As the year winds up and the festive season begins, businesses need to make sure they have a plan in place for the year ahead. Here’s a few tips to ensure that your new year’s business plan will lead to success in 2018.
Evaluate your current position
The first step writing up your business plan for the New Year is to evaluate where you are as a business right now. Looking back on last years plan is a great place to start, evaluating which goals were achieved, which ones weren’t and the reasons why. This will also help you figure out what you need to do this upcoming year in order to be successful.
Evaluate Business Processes
Have a look at how your business operated last year and whether there are any processes in place that could be improved or made more efficient. Part of this is also evaluating what technology you are using and checking the market to see if there are any new machines or new software that could improve your businesses productivity.
Revenue
Looking at where your revenue came from and where it’s coming from is perhaps the most important part of your business plan. Most small businesses need a constant revenue stream in order to stay afloat so knowing where your revenue is coming from will make or break your business. If you’ve lost clients throughout the year, looking at the reasons why and putting systems in place to stop it happening in the future will help you retain more clients. It’s also a good time to have a look at your product pricing. If some products are selling out in seconds and some are sitting in the warehouse for months, it could be time to change some of your pricing and change your production levels.
External Influences
It’s vital that businesses are aware of things happening outside of the company that could impact it. The government could change regulations relating to your business or one of your suppliers, and that could have a big impact on how your business operates. Businesses also need to be aware of what their competitors are doing, and if there are any new competitors entering the market so they have a plan in place in order to compete with them.
Set Goals
Every business plan needs to include long term and short-term goals. This enables you to assess whether or not your plan is working and also helps you get a clearer picture of what needs to be done in order to achieve those goals.
Contingency Plans
Not everything always goes exactly to plan in business, so a contingency plan for when things go wrong could be end up being incredibly valuable in a time of crisis. Pre-planning for when things don’t go as they should will help you avoid panic, and give you a clearer idea of what steps to take if your business takes a turn for the worse.