Integrated Business Planning

It doesn’t matter how well thought out and logical your business plan is, if individuals do not commit to specific actions, then it becomes merely words on a sheet of paper.

Yet the planning process is often a top down activity that can lead to a lack of buy-in at best, and at worst, the plan gathering dust in a drawer somewhere. So how do you ensure buy-in and commitment to a business plan?

Some basic principles include:

• people need to understand the aims being pursued. That is, the purpose and what the deliverables will be
• the earlier that people are involved in the process the better input = commitment. So the more input people have the greater their commitment
• people need to understand where they fit in the process and how their contribution will affect the outcome
• their contribution needs to be valued

These principles can be classed as integrated business planning and can be used to involve employees. You need to begin the process by clarifying the aims being pursued. These aims can be arranged in a hierarchy, starting with the strategic aims of the organisation. Aligned with these will be the strategic aims of the company’s respective business units, then the shorter term aims of the business unit (usually annual) and then departmental aims.

Whatever the business unit does it must contribute towards the strategic aims of the wider organisation. The business unit needs to be clear about what it is trying to achieve in the medium to longer term. This may be aspirational or concrete and can include statements of intent and or/numbers.

Above all, the business unit must contribute to what the annual plan is trying to achieve. This will usually be expressed as goals or targets including financials (turnover, profit or market share targets) but may also include physical things (new markets developed, number of stores opened, number of acquisitions…).

Once these have been agreed, then the departmental or functional goals and targets that are required to achieve the higher level aims can be added.

Of course the real power of this comes from the way this logic is applied and crucially the way people are involved in the whole process.

Integrated business planning needs to involve the key players who will deliver the business plan. These people then need to be taken out of the business for a couple of days and given adequate space to work on the plan together.

The benefits of the integrated planning process:

• everyone in each function has a common understanding of what they have to do
• everyone can see what everyone else has to do, so increases peer accountability
• it increases understanding of the challenges facing other functions and where support may be needed
• hot-spots and bottlenecks can be identified
• resource issues can be highlighted and dealt with
• key risks & issues are identified together with strategies for action
• everyone knows how they fit into the big picture and can see where and how their contribution adds value
• the planning process is totally integrated and aligned
• because everyone has contributed then there is real ownership and team spirit born of sharing a common experience
• motivation is increased
• there is individual and collective commitment to action
• functional heads can monitor their own function’s actions
• the SMT have one integrated plan they can monitor and review and hold the whole business to account
• as a communication method to gain commitment from key players, this is second to none.

If carried out properly, integrated business planning can help deliver real business results as well as getting the best out of people – inspiring them to perform.

If you would like to find out more about how to deliver the above benefits please get in touch.