Updating Your Business Strategy for the New Year

The new year is a great time to step back and examine your business. By gathering your thoughts and organizing them, you can make sure you are charting a successful future course.

When you first founded your company, you wrote a business plan to persuade investors, bankers, and lenders by predicting existing and future markets, projecting what your production demands and capabilities would be, and what your customers’ needs would be. Those projections were an educated guess, and you received your funding based on those projections. Some business owners will jettison that plan once funding is in place. Instead, you can use that original plan this year to measure where you are, where you are going, and how far you’ve come in your business.

Bringing your plan up-to-date will require that you step back from the daily busyness and chaos and allow you to make sure that the original big picture still makes sense. You will be able to ask yourself which founding assumptions were right and which ones turned out to be incorrect. Did your market actually materialize? Are your product’s benefits what you projected they would be? You anticipated who your competitors would be; has that turned out the way you thought? The answers to these key questions will be of immense help in updating your business strategy for the new year.

Your business plan helps you chart your future course by including headcount numbers, KPIs, expenses, sales growth, profitability, etc., and as you revisit those forecasts you will see if your business has deviated from your expectations. If it has, that advanced warning will let you know what corrective action can be taken, such as cutting expenses, reworking your marketing strategy, or revamping your sales strategy. Most business risks can be predicted in advance, so keeping your plan’s risk analysis will ensure you are ahead of the game when it comes to those risks, improving your business’ strength and efficiency.

As an experienced CFO, I understand that to be a success you need someone on your team that is prepared to face trouble-shooting challenges of every size, every day, and I am here to help. Whether you are establishing and growing your company or planning to sell your business, I have the expertise and experience to help get it done.