Strategic Planning Kit For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Ensuring Your Plan Makes Cents

After you've completed your goals and actions, assess the financial viability of your strategic plan. While your action items and goals are fresh in your mind, estimate the costs associated with the implementation of each item.

All the best-laid strategic plans are subject to time and money. In this section, you look at the estimated expenses and the potential revenue. This review helps you make decisions about when to implement certain action items and whether your cash outlay generates the required revenue to meet your financial goals. As with every business, budgets are never big enough to do everything you want to do.

A business can be considered a financial success when it does the following:

• Stays in the black and turns a profit
• Has a healthy balance sheet (see Chapter 4 on ratios)
• Generates good cash flow
• Produces a good return on investment (ROI) for its shareholders

Attaining financial success starts with a financial assessment that's based on historical record and future projections. By looking at the past to help plan and predict the future, you can gain much better control over your company's financial performance. A good financial plan gives you a detailed picture of the financial health of your business and the viability of your strategic plan. It also helps you know whether you're getting off track during implementation so you can ...