Your company is probably aware of strategic planning. Although such planning can have well-defined goals, objectives, and strategies, its implementation may be confusing and overly complex, especially if it isn’t aligned with your company’s strategy.
To counter this problem, you need to complement your strategic plan with an operation plan. While your strategic plan will help you establish a long-term vision, an operation plan will help you lay out the what, who, when, and how of your daily activities.
A good aop planning tool will help you to determine the allocation of your company’s physical, financial, and human resources. That way, you’ll have higher chances of achieving your short-term goals. The difficult task lies in writing an effective operation plan.
Here are some tips on how to can craft a robust plan:
- Develop A Strategic Plan
An annual operation plan is a tool that should help you accomplish your strategic plan, So, it’s vital to have a strong strategic plan that your employees understand in place. Without it, crafting an operation plan may be quite difficult. Its advisable to align your operation’s plan to specific strategic objectives.
- Focus On Your Main Goals
A complex operation plan may be difficult to comprehend. And if your employees can’t understand what’s in the plan, the chances are that following it will be challenging. To avoid complicating your operation plan, focus on your main goals. Before crafting the plan, go through your strategic plan and break it down into one-year objectives. Once you’ve done that, find out the initiatives that’ll help you accomplish those goals.
These may be faster delivery times, new organizational structures, employee professional development, and quality control measures. Out of these goals, select around five initiatives that can help you achieve your long-term goals. These KPIs may prove to be the most powerful success tools.
- Use Leading Indicators
Your company’s KPIs will greatly affect your operations plan’s success. So, you want to select the right ones. Leading indicators are effective metrics because they give you predictive measures that’ll tell you about future expectations. And knowing your future expectations can help you to adjust accordingly.
For example, if you intend to attain a specific sales goal, the calls per week and sales meetings may be strong indicators. From your experience, you can determine how many calls you need to complete a sale. The calls will enable you to track and accomplish sales goals. If you were only to measure sales, it’d be difficult to know how far you are from meeting your sales goals and projections.
- Involve Your Entire Organization
Before setting an operation plan, discuss the KPIs with your organization’s staff, partners, and stakeholders. That way, they’ll understand why you’ve selected some metrics, how they’ll help you achieve the company’s goals, and why they matter. From the stakeholders’ and employees’ input, you may find ways of improving the operation plans.
It’s advisable to hold regular meetings with these individuals and communicate the plan’s progress. A demand planning tool can help you perform this role effectively.
Conclusion
A strong operation plan can help your company to tackle its priorities successfully and achieve its goals. This tool is vital because it outlines how different departments within the company run and the steps they need to accomplish.