Budgeting, Forecasting and Planning In Uncertain Times

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STRATEGY IMPROVEMENT MODEL

The business environment is constantly changing. To survive and grow, organisations must continually adapt their business processes either by improving them or by trying out something new. This requires them to collect, assess, and choose initiatives by modelling how they impact existing structures.

Responding to Change

Strategic and operational planning is primarily concerned with assessing change to an organisation’s business processes. This change can include the outputs those processes generate, the workload that is employed, and the resources they consume. If an organisation’s business processes do not change, then either there is no competition and they will achieve their purpose, or they are on a path that will ultimately lead to their demise.

Imagine selling the same products and services as 20 years ago, or using the same production techniques, marketing campaigns, sales channels, or technology systems as in the past. Customers would almost certainly have moved to another supplier for more relevant products, and the potential operating efficiency gains by using the latest technologies would have been missed, resulting in higher costs relative to competitors.

The need for change comes from different sources, technology being one of them. Most companies are forced to change even if industry or organisation-specific factors do not naturally lend them to change. It is more about technology challenging strategy than strategy challenging technology. ...