Original content provided by BDO UK.
As we mark the beginning of a new year, with new challenges and hurdles to cross. A sturdy business plan would help your business to pass the challenges with flying colors by prioritizing your key strengths. However, the 10 tips, combined with the seven areas of the BDO Business Lens, form something of a manifesto advocating for the creation of agile strategies that offer businesses a viable path into a future where growth remains not just possible but likely.
We at BDO have developed a Business Lens, to focus on 7 key areas of your business that would help you benchmark against your competitors and help your business to stand out from the others.
Along with the business lens, BDO’s Rethink model has observed four significant changes in the way businesses are going to be shaped for the future. The way of ‘how we do business’ has been affected by socio demographics, sustainability and resource resilience, technological transformation and shifting global economics.
A well-planned strategy that is flexible and agile to address new challenges could help you manifest a sound business plan and we at BDO could help you shape the future of your business by combining our Business Lens and Rethink model.
How can you prepare for uncertain times?
If we think of a business as a ship out at sea, heading for a destination and needing to ride any storms, then it is important to consider both the internal design of the ship and the impact of the external factors buffeting the ship.
Regarding the design, BDO has developed its Business Lens to look across seven areas of a business and compare to good practice:
People – Protecting, retaining and motivating a workforce
Processes – Reframing operations, transactions and interactions
Purpose – Finding the 'why' that will keep your business resilient
Profit – Reconsidering a financial strategy
Performance – Adjusting activity-related initiatives to meet goals
Productivity – Ensuring effective operations to stay resilient
Place – Rethinking the importance of location
By completing the Business Lens, business leaders can gain a solid understanding of how they benchmark against competitors, identifying common challenges and sector specific traits.
A balanced approach to growth, spanning these seven areas, can help to both build resilience and increase the effectiveness of the entire business.
Once you have explored all the internal considerations to be factored into your business plan, a thorough assessment of current external trends, threats and opportunities is vital.
BDO’s Rethink model has identified four key long-term megatrends which are shaping how we do business. These include changing socio-demographics, sustainability and resource resilience, technological transformation and shifting global economics.
Megatrends help us to understand additional challenges that businesses face in the immediacy, such as rising inflation, a shortage of skills, and disruption to vital supply chains. They can also help in building a long-term business strategy, forcing businesses to rethink what it is they do, identify new opportunities and opportunities from emerging customer needs or new markets.
10 practical tips for how to plan for uncertain times
We at BDO have listed down 10 practical tips to keep in mind for tackling uncertainty and to help you focus on what matters. Our recommendations follow insights gathered from 160 businesses through BDO’s Business Lens, which covers seven key areas that businesses should consider when planning – people, processes, purpose, profit, performance, productivity and place. Across each of these seven areas, we asked businesses to score their compliance with 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
BDO can guide your business through all these considerations and ensure your business plan is balanced, comprehensive and agile.
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