Long Range Planning

If you’re a small business owner, planning for your future is important. That’s where a long range plan comes in. No matter your industry, a long range plan can help you meet your long-term goals and reach your full potential. Let’s dive deeper into the ins and outs of long range planning so you can determine how it may apply to your unique business. 

What is Long Range Planning?

Put simply, a long range plan is a roadmap that can help your business meet its growth goals. It usually spans a 3 to 5 year period and strives to align long-term objectives or a part of the mission statement with action plans. Depending on the main purpose of the long-range plan, it may have a fixed or rolling deadline. 

A long range plan typically requires the support from various stakeholders in your business, such as those involved in finance, operations, sales, marketing, and manufacturing. All of these stakeholders work together to convert goals into an execution plan that allocates specific tasks to certain resources. 

Long Range Planning vs. Strategic Planning 

Strategic planning is a process your business may use to pinpoint long-term goals after you carefully evaluate where you’re at and where you hope to be in the future. The final strategic plan is typically made up of non-actionable goals. Long range planning is designed to turn the strategic plan into actionable steps that steer you toward success. 

It helps execute strategic planning. While both strategic planning and long range term planning require a significant monetary and time investment, they’re often well worth it. As long as these initiatives are well thought out and properly implemented, they can lead to a variety of benefits for your business, such as goal achievement, growth, and employee satisfaction. 

Key Elements in the Long-Range Planning Process

No two long range plans are created equal. After all, every business has their own unique goals and plans on how to meet them. However, most long range plans involve several important components including: 

Mission: A mission statement explains your purpose and how you serve your customers, employees, and others. 

Vision: You can think of a vision statement as the “why” of your business. It focuses on who you intend to be down the road.

SWOT Analysis: A SWOT analysis explores strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It can help you determine what you can improve and what you should avoid. 

Sales and Operational Goals: With a thorough understanding of sales and operational goals, you may identify initiatives or activities that boost revenue and profits to maximize performance. 

How to Create a Long-Range Plan

There’s no set process for long range planning. Every business may have their own particular way of going about it. However, many organizations take all of or some of these steps:

1. Reflect on the Mission: First and foremost, it’s a good idea to meet with key stakeholders so you can discuss your mission and what it means to you. Let’s say your mission involves serving customers with environmentally friendly products. This can give your company something to focus on as you build a logical, long-range plan. 
2. Create Actionable Goals: Once you choose the part of your mission you’d like to focus on, you can determine the actionable goals that cater to it as well as deadlines for each of them. The goals you set will serve as a backbone of your long-range plan. If your mission relates to green products, one of your goals may be to design green packaging to go along with them. Remember that your goals are not set in stone and sure to change or evolve over time.
3. Identify Operational Procedures: The next step is to come up with a plan that will enable your organization to achieve your goals by your desired deadlines. In most cases, your plan will begin at the leadership level and involve the CEO and management team. As soon as they decide how each individual department will contribute to the goals, team managers can create department focused operational plans to help meet them. In the green packaging example, the manufacturing team might have a plan to create the ideal prototypes while the marketing team’s plan is based on new social media or print marketing campaigns. 
4. Adjust the Plan as Needed: A long range plan typically takes anywhere from 5 to 10 years to complete. Therefore, there’s a good chance it will require some revisions. If you notice changes in technology, supply chain, and customer demand, for example, don’t be afraid to adjust your plan accordingly. It’s in your best interest to schedule regular meetings to discuss progress and determine whether any modifications are necessary. 

Best Long-Range Planning Tools

Although you don't need to have these tools to create a long-range plan. These tools will set you up for success.

Jirav

When you're ready to move to a full-fledged modeling platform, one of the many options we like is Jirav. Their platform will help you create full financial forecasts for yourself or for your clients. Jirav will also support the reporting and dashboard visuals following the close of each month to help you deliver any analysis you may be looking for. On top of this, Jirav syncs with a handful of HR platforms to help pull in HR data that you may wish to use to structure your model.

Basis

Another full modeling platform we love is Basis. Basis not only syncs with your general ledger, but also has a ton of integrations within the HR, PEO, CRM and ERP space. This allows another level of business data to be imported in real time into your model for deep analysis. The output of this data within their reporting and dashboards allow for both financial and business analysis within the platform.