identifying and preparing the necessary resources to deliver on its goals.

A successful corporate plan relies heavily on the establishment and implementation of well-structured tools to create annual reports. This enables companies to review their strategies, policies, and even operational guidelines in response to the ever-changing market environment influenced by economic events. Regular review and adaptation of plans are crucial for a company's sustainable growth and success.

Elements of Successful Corporate Plan

There are six elements in a successful corporate plan:

Keeping up-to-date with information regarding the firm, industry, and competitors is crucial in developing a comprehensive corporate strategy. Regardless of the size of the business, staying informed about market trends, identifying potential opportunities, seizing them at the appropriate time, and being aware of potential threats is essential to success.

A well-crafted mission statement not only helps a company stay on track towards achieving its goals, but it also ensures that all strategic efforts are running smoothly. Clearly defined objectives allow for a focused approach to the work at hand, while having a sense of purpose adds an element of excitement to the process.

Effective achievement of objectives is facilitated by having a well-defined blueprint. The formulation of strategies provides a clear outline of the tasks to be performed by employees. Managers and leaders take into account the available funds, personnel within the organization, and the deadline for achieving the desired target when devising strategies. This enhances the efficiency of business operations.

An organization should monitor its work by forming progress reports, finding the drawbacks, and work on them immediately.

What to include in a Strategic Corporate Plan?

A business's vision statement outlines the goals it aims to achieve. When crafting your corporate strategy, it's crucial to prioritize your vision statement and align your short and long-term goals accordingly. To effectively plan, your goals should be backed by strategic planning and follow the SMART framework.

Crafting a mission statement is a crucial aspect of corporate planning. This statement outlines how your company will achieve its vision and clarifies what it plans to offer, its target market, and unique selling proposition. In just a few concise lines, a well-crafted mission statement can provide an elevator pitch for your corporate planning efforts.

To effectively achieve your goals, it's crucial to consider all aspects of your organization, including systems, structures, employees, products, accounting, assets, divisions, programs, and finance. By assessing the current state of your organization, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of the components that are integral to your success. This will enable you to make informed decisions and implement strategies that align with your overall objectives.

When developing your corporate planning strategy, it's important to set clear and specific business objectives. These objectives should be measurable, realistic, and time-bound. Vague objectives are of no use in corporate planning. You may consider including financial, customer, internal, learning, and growth objectives to ensure a well-rounded approach to achieving success. Additionally, it's important to define how you will measure success in achieving these objectives.

To achieve your business objectives, it's essential to incorporate effective strategies into your planning. These strategies can be tailored towards launching a new product or reducing labour costs by a certain percentage, but it's crucial that they directly align with your objectives. Additionally, it's important to create a detailed plan for executing these strategies to ensure successful implementation.

Here is a video byon Corporate Planning.

Corporate planning vs. Business Planning

Business planning and corporate planning are two significant aspects of achieving a company's objectives. While business planning involves the strategies and tactics used to reach particular goals, corporate planning encompasses the actions taken by employees to meet the overall objectives of the organization. In simpler terms, business planning is focused on short-term goals, while corporate planning is geared towards long-term success. It is important for businesses to understand the difference between these two types of planning to ensure they are effectively executing their strategies.

While a business plan can stand alone, it is crucially intertwined with a corporate plan and its strategies. Without proper business planning, a company's goals and objectives could be unclear and difficult to achieve. Therefore, both business plans and corporate plans work hand in hand to ensure success.

Implementing a strategic planning process is crucial for a business to thrive in the market. It not only helps to identify the industry's short and long-term requirements but also provides new directions and necessary changes. As a result, business and corporate plans can undergo various positive transformations and enhancements.

In order to achieve the mission statement of an organization, corporate planning involves a thorough review of each step in the working process. On the other hand, a business plan focuses on the bigger picture of the organization's overall goals, objectives, and progress. When evaluating tasks, it is important for a business to consider various factors such as the rate of progress, the performance of personnel, the necessary funds for future operations, and other relevant factors.

In the realm of Chief Executives, Corporate Planning positions involve developing policies and strategies that provide a clear path for companies to follow, in accordance with the board of directors' recommendations. These roles require strategic planning, which involves overseeing and coordinating various management activities with the support of staff managers and subordinate executives. Corporate Planning positions are often referred to as Strategic Planning roles as well.

Common corporate planning jobs are-

Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates

Getting Information from all relevant sources

Communicating with Persons Outside Organization

Directing, Guiding, and Motivating Subordinates

Developing and Building Teams

Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships

Developing Objectives and Strategies

Monitoring and Controlling Resources

Analyzing Data or Information

Judging the Qualities of Things, People, and Services

Resolving Conflicts and Negotiating with Others

Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with Standards

Identifying Objects, Actions, and Events

Interacting With Computers

Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing Work

Interpreting the Meaning of Information for Others

Updating and Using Relevant Knowledge

Compiling, categorizing, coding, calculating, auditing, tabulating, or verifying information or data

Coordinating the Work and Activities of Others

Coaching and Developing Others

Thinking Creatively

Staffing Organizational Units

Selling or Influencing Others

Monitor Processes, Materials, or Surroundings

Provide Consultation and Advice to Others

Estimating the Quantifiable Characteristics of Products, Events, or Information

Scheduling Work and Activities

Performing Administrative Activities

Training and Teaching Others

Performing for or Working Directly with the Public

Documenting/Recording Information

In conclusion, the corporate planning process is a crucial activity that plays a vital role in achieving an organization's mission statement. By following a series of steps, personnel can effectively strategize and execute plans to reach their end goal.

Clear and detailed strategies are implemented at every level and department in order to achieve the end goal, with employees assigned specific tasks and deadlines to follow. These tasks are executed under the guidance of leaders and mentors, who provide guidelines to ensure their successful completion.

Once the tasks are completed, managers and leaders analyze the work and suggest any necessary amendments or improvements. The organization then evaluates the feasibility of its plan, taking into account market standards and practicality, before making any necessary changes to upgrade the plan formation based on previous evaluations.

On the concluding note, we hope you would have understood what corporate planning is and how crucial it is for an effective business plan to get favorable outcomes.

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Corporate Planning

Corporate Planning may be defined as the process of deciding long term goals and objectives within the ambit of organisation’s strength and weaknesses in the existing and prospective environmental setting to ensure their achievement either by integrating the short term and long term plans or by adopting such measures which may bring even structural changes in the composition of the organisation, after taking recourse to finan­cial resources.

Learn about:- 1. Introduction to Corporate Planning 2. Definitions of Corporate Planning 3. Characteristics 4. Scope 5. Need 6. Basic Premises 7. Factors for the Success of Corporate Planning

8. Major Practices 9. Process 10. Steps 11. Difference between Strategic Planning and Corporate Planning 12. Reasons which Lead to the Failure of Corporate Planning 13. Limitations.

Corporate Planning: Introduction, Definitions, Characteristics, Scope, Need, Process, Steps and Limitations

Corporate planning – introduction.

Corporate planning in a sense may be stated as Strategic Planning as described by a number of writers including Stenier. In spite of the difference in the concepts of long range planning and Corporate Planning. Stenier, Miner and Gray have used Corporate Planning and long range planning synonymously. Such conceptual similarity may not necessarily obliterate the conceptual difference between the two terms; we will maintain the difference for our analysis.

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D.E. Hussey while defining Corporate Planning stated that “Corporate long range planning, is not a technique, it is a complete way of running a business. Under it, the future implication of every decision is evaluated in advance of implementation. Standards of performance are set up beyond the time horizon of the annual budget. The company clearly defines what it is trying to achieve. A continued study is made of the environment in which the company operates so that the changing patterns are seen in advance and incorporated into the company’s decision process.”

According to Dr. Scott “Strategic Long range Planning is a systematic approach by a given company to making decisions about issues which are of fundamental and crucial importance to its continuing long term health and vitality. The fundamental and crucial importance of issues is derived from the fact that they provide an underlying and unifying basis for all other plans to be developed within the company, over a determinate period of time. Thus a long range strategy is designed to provide information about a company’s basic direction and purpose which will serve as a guide for all the operational activities of that company.”

Likewise, Professor Stoner states that “Strategic Planning is the process of selecting an organisation’s goals, determining the policies and strategic programmes necessary to achieve specific objectives enroute to the goals, and establishing the methods necessary to assume that the policies and strategic programmes are implemented.”

Stoner elaborates further the concept of strategic planning by making distinction with the operational planning. The distinction between the two may be summarised in a few words – “Whereas operational planning focusses on operating planning, problems such as present profit, present resources, environment, efficiency and even low risk, strategic planning focusses on long term survival and development. For this purpose, the emphasis shifts from present to future and from present operation to future growth and development. With the drift from present to future, there ought to be a change from the low risk to high risk.”

Peter Drucker defines corporate planning as a “continuous process of making entrepreneurial decisions systematically and with the least possible knowledge of their fraternity; organ­ising systematically, the effort needed to carry out these decisions; and measuring the results against expectations through organised systematic feedback.”

If we analyse this definition it will contain the following elements to constitute Corporate Planning or Strategic Planning:

1. Laying down long range corporate goals and objectives.

2. Macro and Micro Environments.

3. Strengths and weaknesses of the organisation.

4. Integration between short term and long term plans.

5. Structural changes in the organisation.

6. Implementation of the plan.

7. Optimal use of scarce financial resources.

8 Evaluation of performance.

9. Feedback to make corporate planning more effective and purposeful.

Long term goals and objectives pertain to the areas of production, marketing, quality and even cost of production. In the area of production, the company may specifically spell out its goals regarding the volume of production, addition of new products or product lines. This deci­sion may change the structure of the organisation. Similarly the marketing objectives may relate to market spread from domestic to international market.

To achieve the above goals and objectives, the organisation shall have to assess its strengths and weaknesses in relation to competitors and the market forces and other components of macro and micro environments.

After assessing the strengths and weaknesses in the prevailing and prospecting macro and micro en­vironments, the corporation shall have two options before it – One – it may resort to an expansion programme to cope with the growing commitments to the objectives laid down; for this purpose it will be required to push forward the existing plan of action which amounts to integrating short term plans with long term plans.

Two-the other option may be diversification or technological upgradation. In both the cases some structural changes may be needed in the composition of the organisation.

The objectives of strategic planning is to achieve the desired long term objective/ goals by making the optimal use of the scarce resources in men and material.

Evaluation of the plan implementation is necessary to know from the feedback if the execution has been confronted with any blockade in implementing of the plan. If the bottlenecks are experienced they may be removed by taking suitable measures to achieve the desired objective with efficiency, in the light of the feedback received.

Corporate Planning – Definitions

Corporate planning is a sophisticated planning tool. It has been introduced into the corporate world recently, first in USA and later in all advanced industrial countries. A humble beginning has been made in India also. For example, BHEL practices corporate planning vigorously. In simple words, corporate planning is the determination of the long-term goals of a company as a whole and then developing plans to achieve these goals giving due weightage to environmental changes. It is planning for overall organisational performance.

Hussey defines corporate planning as, “the formal process of developing objectives for the corporation and its component parts, evolving alternative strategies to achieve these and doing this against a background of systematic appraisal of internal strengths and weaknesses and external environmental changes, the process of translating strategy into detailed operational plans and seeing that these plans are carried out.”

This is a comprehensive definition of corporate planning which includes deterministic, motivational and directional elements of corporate planning.

In the words of Steiner, “Corporate planning is the process of determining the major objectives of an organisation and the policies and strategies that will govern the acquisition, use and disposition of resources to achieve these objectives.”

According to Drucker, “Corporate planning is the continuous process of making present entrepreneurial (risk-taking) decisions systematically and with the best possible knowledge of their futurity, organising systematically the efforts needed to carry out these decisions; and measuring the results of these decisions against the expectations through organised systematic feedback.”

As per Drucker’s view, “Corporate planning is not confined to taking strategic decisions in the light of future conditions but is also concerned with the implementation of these decisions in the best possible way and undertaking periodic review of these decisions in the light of new development.”

Corporate planning is quite comprehensive as it includes – (i) strategic planning, (ii) operational planning and (iii) project planning.

Corporate Planning – Top 6 Characteristics  

1. Corporate planning is a formal and systematic process.

2. It is a rational process. It requires imagination, foresight, reflective thinking, judgement and other mental facilities.

3. Corporate planning is a continuous process. It is a dynamic exercise that goes on throughout the company’s life.

4. Corporate planning has a long-term perspective.

5. Corporate planning provides an integrated framework within which each of the functional and departmental plans are tied together.

6. Corporate planning is basically concerned with the future impact of present decisions.

Corporate Planning – Scope

A corporation can be effective only if it can grapple successfully with the external environment (that is the society) in which it functions. Similarly, the corporation can function smoothly and efficiently only if it can deploy its material, manpower and methods in a way that they function with optimal efficiency.

Hence to be effective and efficient the corporation has to cope with external as well as internal environment. Hence corporate planning has two aspects, macro and micro; the former is concerned with the interaction with the external environment and the latter with the interaction with the internal environment. The scope of corporate planning in its macro (aggregative) and micro (functional) aspects has been discussed below-

Scope of Corporate Planning:

1. Aggregative (Macro) Aspects:

i. Economic- National Economic Projections — Technological Progress.

ii. Political- Policy towards private investment.

iii. Social- Social mores and attitudes towards pricing and income distribution.

iv. Regulatory- Government controls on imports and investment, repatriations and size of firms.

v. Competition- Relative growth rate of firms, future tax trends, government policy towards large-scale enterprise.

The need for and extent of corporate planning within any economy is governed basically by the factors.

Scope of Macro-Aspect of Corporate Planning:

1. Economic:

i. National Planning:

a. G.N.P. growth forecasts.

b. Inter sectoral plans.

c. Role of public and private sectors.

d. Monetary and fiscal policy.

e. Export prospects and balance of payments trends.

f. Credit policy.

g. Changes in price level.

ii. Demand:

a. Price policy.

b. Population growth rate.

c. Income-saving pattern.

d. Rate of urbanisation.

iii. Technological Planning:

a. State of indigenous technology.

b. Foreign collaboration and import of technology,

c. Facilities for research and development work.

iv. Availability of Resources:

a. Materials.

b. Manpower

c. Methods.

v. Infrastructure Facilities:

a. Transport.

c. Equivalent.

e. Finance.

2. Political:

i. Manifestoes of party in power and in opposition.

ii. Attitudes towards nationalization and the growth of public sector.

iii. Attitudes towards investors.

iv. Attitudes towards workers.

v. Interests of different pressure groups and lobbying.

vi. Donations to political parties.

i. Policies towards income distribution.

ii. Policies towards “Social pricing”.

iii. Attitudes towards consumption and savings.

iv. Attitude towards social responsibility of business.

v. Attitude towards environmental pollution.

4. Regulatory:

Government Regulations-

i. Industrial licensing.

ii. Foreign exchange.

iii. Capital and bonus issues.

iv. Competition policy.

v. Repatriation of capital/dividends.

vi. Tariff Commission.

5. Competitive:

i. Relative, growth rate of firms.

ii. Government policy towards large business houses.

iii. Tax policies.

iv. Competition for market and market structure.

v. Competition for control of scarce resources like materials, managerial manpower and finance.

vi. Competition from public and cooperative sectors

From the above discussion it is obvious that data on wide variety of topics and aspects has to be collected for coping with the external environment. This process of scanning the external environment is usually denoted by the term “monitoring of the environment”.

There is of course substantial inter-dependency among these various aspects, namely, economic, political, social regulatory and competitive. However, for a moment we may ignore this interdependency and consider the need for and scale of planning which are positive functions of all these factors.

The intensity of impact of each one of these factors varies from country-to-country, from industry-to-industry, from sector-to-sector, from unit-to-unit and, from time-to-time for the same unit. Hence, there is a real need to monitor the environment regularly and continuously.

In particular, one may note the distinctive differences in the developed and developing economics in this respect. In the developed economics, there is stiff competition for a share of the market and relatively less competition for resources. Whereas in developing countries there is not much likelihood of customer based competition.

Instead there is a stiff competition for claims on resources, especially materials, managerial manpower and finance. Further, in developed countries the corporations are giant-sized while government regulation is minimal. On the contrary, in developing countries the corporations are relatively smaller in size but government control and regulations are relatively large and oppressive.

2. Functional (Micro) Aspects:

i. Marketing- New products, new markets, etc.

ii. Production- Technical problems, research.

iii. Materials- Quality, availability.

iv. Finance- Capital structure, sources, viability.

v. Manpower- Managerial, labour force projections, and development.

In addition it is necessary to note that the size of the corporation, the business in which it is engaged and the goals that it has set for itself are crucial factors which affect its planning whether macro or micro.

The second aspect of corporate planning is the “micro” to functional aspect. In broad terms the functional aspects of corporate planning embrace marketing, production and materials procurement, finance and personnel and manpower planning?

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Strategic Planning in Diversified Companies

• Richard F. Vancil
• Peter Lorange

The widely accepted theory of corporate strategic planning is simple: using a time horizon of several years, top management reassesses its current strategy by looking for opportunities and threats in the environment and by analyzing the company’s resources to identify its strengths and weaknesses. Management may draw up several alternative strategic scenarios and appraise them […]

The widely accepted theory of corporate strategic planning is simple: using a time horizon of several years, top management reassesses its current strategy by looking for opportunities and threats in the environment and by analyzing the company’s resources to identify its strengths and weaknesses. Management may draw up several alternative strategic scenarios and appraise them against the long-term objectives of the organization. To begin implementing the selected strategy (or continue a revalidated one), management fleshes it out in terms of the actions to be taken in the near future.

• RV Mr. Vancil is professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School and chairman of its Control Area faculty. His most recent HBR article was “Inflation Accounting—The Great Controversy” (March–April 1976). His book, Strategic Planning Systems, will be published next January by Prentice-Hall.
• PL Peter Lorange is the president of IMD International in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he is also a professor of strategy and holds the Nestlé Chair.

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Managing the availability of supply to meet volatile demand has never been easy. Even before the unprecedented challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, synchronizing supply and demand was a perennial struggle for most businesses. In a survey of 54 senior executives, only about one in four believed that the processes of their companies balanced cross-functional trade-offs effectively or facilitated decision making to help the P&L of the full business.

That’s not because of a lack of effort. Most companies have made strides to strengthen their planning capabilities in recent years. Many have replaced their processes for sales and operations planning (S&OP) with the more sophisticated approach of integrated business planning (IBP), which shows great promise, a conclusion based on an in-depth view of the processes used by many leading companies around the world (see sidebar “Understanding IBP”). Assessments of more than 170 companies, collected over five years, provide insights into the value created by IBP implementations that work well—and the reasons many IBP implementations don’t.

Understanding IBP

Integrated business planning is a powerful process that could become central to how a company runs its business. It is one generation beyond sales and operations planning. Three essential differentiators add up to a unique business-steering capability:

• Full business scope. Beyond balancing sales and operations planning, integrated business planning (IBP) synchronizes all of a company’s mid- and long-term plans, including the management of revenues, product pipelines and portfolios, strategic projects and capital investments, inventory policies and deployment, procurement strategies, and joint capacity plans with external partners. It does this in all relevant parts of the organization, from the site level through regions and business units and often up to a corporate-level plan for the full business.
• Risk management, alongside strategy and performance reviews. Best-practice IBP uses scenario planning to drive decisions. In every stage of the process, there are varying degrees of confidence about how the future will play out—how much revenue is reasonably certain as a result of consistent consumption patterns, how much additional demand might emerge if certain events happen, and how much unusual or extreme occurrences might affect that additional demand. These layers are assessed against business targets, and options for mitigating actions and potential gap closures are evaluated and chosen.
• Real-time financials. To ensure consistency between volume-based planning and financial projections (that is, value-based planning), IBP promotes strong links between operational and financial planning. This helps to eliminate surprises that may otherwise become apparent only in quarterly or year-end reviews.

An effective IBP process consists of five essential building blocks: a business-backed design; high-quality process management, including inputs and outputs; accountability and performance management; the effective use of data, analytics, and technology; and specialized organizational roles and capabilities (Exhibit 1). Our research finds that mature IBP processes can significantly improve coordination and reduce the number of surprises. Compared with companies that lack a well-functioning IBP process, the average mature IBP practitioner realizes one or two additional percentage points in EBIT. Service levels are five to 20 percentage points higher. Freight costs and capital intensity are 10 to 15 percent lower—and customer delivery penalties and missed sales are 40 to 50 percent lower. IBP technology and process discipline can also make planners 10 to 20 percent more productive.

When IBP processes are set up correctly, they help companies to make and execute plans and to monitor, simulate, and adapt their strategic assumptions and choices to succeed in their markets. However, leaders must treat IBP not just as a planning-process upgrade but also as a company-wide business initiative (see sidebar “IBP in action” for a best-in-class example).

IBP in action

One global manufacturer set up its integrated business planning (IBP) system as the sole way it ran its entire business, creating a standardized, integrated process for strategic, tactical, and operational planning. Although the company had previously had a sales and operations planning (S&OP) process, it had been owned and led solely by the supply chain function. Beyond S&OP, the sales function forecast demand in aggregate dollar value at the category level and over short time horizons. Finance did its own projections of the quarterly P&L, and data from day-by-day execution fed back into S&OP only at the start of a new monthly cycle.

The CEO endorsed a new way of running regional P&Ls and rolling up plans to the global level. The company designed its IBP process so that all regional general managers owned the regional IBP by sponsoring the integrated decision cycles (following a global design) and by ensuring functional ownership of the decision meetings. At the global level, the COO served as tiebreaker whenever decisions—such as procurement strategies for global commodities, investments in new facilities for global product launches, or the reconfiguration of a product’s supply chain—cut across regional interests.

To enable IBP to deliver its impact, the company conducted a structured process assessment to evaluate the maturity of all inputs into IBP. It then set out to redesign, in detail, its processes for planning demand and supply, inventory strategies, parametrization, and target setting, so that IBP would work with best-practice inputs. To encourage collaboration, leaders also started to redefine the performance management system so that it included clear accountability for not only the metrics that each function controlled but also shared metrics. Finally, digital dashboards were developed to track and monitor the realization of benefits for individual functions, regional leaders, and the global IBP team.

A critical component of the IBP rollout was creating a company-wide awareness of its benefits and the leaders’ expectations for the quality of managers’ contributions and decision-making discipline. To educate and show commitment from the CEO down, this information was rolled out in a campaign of town halls and media communications to all employees. The company also set up a formal capability-building program for the leaders and participants in the IBP decision cycle.

Rolled out in every region, the new training helps people learn how to run an effective IBP cycle, to recognize the signs of good process management, and to internalize decision authority, thresholds, and escalation paths. Within a few months, the new process, led by a confident and motivated leadership team, enabled closer company-wide collaboration during tumultuous market conditions. That offset price inflation for materials (which adversely affected peers) and maintained the company’s EBITDA performance.

Our research shows that these high-maturity IBP examples are in the minority. In practice, few companies use the IBP process to support effective decision making (Exhibit 2). For two-thirds of the organizations in our data set, IBP meetings are periodic business reviews rather than an integral part of the continuous cycle of decisions and adjustments needed to keep organizations aligned with their strategic and tactical goals. Some companies delegate IBP to junior staff. The frequency of meetings averages one a month. That can make these processes especially ineffective—lacking either the senior-level participation for making consequential strategic decisions or the frequency for timely operational reactions.

Finally, most companies struggle to turn their plans into effective actions: critical metrics and responsibilities are not aligned across functions, so it’s hard to steer the business in a collaborative way. Who is responsible for the accuracy of forecasts? What steps will be taken to improve it? How about adherence to the plan? Are functions incentivized to hold excess inventory? Less than 10 percent of all companies have a performance management system that encourages the right behavior across the organization.

By contrast, at the most effective organizations, IBP meetings are all about decisions and their impact on the P&L—an impact enabled by focused metrics and incentives for collaboration. Relevant inputs (data, insights, and decision scenarios) are diligently prepared and syndicated before meetings to help decision makers make the right choices quickly and effectively. These companies support IBP by managing their short-term planning decisions prescriptively, specifying thresholds to distinguish changes immediately integrated into existing plans from day-to-day noise. Within such boundaries, real-time daily decisions are made in accordance with the objectives of the entire business, not siloed frontline functions. This responsive execution is tightly linked with the IBP process, so that the fact base is always up-to-date for the next planning iteration.

A better plan for IBP

In our experience, integrated business planning can help a business succeed in a sustainable way if three conditions are met. First, the process must be designed for the P&L owner, not individual functions in the business. Second, processes are built for purpose, not from generic best-practice templates. Finally, the people involved in the process have the authority, skills, and confidence to make relevant, consequential decisions.

Design for the P&L owner

IBP gives leaders a systematic opportunity to unlock P&L performance by coordinating strategies and tactics across traditional business functions. This doesn’t mean that IBP won’t function as a business review process, but it is more effective when focused on decisions in the interest of the whole business. An IBP process designed to help P&L owners make effective decisions as they run the company creates requirements different from those of a process owned by individual functions, such as supply chain or manufacturing.

One fundamental requirement is senior-level participation from all stakeholder functions and business areas, so that decisions can be made in every meeting. The design of the IBP cycle, including preparatory work preceding decision-making meetings, should help leaders make general decisions or resolve minor issues outside of formal milestone meetings. It should also focus the attention of P&L leaders on the most important and pressing issues. These goals can be achieved with disciplined approaches to evaluating the impact of decisions and with financial thresholds that determine what is brought to the attention of the P&L leader.

The aggregated output of the IBP process would be a full, risk-evaluated business plan covering a midterm planning horizon. This plan then becomes the only accepted and executed plan across the organization. The objective isn’t a single hard number. It is an accepted, unified view of which new products will come online and when, and how they will affect the performance of the overall portfolio. The plan will also take into account the variabilities and uncertainties of the business: demand expectations, how the company will respond to supply constraints, and so on. Layered risks and opportunities and aligned actions across stakeholders indicate how to execute the plan.

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Trade-offs arising from risks and opportunities in realizing revenues, margins, or cost objectives are determined by the P&L owner at the level where those trade-offs arise—local for local, global for global. To make this possible, data visible in real time and support for decision making in meetings are essential. This approach works best in companies with strong data governance processes and tools, which increase confidence in the objectivity of the IBP process and support for implementing the resulting decisions. In addition, senior leaders can demonstrate their commitment to the value and the standards of IBP by participating in the process, sponsoring capability-building efforts for the teams that contribute inputs to the IBP, and owning decisions and outcomes.

Fit-for-purpose process design and frequency

To make IBP a value-adding capability, the business will probably need to redesign its planning processes from a clean sheet.

First, clean sheeting IBP means that it should be considered and designed from the decision maker’s perspective. What information does a P&L owner need to make a decision on a given topic? What possible scenarios should that leader consider, and what would be their monetary and nonmonetary impact? The IBP process can standardize this information—for example, by summarizing it in templates so that the responsible parties know, up front, which data, analytics, and impact information to provide.

Second, essential inputs into IBP determine its quality. These inputs include consistency in the way planners use data, methods, and systems to make accurate forecasts, manage constraints, simulate scenarios, and close the loop from planning to the production shopfloor by optimizing schedules, monitoring adherence, and using incentives to manufacture according to plan.

Determining the frequency of the IBP cycle, and its timely integration with tactical execution processes, would also be part of this redesign. Big items—such as capacity investments and divestments, new-product introductions, and line extensions—should be reviewed regularly. Monthly reviews are typical, but a quarterly cadence may also be appropriate in situations with less frequent changes. Weekly iterations then optimize the plan in response to confirmed orders, short-term capacity constraints, or other unpredictable events. The bidirectional link between planning and execution must be strong, and investments in technology may be required to better connect them, so that they use the same data repository and have continuous-feedback loops.

Authorize consequential decision making

Finally, every IBP process step needs autonomous decision making for the problems in its scope, as well as a clear path to escalate, if necessary. The design of the process must therefore include decision-type authority, decision thresholds, and escalation paths. Capability-building interventions should support teams to ensure disciplined and effective decision making—and that means enforcing participation discipline, as well. The failure of a few key stakeholders to prioritize participation can undermine the whole process.

Decision-making autonomy is also relevant for short-term planning and execution. Success in tactical execution depends on how early a problem is identified and how quickly and effectively it is resolved. A good execution framework includes, for example, a classification of possible events, along with resolution guidelines based on root cause methodology. It should also specify the thresholds, in scope and scale of impact, for operational decision making and the escalation path if those thresholds are met.

Transforming supply chains: Do you have the skills to accelerate your capabilities?

In addition to guidelines for decision making, the cross-functional team in charge of executing the plan needs autonomy to decide on a course of action for events outside the original plan, as well as the authority to see those actions implemented. Clear integration points between tactical execution and the IBP process protect the latter’s focus on midterm decision making and help tactical teams execute in response to immediate market needs.

An opportunity, but no ‘silver bullet’

With all the elements described above, IBP has a solid foundation to create value for a business. But IBP is no silver bullet. To achieve a top-performing supply chain combining timely and complete customer service with optimal cost and capital expenditures, companies also need mature planning and fulfillment processes using advanced systems and tools. That would include robust planning discipline and a collaboration culture covering all time horizons with appropriate processes while integrating commercial, planning, manufacturing, logistics, and sourcing organizations at all relevant levels.

As more companies implement advanced planning systems and nerve centers , the typical monthly IBP frequency might no longer be appropriate. Some companies may need to spend more time on short-term execution by increasing the frequency of planning and replanning. Others may be able to retain a quarterly IBP process, along with a robust autonomous-planning or exception engine. Already, advanced planning systems not only direct the valuable time of experts to the most critical demand and supply imbalances but also aggregate and disaggregate large volumes of data on the back end. These targeted reactions are part of a critical learning mechanism for the supply chain.

Over time, with root cause analyses and cross-functional collaboration on systemic fixes, the supply chain’s nerve center can get smarter at executing plans, separating noise from real issues, and proactively managing deviations. All this can eventually shorten IBP cycles, without the risk of overreacting to noise, and give P&L owners real-time transparency into how their decisions might affect performance.

P&L owners thinking about upgrading their S&OP or IBP processes can’t rely on textbook checklists. Instead, they can assume leadership of IBP and help their organizations turn strategies and plans into effective actions. To do so, they must sponsor IBP as a cross-functional driver of business decisions, fed by thoughtfully designed processes and aligned decision rights, as well as a performance management and capability-building system that encourages the right behavior and learning mechanisms across the organization. As integrated planning matures, supported by appropriate technology and maturing supply chain–management practices, it could shorten decision times and accelerate its impact on the business.

Elena Dumitrescu is a senior knowledge expert in McKinsey’s Toronto office, Matt Jochim is a partner in the London office, and Ali Sankur is a senior expert and associate partner in the Chicago office, where Ketan Shah is a partner.

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Ericsson Chooses SAP Software to Connect Supply Chains

WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) announced that Ericsson, a world leader in 5G and communications technologies and services, has selected the SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain (SAP IBP) solution to drive further operational efficiencies in its global supply chain network.

Supporting networks with more than 2.5 billion subscribers in more than 180 countries, and with 40% of the world’s mobile traffic outside China carried over its networks, Ericsson needed a technological foundation to provide for a single source of truth for its entire planning and logistics process.

The cloud-based SAP IBP solution integrates business planning capabilities across various business functions, improves the ability of companies to anticipate supply-chain risks and offers mitigating solutions. With SAP IBP, Ericsson will be able to navigate complex planning requirements while improving response times of sales, operations, resources, and inventory planning. This will empower Ericsson to further focus on driving innovation and improving cost efficiencies.    

The ability to predict and meet demand in an agile manner is crucial for companies to achieve several business objectives. Choosing SAP IBP is part of a long-time SAP and Ericsson partnership, in which SAP has supported Ericsson’s vision of providing limitless connectivity for the world.

“Agility, resilience and trust are critical for global leaders like Ericsson to achieve supply-chain resilience and meet customers’ needs,” said Dominik Metzger, head of the SAP Digital Supply Chain organization. “Ericsson and SAP have had a strong collaboration over the years, and its choice of SAP IBP allows us to support it in further digitalizing its supply chain to cement its position as one of the world’s leading telecommunications companies.”

Visit the SAP News Center . Follow SAP at @SAPNews .

Media Contacts: Ulrika Wass, +46 73 827 1074, [email protected] , CET Lesa Plingen, +49 622 776 9000, [email protected] , CET SAP Press Room ; [email protected]

This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ.  Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of SAP’s 2023 Annual Report on Form 20-F. © 2024 SAP SE. All rights reserved. SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices.

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I've traveled to 9 out of 10 countries in Southeast Asia. Here are the 5 biggest mistakes I made along the way.

• I've traveled solo to nine countries in Southeast Asia.
• I've made many mistakes, from traveling during monsoon season to forgetting to bring enough cash.
• Travelers should make sure they plan ahead and research each country's culture.

Over the last two years, my journey as a travel enthusiast and Business Insider's travel reporter in Singapore has brought me to almost every country in Southeast Asia.

In total, there are 10 countries in Southeast Asia , and I've traveled to nine of them — Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, and Brunei. Myanmar remains the only country in the region I have not visited, and while I am keen to explore it, I have held off on visiting because of the country's ongoing civil war.

I've watched the sun rise in Angkor Wat in Cambodia and cared for elephants in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I've explored the Bornean jungle in Brunei and crawled the Cu Chi Tunnels in southern Vietnam.

But it hasn't always been easy. I've made several mistakes traveling across the region , especially as a solo traveler. Here are five mistakes I made and how to avoid them.

1. Going during monsoon season and not planning for the weather.

In July, I traveled to Thailand on a reporting trip to cover the budding cannabis industry . There, I was met with heavy rain nearly every day. In Bangkok, I was staying in a hostel in Chakkrawat , a district with narrow, meandering streets, which made it difficult to walk anywhere in the pouring rain.

I didn't plan for the weather, so I didn't have an umbrella or poncho with me and had to rush to get one at the last minute. I also had a packed itinerary with a lot of travel between meetings, which was a hassle in the constant downpour.

Before traveling to Southeast Asia, make sure to avoid two seasons — the monsoon season, which often comes with strong typhoons in countries like the Philippines, and the burning season, where farmers burn land for fertile soil. This is a common occurrence in countries like Laos, Thailand, and the island of Borneo, which is shared between Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

When I traveled to Laos in April last year during the burning season , most of my plans — including a hot air balloon ride — were canceled because of the thick smog. I also didn't have an N95 mask with me, and I ended up with a sore throat.

If you do plan to come during these seasons, make sure to pack accordingly and plan a flexible schedule.

2. Traveling during Ramadan and expecting the same practices everywhere.

Having grown up in Singapore, I'm familiar with the practices during Ramadan , the holy month for Muslims, where they fast for most of the day. I studied Malay for seven years, and in school, I often fasted with my Muslim classmates and ate only in private.

Still, in many cities in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia , non-Muslims are free to dine in public, so long as they do so respectfully. But on my trip to Brunei in April — at the height of the burning season and in the middle of Ramadan — there were more practices I needed to observe.

Most restaurants were closed, and diners weren't allowed to eat there even if they were open — only take-out was allowed. Eating in public was a major faux pas even for non-Muslims, and if you want to drink some water, you can only do so when nobody is around.

It wasn't easy, especially as Brunei was sweltering at 100 degrees Fahrenheit on some days. I made do by returning to the hotel for lunch and grabbing a big dinner with the locals at the night market after they had broken their fast.

3. Not packing enough modest outfits when visiting temples and mosques.

Southeast Asia is pretty liberal, and you can wear whatever you want in many places. In popular destinations like Phuket, Thailand, and Bali, Indonesia, lots of tourists walk around in bikini tops and shorts, and locals mostly tolerate it.

But there are certain places you do need to cover up, like places of worship, which include temples and mosques. When I visited Angkor Wat — the famed temple complex in Cambodia — in February last year, I found some tourists being told off by the local tour guides for wearing shorts and tank tops — "Tomb Raider" style.

I've learned to err on the right side of caution and bring a sarong wherever I go. It's an easy way to cover up and make an outfit more modest when you need to.

4. Forgetting to pack medication, especially when I plan to eat street food.

Southeast Asia has some of the world's most flavorful food. In every country, you can find food that is cheap and delicious, and that includes Singapore , the world's most expensive city. In countries like Malaysia and Vietnam, street food dishes can cost as little as a dollar.

I eat mostly street food when I travel in Southeast Asia, so medicine for tummy-related illnesses is a must. I've only gotten sick twice from eating street food — and it was the same dish both times— and unfortunately, those were the few times I didn't have medicine with me.

I'm a pretty adventurous eater. I've eaten everything from pufferfish stew to frog porridge and dishes made with intestines off the street. I've learned to wash the utensils provided before digging in and make sure the food is cooked to order and heated up before being served.

5. Relying on my card and not bringing enough cash with me.

In Singapore, I don't really use cash and often use Apple Pay, mobile payments, and cards. But I've found that many stores in other countries in Southeast Asia only accept cash.

For example, on my third trip to Vietnam, I spent an hour trying to make payment via bank transfer after the staff at a luxury perfume shop — which was selling items priced upwards of $200 — informed me at the last minute that they didn't accept card or contactless payment.

I've also found the majority of street vendors in the region only accept mobile payment — which is limited to local banks — or cash. I've learned to change a considerable amount of money before leaving the airport and keep whatever I didn't use for my next trip.

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