Whether you’re just starting a business or actively running an existing one, you’ll likely need a business plan . This articulates your mission, value proposition, target audience, business goals, and financial projections for your organization – essentially the “who,” “what,” and “why” of your business. But to be truly successful, you need to understand in detail how you’re going to execute your company’s vision and when.
While you may have a strategic plan that sets the direction of your business for years or even decades, true success depends on aligning all of your company’s daily operations toward that end goal. To do this, you need an operations plan.
What is an operating plan?
An operations plan (also known as an operational plan) is a document that outlines the daily, weekly, and monthly processes that teams and individual team members should follow to achieve their business goals. Essentially, uk email list an operations plan is a manual that explains how you will implement your strategic plan.
An operating plan typically includes:
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- A comprehensive list of tasks and processes within your company
- A detailed explanation of the roles and responsibilities of individual employees and each department (including your own)
- A timeline for achieving your strategic goals
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Operating Plan vs. Strategic Plan
It’s easy to confuse strategic planning with operational planning, what is sleet? but they work hand in hand and offer different benefits.
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- A strategic plan defines the strategic goals of an organization , while an operations plan describes what needs to be done to achieve those goals. This means that you must have a strategic plan first to create an operations plan.
- A strategic plan is company-wide , colombia business directory while an operational plan is department-specific. Different departments have unique functions to achieve company goals. If your strategic plan is to increase sales by 10%, the finance department’s operational plan might include calculating profit margins, while the marketing department runs campaigns and creates marketing materials to increase sales.
- Strategic planning covers a longer period of time , usually five or ten years. In contrast, operations planning describes the actions to implement that strategy in weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual time frames. For example, the marketing department’s plan might include a weekly social media posting schedule and a monthly check of engagement metrics.
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The Benefits of an Operating Plan
If you’re an action-oriented entrepreneur, an operations plan may seem like fruitless pondering of the future—another document lost in Dropbox or Google Drive. But that’s more a sign of a bad plan than a criticism of the entire planning process.
If you’re running a startup, you might think it’s too small to need an operational plan, and some might justify limited or no planning as being “agile.” But studies show that a lack of operational planning is one of the top reasons startups fail.
The benefits of operational planning include:
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- Less wasted effort. Without an operating plan, as a business owner, you struggle to get all key stakeholders on the same page and have to rethink and prioritize on a daily basis. At best, this process is time-consuming. Often, it results in inconsistent and even competing efforts, wasting valuable resources and turning a straight path into a winding, looping line.
- Better teamwork. Operational plans can also improve teamwork in your company by clearly outlining responsibilities and thereby increasing accountability. Each team member better understands their role and what is expected of them. Everyone can contribute their part, and each part works towards the strategic goals.
- More collaboration. An operations plan also helps you identify siloed information from other areas of the business, resulting in diverse, cross-functional teams that work together more effectively. For example, a strategic goal to increase profit margins in the operations plan might ask the marketing department to increase awareness of the most profitable products. This request invites collaboration with sales or data teams that own the data on product inventory margins.
