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From business planning training through to leadership coaching, Hard Management offers a unique approach to gaining sustainable competitive advantage. Business Planning TrainingEffective business planning requires knowledge and skills in 3 key areas:
Strategy Anyone involved in writing business plans must have strategic awareness. Strategy is the path by which an organisation creates sustainable competitive advantage. It is long-term and is concerned with the type of decisions that require substantial investment of time, resources and capital; decisions that will have an impact far into the future. Visit HardSkills. Sign up for the Essentials Newsletter and find out about our Essentials courses for managers. And find out how gorillas are linked to competitive advantage.
Click here for our brand new site focusing on marketing, strategy and finance Strategy is about focus - what will you do and what will you not do with regard to:
However, strategy can never be described in all-encompassing detail. There are many tactical decisions that can only be made closer to the ground and there are judgement calls. Hard Management business planning training gives managers strategic understanding so that the business plans that they create will be consistent with the overall strategy. Follow this link for more information about our approach to strategy development.
Marketing Marketing is at the core of our business planning training programmes. The importance of marketing is captured by these words of Peter Drucker: "Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two - and only these two - basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are 'costs'. ... Concern and responsibility for marketing must permeate all areas of the enterprise." By marketing we mean, the marketing concept; in other words, organising the business in such a way that everyone in the organisation is focused on the customer. Follow this link for more information about our marketing training in the context of business planning.
Finance Too many programmes focus on the narrow aspects of finance - profit and loss, balance sheet and cashflow. Effective business plans require more than conventional finance skills. First we have to ensure that the plan will actually increase the value of the firm. This does not simply mean, "Will we generate a profit this year"; many profitable firms are actually declining in value. "Value" looks beyond the traditional financial statements, P&L and Balance Sheet, and considers the assets that do not appear on either of these and yet are the most important assets in the business - the intangibles:
The financial aspects of the business plan must incorporate these elements - otherwise the firm becomes trapped in short-term-ism, shying away from the required investments to gain long-term sustainable competitive advantage. Hard Management has considerable expertise in this area - visit our finance pages for more information. We can even provide training or consultancy to help build Excel models to support your Business planning activities. Please use the links below or the menu at the top of the page (hover over our logo) to find out more about our services.
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