Strategic Business Planning - Toolkit

Strategic Business Planning is a disciplined and pragmatic approach that organisations can use to make decisions now about the future. It enables them to make more informed choices and decisions, set future directions, establish priorities, allocate limited resources, improve operations and monitor results. A well-executed planning exercise promotes a common understanding about the financial institution’s overall direction and purpose. Individuals see how their actions support the institution’s mission. Clarity of purpose enhances the organisation’s ability to recognise and concentrate on those activities that are fundamentally important. Second, the strategic business planning process trains staff to think and act strategically. These skills permit the organisation to creatively handle changing circumstances.

This toolkit assists financial organisations to review/develop their Mission, Values and Vision statements; and then develop a strategy on the basis of market, competition, institution and macro-environment analyses. This strategy outlines the financial institution’s market and scope, its strategy towards the competition, and how it will develop and maintain a competitive advantage in the market place.

Having a strategy is one thing – implementing it another. The toolkit assists participants develop a business planning framework that clearly lays out the:

1. Key Objectives (the issues that are critical to the successful implementation of the strategy)
2. Goals (that must be meet to realise the key objectives)
3. Measures/Targets (the financial and non-financial indicators that will be tracked to assess progress towards achieving the goals) and
4. Activities (or projects that will be implemented to achieve the goals)

This analysis then allows the institution to develop its strategic business plan in a participatory manner thus getting inputs/insights from all levels, building buy-in/understanding at all levels and optimising implementation.

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