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How to Write the Operations Plan Section of a Business Plan

Susan Ward wrote about small businesses for The Balance for 18 years. She has run an IT consulting firm and designed and presented courses on how to promote small businesses.

How to Write the Operations Plan Section of the Business Plan

Stage of development section, production process section, the bottom line, frequently asked questions (faqs).

The operations plan is the section of your business plan that gives an overview of your workflow, supply chains, and similar aspects of your business. Any key details of how your business physically produces goods or services will be included in this section.

You need an operations plan to help others understand how you'll deliver on your promise to turn a profit. Keep reading to learn what to include in your operations plan.

Key Takeaways

• The operations plan section should include general operational details that help investors understand the physical details of your vision.
• Details in the operations plan include information about any physical plants, equipment, assets, and more.
• The operations plan can also serve as a checklist for startups; it includes a list of everything that must be done to start turning a profit.

In your business plan , the operations plan section describes the physical necessities of your business's operation, such as your physical location, facilities, and equipment. Depending on what kind of business you'll be operating, it may also include information about inventory requirements, suppliers, and a description of the manufacturing process.

Staying focused on the bottom line will help you organize this part of the business plan.

Think of the operating plan as an outline of the capital and expense requirements your business will need to operate from day to day.

You need to do two things for the reader of your business plan in the operations section: show what you've done so far to get your business off the ground and demonstrate that you understand the manufacturing or delivery process of producing your product or service.

When you're writing this section of the operations plan, start by explaining what you've done to date to get the business operational, then follow up with an explanation of what still needs to be done. The following should be included:

Production Workflow

A high-level, step-by-step description of how your product or service will be made, identifying the problems that may occur in the production process. Follow this with a subsection titled "Risks," which outlines the potential problems that may interfere with the production process and what you're going to do to negate these risks. If any part of the production process can expose employees to hazards, describe how employees will be trained in dealing with safety issues. If hazardous materials will be used, describe how these will be safely stored, handled, and discarded.

Industry Association Memberships

Show your awareness of your industry's local, regional, or national standards and regulations by telling which industry organizations you are already a member of and which ones you plan to join. This is also an opportunity to outline what steps you've taken to comply with the laws and regulations that apply to your industry. 

Supply Chains

An explanation of who your suppliers are and their prices, terms, and conditions. Describe what alternative arrangements you have made or will make if these suppliers let you down.

Quality Control

An explanation of the quality control measures that you've set up or are going to establish. For example, if you intend to pursue some form of quality control certification such as ISO 9000, describe how you will accomplish this.

While you can think of the stage of the development part of the operations plan as an overview, the production process section lays out the details of your business's day-to-day operations. Remember, your goal for writing this business plan section is to demonstrate your understanding of your product or service's manufacturing or delivery process.

When writing this section, you can use the headings below as subheadings and then provide the details in paragraph format. Leave out any topic that does not apply to your particular business.

Do an outline of your business's day-to-day operations, including your hours of operation and the days the business will be open. If the business is seasonal, be sure to say so.

The Physical Plant

Describe the type, size, and location of premises for your business. If applicable, include drawings of the building, copies of lease agreements, and recent real estate appraisals. You need to show how much the land or buildings required for your business operations are worth and tell why they're important to your proposed business.

The same goes for equipment. Besides describing the equipment necessary and how much of it you need, you also need to include its worth and cost and explain any financing arrangements.

Make a list of your assets , such as land, buildings, inventory, furniture, equipment, and vehicles. Include legal descriptions and the worth of each asset.

Special Requirements

If your business has any special requirements, such as water or power needs, ventilation, drainage, etc., provide the details in your operating plan, as well as what you've done to secure the necessary permissions.

State where you're going to get the materials you need to produce your product or service and explain what terms you've negotiated with suppliers.

Explain how long it takes to produce a unit and when you'll be able to start producing your product or service. Include factors that may affect the time frame of production and describe how you'll deal with potential challenges such as rush orders.

Explain how you'll keep  track of inventory .

Feasibility

Describe any product testing, price testing, or prototype testing that you've done on your product or service.

Give details of product cost estimates.

Once you've worked through this business plan section, you'll not only have a detailed operations plan to show your readers, but you'll also have a convenient list of what needs to be done next to make your business a reality. Writing this document gives you a chance to crystallize your business ideas into a clear checklist that you can reference. As you check items off the list, use it to explain your vision to investors, partners, and others within your organization.

What is an operations plan?

An operations plan is one section of a company's business plan. This section conveys the physical requirements for your business's operations, including supply chains, workflow , and quality control processes.

What is the main difference between the operations plan and the financial plan?

The operations plan and financial plan tackle similar issues, in that they seek to explain how the business will turn a profit. The operations plan approaches this issue from a physical perspective, such as property, routes, and locations. The financial plan explains how revenue and expenses will ultimately lead to the business's success.

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How to Write an Operations Plan Section of your Business Plan

Free Operations Plan Template

• June 26, 2024

An operational plan bridges the gap between high ambitions and actual achievements. This essential integral section helps businesses thrive, achieve their goals, and handle challenges with accuracy and purpose.

But is it challenging for you to write one in a manner that shows a clear picture of your business operations? Drafting the operations plan section can be tricky due to the uncertainties of the business environment and the risks associated with it.

Well, worry not you’re at the right place! Here, we will see how to write an engaging operational plan in a business plan with an example. So let’s get going.

What is an operations plan?

An operations plan of a business plan is an in-depth description of your daily business activities centered on achieving the goals and objectives described in the previous sections of the plan. It outlines various departments’ processes, activities, responsibilities, and execution time frame.

The operations section explains in detail the role of a team or department in the collective accomplishment of your goals. In other words, it’s a strategic allocation of physical, financial, and human resources toward reaching milestones within a specific timeframe.

Key questions your operational plan should address

A successful operational plan section of your business plan should be able to answer the following questions:

• Who is responsible for a specific task or department?
• What are the tasks that need to be completed?
• Where will these operations take place?
• When should the tasks be completed? What are the deadlines?
• How will the tasks be performed? Is there a standard procedure?
• How much is it going to cost to complete these tasks?

Let’s see how to write the operations section that answers all the above questions:

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How do you write an operations plan section?

Writing an operations plan within a business plan involves summarizing the day-to-day tasks necessary to run the business efficiently and meet its goals in both the development and manufacturing phases of the business.

Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Development phase

In this stage, you mention what you’ve done to get your business operations up and running. Explain what you aim to change and improvise in the process. These are the elements your development section will contain:

Production workflow

Explain all the steps involved in creating your product. Provide a detailed description of each step, including any inefficiencies and the actions needed to address them. Here, you also mention any inefficiencies that exist and talk about the actions that need to be taken to tackle them.

Write down the risks involved in the production and potential problems you may face later down the line. State the safety measures employees take to avoid any misfortune while working. Explain how you store hazardous material and discard waste.

Mention any industry organizations and associations you’re a part of or plan to join. It’s essential to include this information to convey to the reader that you’re aware of the organizations and associations in your industry.

Supply chains

Here, you mention the vendors you work with to sell your products. Give a quick rundown of the agreements you signed with them. Mention the terms and conditions, prices, and timeframe of the contract. You can also mention if you have any backup suppliers if the existing ones fail to fulfill the requirements.

Quality control

Describe the measures you’re taking to assure and verify the quality of the end product. If you’re working towards getting a product certification, explain the steps you take to meet the set standards.

2. Manufacturing phase

The development stage acquaints the reader with the functioning of your business, while the manufacturing stage describes the day-to-day operation. This includes the following elements:

Outline of daily activities

Create an outline of the day-to-day activities of the production process. This includes the hours of operation, days the business will be open, and whether the business is seasonal or not.

Mention the location of your business , other branches you have, and their locations. If available, include images or drawings of the buildings, lease documents, real estate agreements, and other relevant documents. If you include these in your plan, mention why they’re crucial.

Tools and equipment

Describe the tools and machinery you use. You should also include the cost of the equipment; these will be important to predict financial requirements.

List down all your assets. These include land, buildings, tools, machinery, vehicles, and furniture. Include a legal description and the value of these assets.

Special requirements

If you require any additional facilities like water supply or power requirements, you mention them here. Specify what you need to do or have already done to acquire permissions for these requirements.

Raw materials

Mention your raw material suppliers. If you need any extra materials, you can also include them in your operations plan. Here, you also mention the contracts and agreements with your suppliers.

Productions

Explain the production process and the time required to produce one unit. Include the factors that may disrupt the production flow. Further, mention your strategies to tackle these inefficiencies to avoid delays in manufacturing.

Here, you state the process of storing manufactured products, managing the stock, and the costs of the storage spaces. Stringent management of inventory is essential to maintain product quality and assure customer satisfaction.

Feasibility

To ensure the viability and effectiveness of your product, detail any tests it has undergone. This includes prototype testing to evaluate the design and functionality.

Additionally, highlight product or service testing, such as performance, safety, and user experience assessments. These tests validate your product’s readiness for the market, ensuring it meets customers’ needs and regulatory standards.

Include the pricing strategy for your products or services. You can also include the final prices of your products.

Outline your pricing strategy including which approach you used, for example—cost-plus, value-based, or competitive pricing. Include the final prices of your products or services, providing a breakdown if there are different tiers or packages.

Why do you need an operations plan?

An operations plan is like an instruction manual for your business. It helps investors assess your credibility and understand the structure of your operations.

Internally, an operations plan works as a guide, which helps your employees and managers to know their responsibilities. It also helps them understand how to execute their tasks in the desired manner—all while keeping account of deadlines.

The operations plan helps identify and cut the variances between planned & actual performance and makes necessary changes.

It helps you visualize how your operations affect revenue and gives you an idea of when you need to implement new strategies to maximize profits. Some of the advantages of preparing an operations plan include:

Offers clarity

Operational planning makes sure that everyone in the audience and team is aware of the daily, weekly, and monthly work. It improves concentration and productivity.

Contains a roadmap

Operational planning makes it much easier to reach long-term objectives. When members have a clear business strategy to follow—productivity rises, and accountability is maintained.

Set a benchmark

It sets a clear goal for everyone about what is the destination of the company and how to reach it.

Manages resources

It supports you in allocating resources, such as human resources, equipment, and materials, ensuring that nothing is wasted and everything is used optimally.

Helps in decision making

An operations plan helps make smart decisions by showing how the business runs day-to-day. It provides details on resources, wise investments, and effective risk management, ensuring that decisions improve overall business operations.

Operations plan essentials

Now that you have understood the importance of the operations plan, let’s go through the essentials of an operations plan:

Strategic plan

Your operations plan is fundamentally a medium for implementing your strategic plan . Hence, it’s crucial to have a solid plan to write an effective operations plan.

Having clear goals is one of the most important things for an operations plan. For clear goals, you need to think SMART:

• Specific: Clearly define what employees should achieve
• Measurable: Quantify the goal to track progress
• Attainable: Set ambitious but achievable goals
• Timely: Provide a deadline

Different departments will have their objectives, all supporting the main goal. All these strategic objectives are flexible and should align with the company’s long-term goals.

Key performance indicators

It’s essential to choose the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). It’s a good practice to involve all your teams while you decide your KPIs. Some of the important KPIs can be revenue growth, customer acquisition cost (CAC), net profit margin, churn rate, etc.

Creating a timeline with milestones is necessary for any business. It keeps everyone focused and helps track efficiency. If some milestones aren’t met in a certain period, then it’s time to re-evaluate them.

Examples of some milestones are:

• Hiring key team members in six months
• Setting checkpoints for different production phases like design, prototype, development, testing, etc.
• Acquiring the first 50 clients in a year

Now you’re all set to write an operations plan section for your business plan. To give you a headstart, we have created an operations plan example.

Operations Plan Example

We know this guide has been helpful for you in drafting a comprehensive operational plan section for your business plan.

If you’re still unsure or need help getting started, consider using business plan software like Upmetrics . It offers step-by-step guidance, so you won’t have to worry about what comes next.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a strategic plan and an operational plan.

A strategic plan outlines the long-term vision, mission, and goals of an organization, focusing on growth and direction over several years.

In contrast, an operational plan details the short-term tasks, processes, and resource allocation needed to achieve those strategic goals, emphasizing day-to-day efficiency and productivity.

What role does the operations plan play in securing funding for a business?

The operations plan defines the clear goals of your business and what actions will be taken daily to reach them. So, investors need to know where your business stands and it will prove the viability of the goals helping you in getting funded.

What are the factors affecting the operations plan?

Some of the factors that affect the operations plan are:

• The mission of the company
• Goals to be achieved
• Finance and resources your company will need

Can an operations plan be created for both start-up and established businesses?

Yes, both a startup and a small business need an operations plan to get a better idea of the roadmap they want for their business.

About the Author

Upmetrics Team

Upmetrics is the #1 business planning software that helps entrepreneurs and business owners create investment-ready business plans using AI. We regularly share business planning insights on our blog. Check out the Upmetrics blog for such interesting reads. Read more

Reach Your Goals with Accurate Planning

An Ultimate Guide for Better Operations

• Operates towards success
• Describe business milestones
• Plan such as financials, budget planning 
• Turn your goals into an actionable plan

Operational Plan: Everything You Need To Know (2024 Guide)

The old way of planning no longer works in complex and unpredictable business environments, and companies are struggling to find their feet on shaky ground. As we’ve seen with many of our customers and strategies in Cascade, organizations can no longer count on executing three or even five-year strategic plans.

The new reality forces companies and their operations teams to adapt their operational plans more frequently and within shorter time frames if they want to reap benefits faster than their competitors. Organizations need to work on their strategic instinct and fast adaptability to enhance their operational efficiency .  

And that requires big changes—including building a flexible operational plan, supported by the right tools and systems that help you achieve real-time centralized observability and empower a strategic response to external disruptions.

Read this article to build a bulletproof operational plan that includes all the key elements necessary to overcome unpredictable business chaos. You’ll also get free templates that will help you rapidly adapt and align your teams.

✨Bonus: We’ve included pro tips from business leaders in our network to help you identify gaps in your strategy execution and build resilient business operations.

What Is An Operational Plan?

An operational plan is action and detail-oriented; it needs to focus on short-term strategy execution and outline an organization's day-to-day operations. If your operations strategy is a promise, your operational plan is the action plan for how you will deliver on it every day, week, and month.

Put simply, an operational plan helps you bridge the gap between business strategy and on-the-ground execution and ensures that the organization is on track to achieve its long-term goals.

Benefits of operational planning

• Clear definition of relationships between cross-functional teams in different departments and responsibilities for each to eliminate duplicated efforts.
• Tighter alignment between corporate or business unit strategic plans and on-the-ground execution, helping the organization meet its business targets.
• Strong operating system that enables the company to quickly adapt, deliver operations goals, and monitor performance.

Operational planning vs. strategic planning

Operational planning deals with the day-to-day details and short-term goals, while strategic planning focuses on the big picture and long-term direction of an organization.

To put it in simpler terms, operational planning is about the "how" of daily tasks, while strategic planning defines the "what" and "why" for future success.

📚Recommended reading: Strategic vs. Operational Planning

Kickstart Your Operational Planning Process: Lay The Foundation

The quality of your operational plan will depend on your input. A successful operational planning initiative will consider these aspects:

• Who will be involved? Identify and include employees, customers, and the management team in the planning process to gain valuable insights from the front lines, ensuring better strategy and execution buy-in.
• What are your internal capabilities? Assess internal capabilities by conducting an internal analysis , including resource requirements, operating budget, and talent skills. Talent management and employee engagement are just a few of the many challenges that COOs will have on their operations agenda.
• What environment are you operating in? Conduct an external analysis (e.g., PESTLE or Porter’s 5 Forces ) to inform your approach and identify optimization opportunities and risks, keeping you agile in a changing market.
• Is it aligned with your organization’s strategy? Ensure alignment of your operational plan with your organization’s strategic plan to actively support the company's long-term vision and contribute to key business metrics.

👉🏻 Once you’ve gathered this information, you can develop an operational plan to help you execute business strategies.

Key Elements Of Your Operational Plan

Enough chit-chat; it’s time to put your operational plan together. We've built this based on our proven and tested approach, used by over +45,000 Cascade users.

See how Cascade Strategy Execution Platform enhances operational efficiency by reducing duplication and aligning teams toward common goals. It effectively eliminates waste resulting from misalignment, fostering smoother operations and improved performance.

Here’s a recap of the five key elements your plan must consider:

Choose key metrics aligned with the company goals

Selecting your operational plan's key metrics isn't a mere exercise in tracking numbers; it's about laser-focused alignment with your business needs and objectives. These metrics are the tangible indicators of your organization's efficiency and performance. They serve as the compass, guiding your daily decisions and actions toward achieving concrete results.

By precisely aligning these metrics with your company's core objectives, you ensure that every initiative and action within your operational plan directly contributes to achieving tangible results.

An aligned operational plan makes it easier to:

• Communicate roles and responsibilities to all employees so they know how their efforts contribute to overall business success.
• Identify and address operational bottlenecks and inefficiencies that could derail strategy execution.
• Motivate and engage employees to work toward strategic objectives and deliver on business outcomes.

Remember that the role of operations is to close the gap between your organization's strategic goals and what is being done on a daily basis to make them happen.

👉🏻 How Cascade can help:

With Cascade’s Metrics Library , you can bring your operating and financial business-level goals together with your strategy under one single roof. This makes reporting & governance easy, accurate, and less time-consuming by connecting your business data to your key business initiatives.

Through Cascade’s integrations , you can consolidate your metrics in one place, importing your data directly from business systems, data lakes, BI tools, or even spreadsheets.

Define the focus areas of your operational plan

The focus areas of your operational plan are the key areas of the business that the plan will address.

This will depend on your business plan. Think about how the business operates and how it succeeds. Do you need to pursue short-term cost reductions while simultaneously pursuing longer-term growth and transformation initiatives? Your operational plans must be built on these strategic priorities.

For example, you can prioritize your focus areas based on the most relevant business strategies or by specific departments. Some examples of focus areas could be:

• Administration
• Human Resources

💡Tips to help define the focus areas of your operational plan:

• Identify the business's key challenges and opportunities.
• Consider the business's overall long-term strategy and key metrics and how the operational plan's focus areas can support these objectives.
• Bring other people on board to help you identify what needs to be addressed by the operations plan.

Create strategic objectives for your operational plan

Strategic objectives are specific goals aligned with the operation’s strategy and focus areas. They represent what you want to achieve in each focus area and will serve as the building blocks of your plan, ensuring that it’s focused and actionable.

Some examples of strategic objectives:

• Reduce costs by 10% within the next year by implementing more efficient processes and streamlining the supply chain over the next year.
• Launch three new products in the next fiscal year to expand your product lines and increase revenue.
• Increase customer satisfaction scores by 5% within the next six months.

💡Tips for defining strategic objectives include:

• Ensure your objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).
• Consistently align objectives with your operational plan's focus areas and the company's goals.
• Don’t be afraid to get input from other people about your objectives.

Identify and prioritize projects

It’s time to identify and prioritize the projects that need to be executed. Remember, projects are action plans to help you achieve your strategic objectives.

Project planning should include thinking about time frames, task assignments, and deliverables (and prioritizing).

Here are some examples of project ideas:

• Localize sourcing for critical semi-finished materials.
• Streamline the supply chain to reduce costs and improve efficiency.
• Find and develop an alternative logistics channel.
• Implement a new customer service training program to improve customer satisfaction scores.
• Implement a new technology that will enable end-to-end supply chain visibility.

💡Tips for defining and prioritizing projects:

• Identify the specific actions and activities needed to achieve each strategic objective.
• Prioritize the projects based on their importance, feasibility, and potential impact on the business.
• Involve stakeholders in defining and prioritizing the projects to ensure their needs and concerns are heard.

Identify and track key performance indicators (KPIs)

Finally, you’ll need to know if your operational plan and day-to-day activities result in outcomes.

Set KPIs for key initiatives and strategic objectives to measure success, ensure alignment, and identify performance gaps in your operational plan.

Some examples of operations KPIs are:

• Inventory costs
• Costs of goods sold
• Revenue growth
• Employee retention rate
• Customer satisfaction score

💡Tips for defining and tracking KPIs:

• Align KPIs with your strategic objectives and focus areas so that you can track the plan's progress against these specific goals.
• Add both lagging and leading indicators .
• Instead of using multiple disconnected spreadsheets and project management tools, consider live dashboards or reporting systems to track the KPIs and monitor progress over time.

👉🏻 How Cascade can help build your plan:

Cascade’s planner feature enables you to build your operational plan with structure and ease by breaking down the complexity from high-level initiatives to executable outcomes. Define your key elements (focus areas, objectives, projects, and KPIs), and share the plan with your teams. You’ll get full visibility of the plan’s progress in real-time, allowing you to identify gaps, quickly update the plan, and communicate the change with your team with a single click.

👉🏻 If you don’t want to start building the plan from scratch, use our free Operational Plan Template pre-filled with examples of focus areas, objectives, projects, and KPIs that you can customize to meet your organization’s needs.

Operational Plan Examples & Templates

Here are five operational plan examples to help you create plans for your teams. You can use one master operational plan or set up an operational plan for each department.

Master Operational Plan Example

This Operational Plan Template will help you close the gap between business goals and day-to-day operations. You'll be able to set goals and KPIs for your top priorities and work with the operations team to deliver operational excellence and business results.

HR Plan Example

This HR Operational Plan Template can be used to meet staffing requirements, manage human capital and align human resources activities with your strategy. HR managers in any industry can create a clear operational plan that can be constantly monitored, adapted, and improved.

IT Plan Example

If you’re in the IT team, try out this IT Plan Template to get your IT operational planning up and running fast. It comes prefilled with focus areas and KPIs relevant to IT operations; you can easily customize workflows and deliverables to your needs.

Marketing Plan Example

This Marketing Plan Template can help you efficiently understand and plan your digital marketing operations using best practices. Use it to quickly set up priorities and get your social media and marketing teams moving on tasks that will make an impact.

Finance Plan Example

This finance-focused template is ideal if you want to get on top of your finance operations plan. Use it to allocate and distribute financial resources across your organization and get real-time updates through your dashboard and reports—which are great tools to create a visually compelling financial summary that clearly shows your key metrics.

💡Pro Tip: To ensure successful execution, it's crucial to align not just your master operational plan with your overarching strategic plan, but also all the operational department plans.

With the Alignment Maps feature, you’ll be able to visualize how your top-level business strategy breaks down into functional and operational plans. This empowers COOs and CFOs to consolidate their operational plans in one place, creating tighter alignment between the finance and operations teams and improving cross-collaboration to build more resilient operations.

Want to dig deeper? Use the Relationships feature to see the relationships between connected objectives from your plans and understand how your different department goals contribute to the core business metrics and goals. This view will allow you to clearly map dependencies, blockers, and risks that may lie along your journey.

5 Tips For An Effective Operational Plan And Its Execution

1. don’t underestimate the power of transparent communication.

Regularly communicate the operational plan and progress to all relevant stakeholders to build the necessary buy-in and support. Your employees must know your goals and the roadmap, and team members should understand their role in its execution. This business transparency will help everyone row in the same direction.

“Clarity regarding strategy is one of the key drivers of autonomous execution. If people understand what you’re working toward and have guardrails in place, they can be empowered to make their own decisions and don’t need everything to be ‘run up the chain’ to get approved. This allows you to move fast and at scale.” — Sam Sterling , Chief Strategy Officer, Akqa

2. Keep moving forward and adopt a growth mindset

Keep the momentum going and ensure that the plan is executed effectively. Regular monitoring and reviews can help identify and address any challenges or obstacles that may arise.

Schedule regular reviews and check-ins and provide the necessary support to ensure projects are on track and moving forward.

“I think adopting a growth mindset is super important. This means having the confidence to fail fast, try something new and empower people to do that.” — Ken Miller , General Manager, Azure Intelligent Cloud at Microsoft

With the Team Updates functionality, every team member can post updates on key measures, actions, and objectives. This will give you real-time visibility into performance and help you identify possible risks before it’s too late—without having to schedule extra meetings or nag your team members for updates.

3. Make strategic moves and change fast when you need to

Your operational plan should be flexible, adaptable, and open to adjustments. This means keeping an eye on progress, making corrections if needed, and being willing to adapt the plan to changing circumstances or new opportunities. As McKinsey suggests, you can consider creating a team that will be able to collect data, link analysis with action, and offer quick responses to rapid changes.

“Traditionally, companies would have taken that piece of paper and gone out and said: we're going to execute it, start to finish. Then get into the formulation of the strategy, what we need to hit, and what the end product result will be like. But what we do know is that’s never the case. Along the way, you're going to have bumps, and inevitably, you’ll need to change from that original picture.” — Annie Lucchitti , Marketing Manager, Unilever

4. Empower your operations team and boost efficiency

Effective operational planning requires the engagement and empowerment of your team. Involve stakeholders in the planning process and provide them with the necessary resources. Give them context and an opportunity to set goals and prioritize initiatives. This will help you boost engagement and hold them accountable for progress.

“I think it just works at every single level. Are people allowed to be themselves at work? Personally, are they at peace? Are they happy? Productivity happens when people have the right skills, but also when they are engaged and happy. If one of those fails a bit, productivity will start decreasing.” — Joan Torrents , Global Sourcing Manager, TESCO.

5. If it isn’t measured, it isn’t managed

Don’t underestimate the importance of tracking and measuring progress against the operational plan's goals and objectives. Set milestones, enforce KPIs, and stay on top of progress. Doing this will help you stay on course, empower you to act quickly, and provide valuable insights into what is going wrong.

“Data is a foundational element in the strategy definition phase as well as in the strategy execution phase as it helps create a baseline, identify key priorities, set goals, and measure progress.” — Erica Santoni , Principal, Diversity Equity & Inclusion, Intuit

Use Cascade’s Dashboards to monitor your day-to-day progress on key metrics and critical business and strategic information in real-time.

Compile the information in powerful reports and executive summaries in seconds with pre-built templates. Share them with your key stakeholders —internal and external— and invite them to collaborate on your strategy together.

Execute Your Operational Plan With Cascade 🚀

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❌They aren’t designed for adaptive strategy and planning.

❌They often lead to siloing and hinder effective cross-collaboration.

❌They make it challenging to measure progress and slow down decision-making.

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Operational Planning: How to Make an Operations Plan

The operations of your business can be defined as the sum of all the daily activities that you and your team execute to create products or services and engage with your customers, among other critical business functions. While organizing these moving parts might sound difficult, it can be easily done by writing a business operational plan. But before we learn how to make one, let’s first understand what’s the relationship between strategic and operational planning.

Operational Planning vs. Strategic Planning

Operational planning and strategic planning are complementary to each other. This is because strategic plans define the business strategy and the long-term goals for your organization, while operational plans define the steps required to achieve them.

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What Is a Strategic Plan?

A strategic plan is a business document that describes the business goals of a company as well as the high-level actions that will be taken to achieve them over a time period of 1-3 years.

What Is an Operational Plan?

Operational plans map the daily, weekly or monthly business operations that’ll be executed by the department to complete the goals you’ve previously defined in your strategic plan. Operational plans go deeper into explaining your business operations as they explain roles and responsibilities, timelines and the scope of work.

Operational plans work best when an entire department buys in, assigning due dates for tasks, measuring goals for success, reporting on issues and collaborating effectively. They work even better when there’s a platform like ProjectManager , which facilitates communication across departments to ensure that the machine is running smoothly as each team reaches its benchmark. Get started with ProjectManager for free today.

What Is Operational Planning?

Operational planning is the process of turning strategic plans into action plans, which simply means breaking down high-level strategic goals and activities into smaller, actionable steps. The main goal of operational planning is to coordinate different departments and layers of management to ensure the whole organization works towards the same objective, which is achieving the goals set forth in the strategic plan .

How to Make an Operational Plan

There’s no single approach to follow when making an operation plan for your business. However, there’s one golden rule in operations management : your strategic and operational plans must be aligned. Based on that principle, here are seven steps to make an operational plan.

• Map business processes and workflows: What steps need to be taken at the operations level to accomplish long-term strategic goals?
• Set operational-level goals: Describe what operational-level goals contribute to the achievement of larger strategic goals.
• Determine the operational timeline: Is there any time frame for the achievement of the operational plan?
• Define your resource requirements: Estimate what resources are needed for the execution of the operational plan.
• Estimate the operational budget: Based on your resource requirements, estimate costs and define an operational budget.
• Set a hiring plan: Are there any skills gaps that need to be filled in your organization?
• Set key performance indicators: Define metrics and performance tracking procedures to measure your team’s performance.

Free Operational Plan Template

Leverage everything you’ve learned today with our template. This free operational plan template for Word will help you define your budget, timeline, KPIs and more. It’s the perfect first step in organizing and improving your operations. Download it today.

What Should be Included in an Operational Plan?

Your operational plan should describe your business operations as accurately as possible so that internal teams know how the company works and how they can help achieve the larger strategic objectives. Here’s a list of some of the key elements that you’ll need to consider when writing an operational plan.

Executive Summary

An executive summary is a brief document that summarizes the content of larger documents like business plans, strategic plans or operation plans. Their main purpose is to provide a quick overview for busy stakeholders.

Operational Budget

An operational budget is an estimation of the expected operating costs and revenues for a given time period. As with other types of budget, the operational budget defines the amount of money that’s available to acquire raw materials, equipment or anything else that’s needed for business operations.

It’s important to limit your spending to stay below your operational budget, otherwise, your company could run out of resources to execute its normal activities. You can use our free operating budget template for Excel to track your operating costs.

Operational Objectives

It’s essential to align your operational objectives with your strategic objectives. For example, if one of your strategic objectives is to increase sales by 25 percent over the next three years, one possible operational objective would be to hire new sales employees. You should always grab your strategic plan objectives and turn them into one or multiple action items .

Processes & Workflows

Explain the various business processes, workflows and tasks that need to be executed to achieve your operational objectives. Make sure to explain what resources are needed, such as raw materials, equipment or human resources.

Operational Timeline

It’s important to establish a timeline for your operational plan. In most cases, your operational plan will have the same length as your strategic plan, but in some scenarios, you might create multiple operational plans for specific purposes. Not all operational plans are equal, so the length of your operational timeline will depend on the duration of your projects , workflows and processes.

Hiring Plan

Find any skills gap there might be in your team. You might need to hire a couple of individuals or even create new departments in order to execute your business processes .

Quality Assurance and Control

Most companies implement quality assurance and control procedures for a variety of reasons such as customer safety and regulatory compliance. In addition, quality assurance issues can cost your business millions, so establishing quality management protocols is a key step in operational planning.

Key Performance Indicators

It’s important to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the productivity of your business operations. You can define as many KPIs as needed for all your business processes. For example, you can define KPIs for marketing, sales, product development and other key departments in your company. This can include product launch deadlines, number of manufactured goods, number of customer service cases closed, number of 5-star reviews received, number of customers acquired, revenue increased by a certain percentage and so on.

Risks, Assumptions and Constraints

Note any potential risks, assumptions and time or resource constraints that might affect your business operations.

What Are the Benefits of Operational Planning?

Every plan has a massive effect on all team members involved, and those can be to your company’s benefit or to their detriment. If it’s to their detriment, it’s best to find out as soon as possible so you can modify your operational plan and pivot with ease.

But that’s the whole point of operational planning: you get to see the effect of your operations on the business’s bottom line in real time, or at every benchmark, so you know exactly when to pivot. And with a plan that’s as custom to each department as an operational plan, you know exactly where things go wrong and why.

How ProjectManager Can Help with Operational Planning

Creating and implementing a high-quality operational plan is the best way to ensure that your organization starts out a project on the right foot. ProjectManager has award-winning project management tools to help you craft and execute such a plan.

Gantt charts are essential to create and monitor operational plans effectively. ProjectManager helps you access your Gantt chart online so you can add benchmarks for operational performance reviews. You can also create tasks along with dependencies to make the operation a surefire success.

Whether you’re a team of IT system administrators, marketing experts, or engineers, ProjectManager includes robust planning and reporting tools. Plan in sprints, assign due dates, collaborate with team members and track everything with just the click of a button. Plus, we have numerous ready-made project reports that can be generated instantly, including status reports, variance reports, timesheet reports and more.

Related Operations Management Content

• Operational Strategy: A Quick Guide
• Operations Management: Key Functions, Roles and Skills
• Operational Efficiency: A Quick Guide
• Using Operational Excellence to Be More Productive

Operational planning isn’t done in a silo, and it doesn’t work without the full weight of the team backing it up. Ensure that your department is successful at each benchmark. ProjectManager is an award-winning pm software dedicated to helping businesses smooth out their operational plans for a better year ahead. Sign up for our free 30-day trial today.

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Operational planning: 5 steps to create a better business operational plan

Learn how to conduct operational planning to enhance collaboration, streamline workflows, and unlock peak productivity in all your company’s teams.

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Operational planning enhances collaboration and streamlines workflows to unlock peak efficiency.

Transforming a strategic vision into business success demands meticulous planning. It requires navigating unexpected obstacles, coordinating team activities with long-term goals, and implementing practical steps to realize organizational objectives.

Organizational planning plays a pivotal role in this context by translating high-level strategies into actionable day-to-day tasks.

But an operational plan is more than a structured to-do list — it’s a comprehensive framework that outlines roles, responsibilities, and timelines. By breaking down grand strategies into executable actions, operational planning ensures cohesive teamwork and transforms ambiguous business strategies into achievable realities.

What’s operational planning?

Operational planning is how companies organize day-to-day tasks to align with broader strategic goals. It’s a road map guiding teams through operational decisions about daily operations, ensuring every task contributes to the company’s long-term and high-level objectives. This typically involves setting short-term objectives, defining key activities, and establishing clear timelines.

In practice, operational planning often blends traditional and innovative methods to maximize efficiency. Conventional strategies like Gantt charts and flowcharts help leaders visualize data , tasks, and timelines to make complex projects more manageable. And digital tools like enterprise project management software introduce automation, real-time collaboration, and data analytics into the mix. These platforms enable agile plan adjustments and offer insights through predictive analytics.

By integrating these mixed methodologies, operational planning helps enterprises build a system that’s efficient and responsive to evolving business needs. It bridges the gap between meticulous organization and the agility needed in a fast-paced business environment.

Benefits of operational planning

Operational planning offers a structured approach to decision-making, but its advantages extend beyond planning. Here’s why it’s a crucial tool for achieving organizational goals.

Clarifies goals

Operational planning turns abstract ideas into concrete objectives. It encourages setting explicit goals with definitive timelines. This clarity benefits leadership and the entire team, ensuring everyone understands what needs doing, who’s doing it, and by when.

Enhances productivity

An operational plan enhances productivity by establishing timelines, outlining objectives, and allocating resources. This structure helps team members prioritize their work and manage their time efficiently because they have clear deadlines to guide them.

By defining precise objectives, the plan ensures every team member understands their specific tasks and expected outcomes, preventing unnecessary work and deviations from the plan. And knowing what resources are available helps team members prepare realistically for their taskwork.

Improves efficiency

A well-crafted operational plan boosts efficiency by optimizing workflows and streamlining organizational processes . By mapping out immediate and long-term objectives, the plan establishes a clear blueprint for task execution. As team members better understand their roles, task sequence, and the rationale behind each, they can execute them more seamlessly. This clarity and structure are also invaluable for onboarding new team members and allow them to integrate and understand the workflow with less friction.

Strategic planning vs. operational planning

Both plan types are distinct yet essential components of an organization’s overall planning process. Let’s break down the primary differences:

• A strategic plan defines your company’s “what,” outlines your business’s direction, and sets broad, long-term objectives. It’s a high-level overview that articulates your mission statement, establishes key business objectives, and outlines strategies for achieving them. This plan typically spans several years into the future and aligns the company’s efforts with its overarching vision.
• An operational plan focuses on the “how” by detailing how to execute the strategies and goals laid out in the strategic plan. This is where you get into the specifics — setting milestones, crafting a detailed road map, and establishing short-term, incremental goals that steer your company toward achieving strategic objectives. And at this point, you’ll focus on more immediate factors, like dealing with daily management and task implementation, that are necessary to achieve strategic organizational goals.

Types of operational plans

Departmental goals and needs vary significantly, and tailored operational plans ensure you optimally manage each area. While a sales department might need a plan focused on customer engagement and retention, an IT department might emphasize technology upgrades and cybersecurity . Combining various plan types — like a couple of those that follow — ensures optimal management and effectiveness in each area, aligning departmental activities with broader objectives.

Project operation plans

Project operation plans are indispensable documents for breaking projects into actionable milestones and assigning teams to relevant tasks. A well-developed project plan organizes tasks and anticipates resource requirements such as personnel, infrastructure, and time. By identifying these requirements early on, project operation plans provide planning foresight that helps avoid resource shortages and last-minute scrambles to ensure projects progress smoothly and stay on track.

Say you’re designing a website . Your project operation plan will outline key steps, such as user research , wireframing , user testing , and launch. Each step would have assigned teams, deadlines, and specific objectives, like establishing focus groups by a certain date and finalizing prototypes. The project manager would monitor progress to ensure resource availability and timeline adherence.

Enterprise operation plans

Enterprise operation plans translate broader strategic goals into smaller, manageable milestones. They involve assigning responsibility for these milestones to department directors to ensure accountability for each plan segment.

When creating an enterprise operational plan, it’s vital to identify resource gaps, dependencies, and other potential obstacles to ensure seamless execution. This lets you set realistic, achievable milestones and achieve smooth interdepartmental coordination. Involving directors from the start is also crucial because their insights can reveal critical aspects you might otherwise overlook.

Consider a web design agency planning to expand their service offerings to include mobile app development over the next year. The enterprise operational plan might include milestones such as hiring app developers, training current staff in responsive mobile design , and marketing these new services to potential leads. You might also ask the development head to oversee recruitment and training and involve the marketing director in developing strategies to promote the new services.

IT operation plans

IT departments confront unique challenges due to rapid cybersecurity threats and their critical role in every business sector. Unlike other departments focusing on sales and marketing, IT departments must ensure the organization’s technological structure is robust, secure, and current.

IT operation plans typically outline how the department will adapt to business changes, like scaling up for new hires, migrating from a legacy system to a new one, and safeguarding the organization against evolving cybersecurity threats.

If you’re preparing for a major server infrastructure upgrade, for instance, an IT operation plan will outline steps like evaluating current server and hosting capacities, selecting new hardware and infrastructure, and scheduling website migration to new servers. The plan would include specific timelines — such as completing server evaluations by the end of the first quarter and starting the migration in the second quarter — to ensure minimal downtime and a smooth transition for all hosted websites.

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Key elements of an operational plan

No matter the type you’re creating, most operational plans include the following core traits.

Operational plans should be clear and to the point. While comprehensive coverage is important, elaborating too much risks misinterpretation and becoming bogged down in the details. Focus on concise, direct explanations and allow the details to unfold during project execution.

Team buy-in is essential for success. Instead of leaving the executive team to dictate the plan exclusively, involve team members in its creation. A collaborative approach helps garner buy-in and fosters feelings of ownership and responsibility toward the plan’s objectives. This involvement translates to increased motivation and commitment because team members feel more likely to invest effort in a plan they helped shape.

Consistency

Consistency in operational plans is crucial for their effectiveness and for establishing organizational trust. It involves applying the same standards and procedures uniformly across all departments and teams. By consistently applying rules and policies, you ensure every organizational element operates under the same guidelines, enhancing fairness and reducing confusion. Consistent execution of your operational plan also streamlines progress and success tracking because the criteria and methods used for each remain uniform.

Specify the processes and methodologies each department should use. If the design team uses an agile, iterative process , for instance, implement similar practices in other departments like IT. This standardization enables smoother collaboration and operational harmony.

Key performance indicators

Every operational plan needs well-defined key performance indicators (KPIs) from the outset. These should include:

• Leading indicators provide early insights into your strategy’s effectiveness by signaling shifts and trends ahead of their full realization. By monitoring these indicators, you can gauge your strategy’s immediate impact and proactively adjust your approach. Indicator examples include customer satisfaction levels, changes in market share, and fluctuations in sales figures.
• Lagging indicators reflect the outcomes of your operational efforts by providing historical data on your plan’s efficacy after execution. Key lagging indicators include metrics like the time taken to complete projects, support ticket volumes, and total expenses incurred. Analyzing these metrics also helps identify improvement areas, like optimizing resource allocation, enhancing customer support processes, and streamlining operational workflows.

Constraints

Acknowledge any assumptions and constraints within your plan, such as technological limitations, tight deadlines, and regulatory requirements. Being upfront about these factors is essential for setting realistic expectations and guiding effective task execution. And it ensures everyone involved understands the framework they’re operating in.

Say you’re building an agency website in the European Union (EU). A critical constraint would be compliance with data protection regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). You must keep this constraint in mind as you develop your operational plan because it affects the technology and processes used for data handling and shapes your website’s design and functionality. For instance, you’ll likely need to integrate clear consent mechanisms for data collection, prominent user data management tools into the website’s layout, and GDPR-compliant technologies for data processing and storage.

The 5 steps of the operational planning process

Enterprises develop operational plans through five strategic steps, each essential for shaping an actionable and effective strategy. Let’s explore what this planning process looks like.

1. Set goals

Establish specific, immediate business goals that align with your strategic plan. This might include launching a redesigned website, increasing online sales by a specific percentage, or reducing digital marketing expenses.

Make these goals ambitious yet adaptable, allowing for flexible responses to unexpected challenges. This step lays the foundation for your operational strategy and aligns every subsequent action toward these well-defined objectives.

2. Allocate resources

After establishing your goals, evaluate your capacity to achieve them. Analyze your current resources and identify what additional expertise, technology, and budget you require. This step isn’t just about highlighting what’s missing — it’s about strategizing how to scale your business to accommodate these needs.

3. Define KPIs

Select KPIs that align closely with your operational goals and ensure they reflect key aspects of your strategy. These KPIs should include leading indicators, like website traffic and user engagement rates for predictive analytics, and lagging indicators, such as satisfaction scores post-launch, to evaluate past performance. Consistently apply these KPIs throughout your project to monitor progress and keep the team focused on core objectives.

Consider using digital analytic platforms like Google Analytics to track KPIs. These tools offer detailed insights into traffic and user behavior. And you can set up dashboards to visually represent these metrics to help spot trends and patterns without combing through data.

Suppose you notice rising bounce rates on a specific webpage — this might indicate user disinterest or navigational issues. In response, you might pivot to revise the page’s copy, restructure its visual hierarchy , or simplify the navigation structure to make it more engaging and user-friendly.

4. Prescribe processes

Develop clear and detailed plans for how your teams should execute tasks. This clarity guides them through each stage, reducing confusion, ensuring consistency, and enhancing productivity.

To communicate these procedures to your team, use tools like flowcharts. They simplify and clarify each operational plan phase and help ensure everyone understands their responsibilities.

For large-scale projects, consider using project management software like Asana, Trello, or Jira. These platforms offer features like task assignment, deadline tracking, and real-time communication, and they provide a centralized platform for monitoring progress and maintaining team alignment.

5. Determine milestones

Create a road map that outlines clear, measurable goals and specific objectives. This map transforms your operational plan into achievable targets, helping teams visualize where they’re headed and the benchmarks they need to hit. Host regular meetings when outlining your milestones — this consistent evaluation ensures everyone moves forward in sync, maintaining the necessary momentum to achieve the plan’s goals.

In a web development project, for example, these evaluations might reveal if certain phases, like design or development, have too few or surplus resources. Identifying these imbalances lets you efficiently reallocate resources to ensure each department has what it needs to meet its milestones effectively and on schedule.

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How to Write the Operations Plan Section of Your Business Plan

The Operations Plan is a component of your business plan that is like the engine of your car. The operations plan holds the key parts of your business and it shows how those parts work together to keep the business running. If you are starting a business or your business is growing, the operations plan also shows that your business is more than just a good concept. It shows why the business is running smoothly and how key milestones ahead will be met as the business grows. The operations plan is the powerhouse engine in your business plan . Let’s start that engine together.

What is the Operations Plan in a Business Plan?

The key to putting your operations plan together is choosing which processes show how your business works and what the expected outcomes will be as a result. Include the processes that you believe are most important even if they are basic or simple. And, if you think your business is too new to create an operations plan, think again. Every business has processes, no matter how large or small they may be. Your operations plan may be considered by potential investors or lenders; make it the best it can be.

Components of a Comprehensive Operations Plan

The best operations plan includes a list of key processes with short explanations that detail each process. Some explanations will also include a brief sentence explaining how the key process will help the business meet the expected key milestones. For example, “Our Marketing team will post on social media each time our product sales reach one of our sales goals. This will drive new customers to our product offering.”

Main components of an operations plan:

Product Development

Describe how the product is being developed and if it is currently offered or is on target for launch. Include the production process for testing, improvements or revisions.

Key milestone : Note the forecast for new product development to expand the product line.

Manufacturing

Describe the process of manufacturing, from the first step to the delivery of products. This may include several bullet points. Add facilities maintenance in this section. Also, include the management processes of the staff.

Key milestone : Include a brief forecast with plans to increase manufacturing capabilities.

Administration/Human Resources

Include a description of day-to-day activities that are overseen by staff members, including facilities management, safety, reports and compliance, hiring staff and training.

Key milestone : Add a sentence regarding staff training for leadership as the business grows.

List the process of purchasing parts, services, products, and raw materials. Include a sentence about financial oversight of expenditures to control costs.

Key milestone : Indicate how the staff is preparing for purchasing increases to meet higher manufacturing demands.

Customer Service

List the processes that comprise customer service, including any customer relationship management software (CRM) or other processes that interact with customers. Provide details on processes for customer retention.

Key milestone : Add a sentence describing staff training to build customer relationships.

Describe how your business conducts sales, whether through online channels, via wholesale or retail sales, or by other means. Explain why the process works for your business and how it is positioned to be successful because of the sales process.

Key milestone : Indicate how planned sales strategies will expand to meet key milestones.

Note the process of current marketing campaigns and the response of the target audience. Note how responses are scored on social media.

Key milestone : Include operational plans for building brand awareness, key selling points, and entry positions.

At this stage of business, the finance process should be clearly outlined, with current and any expected funding included. Also, include a sentence about how the business has structured a repayment plan for any loans and is making on-time payments.

Key milestone : Describe any anticipated funding options that have already been put into place.

Accounting/Payroll:

Describe in a few sentences how timely accounting is completed on a regular basis. Add a sentence about the payroll system and the software that runs it.

Key milestone : Add a note about increasing software programs in accounting to increase performance during growth.

Include a sentence about the process of oversight for the business. Add the process of documentation, filings, and oversight of any copyrights, patents, or trademarks. Include any licensing payments that add revenue to the business.

Key milestone : Include a description of the legal process already in place to accommodate expansion and long-term growth.

How to Write the Operations Plan For Your Business

Now that you’ve read about the main components in a business operations plan, it’s time to connect them in writing your own operations plan. To do this, you can follow the easy steps ahead as you construct each process.

Remember, you may not need all of the processes listed here. You will want to choose those that make sense for your business and, if needed, add some others. When completed, your operations plan will flow smoothly from start to finish.

• Consider your Business Goals . Write out each goal. Read them as you decide which processes to include in your operations plan and think about how soon you will want to meet the company goals.
• Create a Process List . Look at the list of components and decide how to make them into a list for your own business. Don’t write out full descriptions yet. We’re building the list first. How do processes start in your business?
• Finance (get funding)
• Product Development (buy a truck, provide services, equipment, tools)
• Manufacturing (maintain the garage and tow truck)
• Sales (make sales calls)
• Customer Service (answering texts, and emails)
• Marketing (getting referrals from friends)
• Accounting/Payroll (paying yourself and the bookkeeper)
• Legal (risk management assistance)
• Start filling in the Process Descriptions . Use the examples above to describe the processes of your business. A few sentences that explain each process are all you need in the operations plan.
• For example, key milestones for your tow truck business might be:
• Tow at least five vehicles daily during each week (sales/marketing)
• Buy a second tow truck within 6 months (finance)
• Add a second tow truck driver within 6 months (human resources)
• Buy a commercial truck within 12 months (finance/product development)
• Finish your Operations Plan . Re-read each Process Description and complete the Key Milestones for each operations section.

Sample Operations Plan for Badger Drains & Plumbing

Badger Drains & Plumbing, based in Milwaukee, WI, is dedicated to providing top-notch residential and commercial plumbing services. Our operations plan outlines the key processes that make our business run smoothly and how we plan to meet our key milestones as we grow.

Our services, instead of physical products, are continuously refined based on customer feedback and technological advancements in plumbing. This includes adopting newer, more efficient ways to conduct pipe repairs, installations, and maintenance services.

Key milestone : To introduce environmentally friendly and cost-effective plumbing solutions within the next year.

Our staff handle day-to-day operational tasks, prioritizing safety, efficiency, and regulatory compliance. This includes everything from scheduling service calls to conducting routine safety checks and equipment maintenance.

Key milestone : Implement a leadership development program for senior technicians to prepare them for managerial roles as the company expands.

We procure high-quality plumbing materials, tools, and technologies from reputable suppliers, ensuring we have the necessary inventory to meet customer demand without excessive expenditure.

Key milestone : Strengthen relationships with key suppliers to negotiate better prices and ensure priority fulfillment as service demand increases.

Customer service is a pillar of our operations, involving not just resolving issues but proactively enhancing customer satisfaction through follow-ups and feedback collection using CRM software.

Key milestone : Introduce a loyalty program by the end of the next quarter to increase customer retention rates.

Sales efforts are directed through personal client interactions and digital marketing to generate leads, with a strong focus on the benefits of choosing Badger Drains & Plumbing for reliability and professionalism.

Key milestone : Achieve a 20% increase in annual contracts by targeting commercial entities in the Milwaukee area.

Our marketing is focused on local SEO, targeted ads, and social media engagement to connect with the Milwaukee community, emphasizing our quick response times and quality service.

Key milestone : Launch a community-oriented campaign to increase brand visibility and customer engagement by participating in local events and sponsorships.

Our current financing includes business revenue and a small business loan, with a diligent approach to budgeting and a clear plan for loan repayment and future investments.

Key milestone : Secure a line of credit to fund an expansion of services within the next two years.

Accounting/Payroll

We use modern software solutions to ensure accurate and timely financial and payroll management, allowing us to focus more on serving our customers and less on back-office tasks.

Key milestone : Transition to a more comprehensive software suite that integrates CRM and finance for better overall management efficiency.

Our legal framework encompasses regular reviews of compliance, documentations, and the management of any intellectual property, ensuring all operations are above board.

Key milestone : Establish a retainer partnership with a legal firm specializing in small businesses to prepare for interstate licensing and expansion.

By following this operations plan, Badger Drains & Plumbing aims to enhance its service offerings, optimize operational efficiency, increase productivity, and achieve sustainable growth, maintaining its commitment to being Milwaukee’s trusted plumbing service provider.

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Businesses may utilize operational plans to lay out objectives, set reasonable timelines, and define expectations. They can increase productivity and efficiency at work by studying how to write compelling and thorough operational plans. An operations plan specifying goals and objectives may be made using various techniques.

What is an Operational Business Plan?

An operational business plan is a detailed document that gives a window into the company's mission, vision, goals, and operational techniques that will steer it in the right direction. It is a pathway, a helpful instrument for the organization that gives answers on, for example, resource allocation, the running of operations, and efficiency measurement. 

An operational business plan is an indispensable tool for entrepreneurs to make the right decisions, create new opportunities, and ensure the business's sustainable long-term development goals. By establishing strategic directions, dealing with risks, procuring funding, and promoting accountability, businesses can overcome barriers and get the maximum benefit.

Why Do Businesses Need an Operational Business Plan?

A proper business plan is a must for any business, regardless of its size and industry, as it is like a roadmap to help reach success. It is common as it gives a clear vision and a specific direction, defining tactics, strategies, and objectives to achieve them. Companies must prioritize their chores and delegate resources adequately with a clear plan.

Let’s look at the reasons why an operational plan is a significant part of your business strategy: 

1. Providing Strategic Direction and Focus.

An operational business plan delivers strategic orientation and specialization by describing short-term and long-term goals. It lays out the boxes of reaching these objectives; this allows the companies to stay focused even when the market changes or the customers embrace different products.

2. Ensuring Risk Mitigation and Adaptability.

Companies can identify business threats and problems using inclusive market studies and competitors' analysis. An operational business plan provides a way to preemptively manage such risks and change strategies to take advantage of opportunities in a changing business environment.

3. Overcoming the Fear of Funding and Stakeholder Consent.

A properly drafted business plan is vital in getting investment funds from investors or lenders. You can use Google Workspace to draft a solid business plan streamlining operations. It shows you have researched the market, identified the business plan’s growth potential, and have a path to profit, thus inspiring confidence in stakeholders to provide you with the financial support needed for business initiatives.

4. Measuring Performance and Holding the Leadership Accountable.

An operational business plan is an important accountability tool, ensuring that the organization's goals and performance metrics are set. Teams can monitor growth, pinpoint mistakes, spot and reward accomplishments, build a culture of persistent improvement, and earn overall business influence. You must schedule appointments with your clients and discuss the minutes with the team to enhance the outcomes. 

Key Components of an Operational Business Plan

An operational business plan comprises several key components essential for guiding the organization toward its objectives: 

1. Executive Summary

The executive summary introduces the whole business plan and highlights its salient points, such as the company's mission, the aims, and the proposed strategies.

2. Business Description

This business plan component is highly focused and provides details, such as type of venture, products and services, market segment, competitive environment, and unique selling points.

3. Market Analysis

Market analysis is a comprehensive process involving the evaluation of industry trends, customer needs, competition, potential market openings, and information critical for making strategic decisions. Based on the market analysis, you need to create marketing strategies. There are various forms of marketing, including email marketing through email newsletters , social media marketing, and many other things.

4. Operational Strategies

Operational strategies essentially describe how the business plans to function effectively, utilizing methods such as production processes, supply chain management, quality control, and technology utilization.

5. Financial Projections

The financial projections involve expected revenues, expenses, cash flow statements, and breakeven analysis to evaluate the business's financial viability and long-term sustainability.

6. Implementation Plan:

The plan encompasses the project schedule, tasks, responsibilities, and milestones. It outlines the implementation of how the execution strategies were developed in the business plan and how the progress was effectively monitored.

7. Risk Management

Preparing for assessing possible risks and developing contingency plans to respond to them is what the business should do to protect itself against unpredictable obstacles or threats.

8. Monitoring and Evaluation

The setting of metrics and performance indicators facilitates performance monitoring and evaluation of the business progression towards its objectives in a continuous fashion, thus permitting the implementation of timely changes and upgrades when needed.

Crafting an Operational Business Plan

Crafting an operational business plan is critical to any business as this is the key to setting the business's targeted goals, strategies, and tactics. It defines the strategies and guidelines for success, thus ensuring productive use of available resources and effective decision-making.

1. Conducting Market Research for Your Operational Business Plan.

Market research is the most important part of creating an operational business plan . It means getting data on your intended audience, competitors' market trends, and the industry. This will assist you in defining your target market, familiarizing yourself with their needs and preferences, and analyzing the competition. After conducting thorough market research, you can decide on pricing, positioning, and marketing strategies. This is the right way to create opportunities for success.

2. Setting Realistic Goals and Objectives in Your Operational Business Plan.

To ensure the success of any work plan, it is essential to set clear and achievable aims and objectives. To do this, you must have a sense of direction and purpose. Goals should be defined in a way that makes them specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. When defining goals and objectives for your company, it's important to consider its core strengths and weaknesses, trends in the market, and industry standards. Setting attainable goals and objectives can motivate your team, keep track of progress, and make any necessary changes.

3. Building Plans and Techniques to Reach Your Objectives.

After you have identified your target and objectives, the next thing to do is develop the strategies and tactics to help you achieve these goals. Strategies are the broad approaches that tell you how you will attain your goals, while tactics are the specific actions or initiatives you will take to support those strategies. In strategy and tactics of development, consider your market segment, competitive advantages and resources, and market trends. By doing so, you can produce a comprehensive and well-thought-out action plan.

4. Creating an Organizational Structure and Assigning Responsibilities.

The operational business plan requires a well-defined organizational structure, and roles and responsibilities must be clearly defined. As a result of such an approach, people from all company positions unanimously know their role. While developing an organizational structure, establish the optimal size of the company, the complexity of the production, and the skills and needs of your employees. Closely define the reporting lines, generate communication channels, and share the responsibility to roll out smooth operations and make the staff accountable.

5. Financial Analysis and Budgeting in Your Operational Business Plan.

Financial analysis and budgeting are the key features of an operational plan of action. They guide you in your business's profitability and break-even point determination, investment allocation, and monitoring performance. Perform a financial statement analysis by investigating your earning streams, expenses, break-even points, and cash flow. Bring this information to learn how to create a realistic budget that matches your priorities and objectives. Make it a point to periodically assess and revise your financial projections to ensure that, from a financial standpoint, your business remains stable and on track.

6. Implementing and Monitoring Your Operational Business Plan.

To make your operational business plan successful, you need full communication, execution well, and continuous control. Communicate the plan to your team so everyone understands their roles and contributions. Create a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) to help you track progress and monitor them regularly to ensure you hit your targets. Monitor market conditions, customer feedback, and performance metrics to identify problems and adjust appropriately. Consistently deliver information on the achieved milestones and result in positive outcomes.

7. Updating and Reviewing Your Operational Business Plan.

An operational business plan is a dynamic document that requires constant updating and review. When your business is going through changes and markets are expanding and contracting, it is wise to audit and update your plan. Make sure to carve out time to review the main plan at least once yearly, if needed. Assess your strategies and tactics to see if they need adjustment, update the financial projections, and implement any further revisions. By constantly revising and monitoring your operational business plan, you can make it widely applicable and efficient in achieving your business success.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Operational Business Planning

An operational business plan constitutes detailed work and an advanced strategic approach. Nevertheless, frequent mistakes often obstruct the implementation and may prevent the plan’s success.

Avoiding mistakes in operational business planning is worthwhile, as it can facilitate the development of more effective and sustainable strategies. Through creating specific goals, keeping risks low, designing realistic financial projections, planning the implementation, and monitoring progress, businesses can greatly increase their success potential and achieve their long-term objectives. Look for some key pitfalls to avoid when building a successful operational business plan.

1. Inadequate Definition of Goals.

If definite and attainable goals are specified, the organization will be in a state of haze and clarity. Establishing clear, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals is vital to staying focused on achieving the overall objectives of the business plan.

2. Inadequate Market Research.

Ignoring market research can lead to poor estimations about buyers’ expectations, market tendencies, and competitors’ strategies. Thorough market research is essential in an organization's branding since it gives the management the knowledge they need to make good decisions and develop good strategies.

3. Overlooking Risk Management.

Neglecting to recognize and address risks can leave the business vulnerable to unexpectedly challenging situations or disruptions. Integrating risk management strategies into the business plan mitigates risks and enhances resilience.

4. Unrealistic Financial Projections.

Financial mismanagement can occur from overly optimistic financial projections, damaging the business plan's credibility and implementation. Financial projections must rely on credible data, anticipated plausible outcomes, and lower probable estimations.

5. Planning Implementation.

A zero focus on the implementation plan indicates that execution will likely fail. A practical implementation strategy, including timelines, tasks, assignments, and resources, is necessary for the plan to be successful.

6. Lack of Monitoring and Failure to Respond Accordingly.

Failure to monitor progress and manage changes that arise after implementing the business plan will likely result in missed opportunities or inefficient strategies. The major performance indicators (KPIs) should be routinely monitored and evaluated to adjust and refine them for continuous betterment.

Wrapping Up,

To sum up, building a working operational business plan is an inseparable part of a successful business strategy. In doing so, you’ll have a detailed strategy that fits your expectations, explains your goals, and indicates direction for progress. It is essential to conduct thorough market research, have feasible goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics, build the organizational structure, analyze the financials, implement and control the plan, and constantly update and review it.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. what is a business plan for the operations.

A business plan to implement operations includes the company's daily procedures and strategies to realize its strategic goals. It portrays how these operational areas, including production, marketing, finance, and human resource management, will support the business goals.

2. Why is a business operating plan important?

A complete business plan indicates who will do what and helps the company achieve its strategic goals. It strengthens efficiency, minimizes risks, and guides decision-making to ensure the strategy moves in the right direction.

3. What are the main parts of the operational guide?

The main components include mission, vision, operational strategies, organizational structure, resource allocation, performance metrics, risk management, and contingency alternatives.

4. What steps involve drawing up an operational business plan?

The business creates operational planning by

• Comparing current organizational status and goal setting as well as strategy development
• Resource allocation and implementation,
• Re-rolling to results and changing the environment.

5. How often should businesses revise and amend their operational plans?

The operational business plan should undergo a periodic review and revision, usually every quarter or annually, to keep it in line with the changes in market conditions, business priorities, and internal issues. Periodic reviews are imperative for keeping up-to-date with the dynamics and consistency in realizing business goals.

Table of Contents

How to make a business plan

How to make a good business plan: step-by-step guide.

A business plan is a strategic roadmap used to navigate the challenging journey of entrepreneurship. It's the foundation upon which you build a successful business.

A well-crafted business plan can help you define your vision, clarify your goals, and identify potential problems before they arise.

But where do you start? How do you create a business plan that sets you up for success?

This article will explore the step-by-step process of creating a comprehensive business plan.

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a formal document that outlines a business's objectives, strategies, and operational procedures. It typically includes the following information about a company:

Products or services

Target market

Competitors

Marketing and sales strategies

Financial plan

Management team

A business plan serves as a roadmap for a company's success and provides a blueprint for its growth and development. It helps entrepreneurs and business owners organize their ideas, evaluate the feasibility, and identify potential challenges and opportunities.

As well as serving as a guide for business owners, a business plan can attract investors and secure funding. It demonstrates the company's understanding of the market, its ability to generate revenue and profits, and its strategy for managing risks and achieving success.

Business plan vs. business model canvas

A business plan may seem similar to a business model canvas, but each document serves a different purpose.

A business model canvas is a high-level overview that helps entrepreneurs and business owners quickly test and iterate their ideas. It is often a one-page document that briefly outlines the following:

Key partnerships

Key activities

Key propositions

Customer relationships

Customer segments

Key resources

Cost structure

Revenue streams

On the other hand, a Business Plan Template provides a more in-depth analysis of a company's strategy and operations. It is typically a lengthy document and requires significant time and effort to develop.

A business model shouldn’t replace a business plan, and vice versa. Business owners should lay the foundations and visually capture the most important information with a Business Model Canvas Template . Because this is a fast and efficient way to communicate a business idea, a business model canvas is a good starting point before developing a more comprehensive business plan.

A business plan can aim to secure funding from investors or lenders, while a business model canvas communicates a business idea to potential customers or partners.

Why is a business plan important?

A business plan is crucial for any entrepreneur or business owner wanting to increase their chances of success.

Here are some of the many benefits of having a thorough business plan.

Helps to define the business goals and objectives

A business plan encourages you to think critically about your goals and objectives. Doing so lets you clearly understand what you want to achieve and how you plan to get there.

A well-defined set of goals, objectives, and key results also provides a sense of direction and purpose, which helps keep business owners focused and motivated.

Guides decision-making

A business plan requires you to consider different scenarios and potential problems that may arise in your business. This awareness allows you to devise strategies to deal with these issues and avoid pitfalls.

With a clear plan, entrepreneurs can make informed decisions aligning with their overall business goals and objectives. This helps reduce the risk of making costly mistakes and ensures they make decisions with long-term success in mind.

Attracts investors and secures funding

Investors and lenders often require a business plan before considering investing in your business. A document that outlines the company's goals, objectives, and financial forecasts can help instill confidence in potential investors and lenders.

A well-written business plan demonstrates that you have thoroughly thought through your business idea and have a solid plan for success.

Identifies potential challenges and risks

A business plan requires entrepreneurs to consider potential challenges and risks that could impact their business. For example:

Is there enough demand for my product or service?

Will I have enough capital to start my business?

Is the market oversaturated with too many competitors?

What will happen if my marketing strategy is ineffective?

By identifying these potential challenges, entrepreneurs can develop strategies to mitigate risks and overcome challenges. This can reduce the likelihood of costly mistakes and ensure the business is well-positioned to take on any challenges.

Provides a basis for measuring success

A business plan serves as a framework for measuring success by providing clear goals and financial projections . Entrepreneurs can regularly refer to the original business plan as a benchmark to measure progress. By comparing the current business position to initial forecasts, business owners can answer questions such as:

Are we where we want to be at this point?

Did we achieve our goals?

If not, why not, and what do we need to do?

After assessing whether the business is meeting its objectives or falling short, business owners can adjust their strategies as needed.

How to make a business plan step by step

The steps below will guide you through the process of creating a business plan and what key components you need to include.

1. Create an executive summary

Start with a brief overview of your entire plan. The executive summary should cover your business plan's main points and key takeaways.

Keep your executive summary concise and clear with the Executive Summary Template . The simple design helps readers understand the crux of your business plan without reading the entire document.

2. Write your company description

Provide a detailed explanation of your company. Include information on what your company does, the mission statement, and your vision for the future.

Provide additional background information on the history of your company, the founders, and any notable achievements or milestones.

3. Conduct a market analysis

Conduct an in-depth analysis of your industry, competitors, and target market. This is best done with a SWOT analysis to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Next, identify your target market's needs, demographics, and behaviors.

Use the Competitive Analysis Template to brainstorm answers to simple questions like:

What does the current market look like?

Who are your competitors?

What are they offering?

What will give you a competitive advantage?

Who is your target market?

What are they looking for and why?

How will your product or service satisfy a need?

These questions should give you valuable insights into the current market and where your business stands.

4. Describe your products and services

Provide detailed information about your products and services. This includes pricing information, product features, and any unique selling points.

Use the Product/Market Fit Template to explain how your products meet the needs of your target market. Describe what sets them apart from the competition.

5. Design a marketing and sales strategy

Outline how you plan to promote and sell your products. Your marketing strategy and sales strategy should include information about your:

Pricing strategy

Advertising and promotional tactics

Sales channels

The Go to Market Strategy Template is a great way to visually map how you plan to launch your product or service in a new or existing market.

6. Determine budget and financial projections

Document detailed information on your business’ finances. Describe the current financial position of the company and how you expect the finances to play out.

Some details to include in this section are:

Startup costs

Revenue projections

Profit and loss statement

Funding you have received or plan to receive

Strategy for raising funds

7. Set the organization and management structure

Define how your company is structured and who will be responsible for each aspect of the business. Use the Business Organizational Chart Template to visually map the company’s teams, roles, and hierarchy.

As well as the organization and management structure, discuss the legal structure of your business. Clarify whether your business is a corporation, partnership, sole proprietorship, or LLC.

8. Make an action plan

At this point in your business plan, you’ve described what you’re aiming for. But how are you going to get there? The Action Plan Template describes the following steps to move your business plan forward. Outline the next steps you plan to take to bring your business plan to fruition.

Types of business plans

Several types of business plans cater to different purposes and stages of a company's lifecycle. Here are some of the most common types of business plans.

Startup business plan

A startup business plan is typically an entrepreneur's first business plan. This document helps entrepreneurs articulate their business idea when starting a new business.

Not sure how to make a business plan for a startup? It’s pretty similar to a regular business plan, except the primary purpose of a startup business plan is to convince investors to provide funding for the business. A startup business plan also outlines the potential target market, product/service offering, marketing plan, and financial projections.

Strategic business plan

A strategic business plan is a long-term plan that outlines a company's overall strategy, objectives, and tactics. This type of strategic plan focuses on the big picture and helps business owners set goals and priorities and measure progress.

The primary purpose of a strategic business plan is to provide direction and guidance to the company's management team and stakeholders. The plan typically covers a period of three to five years.

Operational business plan

An operational business plan is a detailed document that outlines the day-to-day operations of a business. It focuses on the specific activities and processes required to run the business, such as:

Organizational structure

Staffing plan

Production plan

Quality control

Inventory management

Supply chain

The primary purpose of an operational business plan is to ensure that the business runs efficiently and effectively. It helps business owners manage their resources, track their performance, and identify areas for improvement.

Growth-business plan

A growth-business plan is a strategic plan that outlines how a company plans to expand its business. It helps business owners identify new market opportunities and increase revenue and profitability. The primary purpose of a growth-business plan is to provide a roadmap for the company's expansion and growth.

The 3 Horizons of Growth Template is a great tool to identify new areas of growth. This framework categorizes growth opportunities into three categories: Horizon 1 (core business), Horizon 2 (emerging business), and Horizon 3 (potential business).

One-page business plan

A one-page business plan is a condensed version of a full business plan that focuses on the most critical aspects of a business. It’s a great tool for entrepreneurs who want to quickly communicate their business idea to potential investors, partners, or employees.

A one-page business plan typically includes sections such as business concept, value proposition, revenue streams, and cost structure.

Best practices for how to make a good business plan

Here are some additional tips for creating a business plan:

Use a template

A template can help you organize your thoughts and effectively communicate your business ideas and strategies. Starting with a template can also save you time and effort when formatting your plan.

Miro’s extensive library of customizable templates includes all the necessary sections for a comprehensive business plan. With our templates, you can confidently present your business plans to stakeholders and investors.

Be practical

Avoid overestimating revenue projections or underestimating expenses. Your business plan should be grounded in practical realities like your budget, resources, and capabilities.

Be specific

Provide as much detail as possible in your business plan. A specific plan is easier to execute because it provides clear guidance on what needs to be done and how. Without specific details, your plan may be too broad or vague, making it difficult to know where to start or how to measure success.

Be thorough with your research

Conduct thorough research to fully understand the market, your competitors, and your target audience . By conducting thorough research, you can identify potential risks and challenges your business may face and develop strategies to mitigate them.

Get input from others

It can be easy to become overly focused on your vision and ideas, leading to tunnel vision and a lack of objectivity. By seeking input from others, you can identify potential opportunities you may have overlooked.

Review and revise regularly

A business plan is a living document. You should update it regularly to reflect market, industry, and business changes. Set aside time for regular reviews and revisions to ensure your plan remains relevant and effective.

Create a winning business plan to chart your path to success

Starting or growing a business can be challenging, but it doesn't have to be. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting, a well-written business plan can make or break your business’ success.

The purpose of a business plan is more than just to secure funding and attract investors. It also serves as a roadmap for achieving your business goals and realizing your vision. With the right mindset, tools, and strategies, you can develop a visually appealing, persuasive business plan.

Ready to make an effective business plan that works for you? Check out our library of ready-made strategy and planning templates and chart your path to success.

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Plans and pricing.

What Are Operational Processes? Benefits & How To Build One

Operational processes are key activities that must be performed to ensure that your company stays competitive.

Every business has (or should have) operational processes, whether they know it or not. These might be small processes, like opening and closing bank accounts, or large processes, like process manufacturing .

You want to carefully map out operational processes to keep them efficient and effective. And that's not just lip service: an efficient operational process will save a company time and money.

To help you better understand operational processes, we’ve put together a comprehensive guide covering everything from what they are and why they’re important to how you can create and implement them in your business.

What are operational processes?

A company's operational processes are the activities that generate revenue and income directly. These activities link the company with its target customers so they can provide the best products and services.

In other words, operational processes are the backbone of a company and play a vital role in ensuring things run smoothly. When these processes are well designed and executed, they can help businesses save time and money, as well as improve quality and customer satisfaction.

An example of what operational processes for a manufacturing company might look like:

• Sourcing materials for what they sell.
• Receiving customer orders.
• Storing products.
• Picking and packing orders.
• Shipping products to customers.
• Receiving and processing payments from customers.

An organization's operational processes are crucial for staying competitive.

The difference between operational processes & business processes

Operational processes are a subset of business processes . Business processes cover all the activities that must be performed in order to run a successful business, from marketing and sales to accounting and HR.

Operational processes, on the other hand, are the types of business processes that directly add value to business outputs. These are the key activities that you need to perform in order to produce a product or service.

📌 ‎ Related resource: Operations Teams: How to Assemble and Lead a High-Performing Team

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Why are operational processes important?

Operational processes are important because they are directly linked to a company's bottom line. They have a direct impact on revenues, costs, and profits.

In order to be competitive, businesses need to ensure that their operational processes are efficient and effective. This can be a challenge, as operational processes can often be complex and can involve many different departments and employees.

When business operations are inefficient or ineffective, they can lead to problems such as wasted time and resources, poor quality products or services, and unhappy customers.

However, with proper planning and execution, businesses can overcome these challenges and reap the benefits of well-designed operational processes.

Organizations should strive for operational excellence as their main goal.

Benefits of operational excellence

There are many benefits to achieving operational excellence, such as

• Improved efficiency: When operational processes are well designed and executed, they can help businesses save time and money.
• Improved quality: With proper planning and execution, businesses can produce high-quality products and services, which will boost other areas of the business as well.
• Improved customer satisfaction: Effective operational processes such as fast order fulfillment and timely delivery of products and services can lead to happier customers.
• Reduced costs: Cutting out unneeded steps and improving efficiency can help businesses save money on labor, materials, and other resources.
• Improved competitiveness: When businesses can produce products or services faster and cheaper than their rivals, they gain a competitive advantage.

In addition, operational processes can help businesses reduce waste and improve communication between departments.

To achieve all of these, organizations must first identify their core operational processes and then implement best practices that will help them improve these processes. By doing so, they will be able to improve their overall performance and stay competitive.

How to identify your operational processes?

There are many different ways to identify the operational processes of a business.

Let's go through some of the best ways:

1. Evaluate inputs & outputs

One of the first steps in identifying your operational processes is to evaluate the inputs and outputs of each process.

This will help you understand what each process is supposed to achieve and identify any areas where the process is not meeting its goals.

What are the raw materials or inputs that are required in order to produce our product or service? And what are the finished products or services that we deliver to our customers?

2. Ask for feedback

Another way to identify your operational processes is to ask for feedback from your employees.

Your employees are the ones who are directly involved in carrying out these internal processes on a day-to-day basis, so they will be able to provide you with valuable insights into which ones are working well and which ones could be improved.

Customer feedback is something you should think about as well, with 85 percent of small and medium-sized enterprises reporting positive results from online customer feedback. They will be able to tell you which parts of your product or service they are happy with and which ones they are not.

3. Make a process analysis

Proper process analysis will help you understand how these digital processes work and identify any areas where they can be improved. 

There are many different tools and techniques that you can use for process analysis, such as:

• Process mapping .
• Flowcharts .
• Workflow diagrams .
• Process modeling .

These tools will help you visualize your processes and identify any inefficiencies. 

4. Use data & analytics

Once you have identified your core operational processes, it is important to analyze the results in order to determine which ones are working well and which ones need to be improved.

This is where data and analytics come in. By tracking the performance of your operational processes, you can identify any bottlenecks that your process has.

On top of that, you can also use data and analytics to benchmark your performance against other businesses in your industry.

📌 ‎ Related resource: The Operations Manager Decoded: Role, Skills & New Insights

How to build your own processes?

Creating operational processes can seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. Whether you’re starting from scratch, or looking to improve or automate existing processes , there are a few simple steps that you can follow to build your own best practices:

1. Identify the problem that needs a new process

In order to build your own process, you will first need to identify the problem that it will address. This could be anything from a lack of clarity around customer expectations to inefficiencies in the way work is currently being carried out.

 It's important to fully understand the problem in order to build a solution and manage process adherence , as this will ensure that your solution is fit for purpose.

2. Define your goals

Once you have defined the process, you need to define your goals. What are you trying to achieve with this process? What are your targets?  

Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Having clear goals will help you to track and measure the success of your process, and make necessary adjustments along the way.

3. Create a process map or step-by-step guide

A process map is a visual representation of the steps involved in the process.  It is a helpful tool to have when you are trying to streamline the process and identify areas of improvement.

Create a step-by-step guide either manually or by automating it with Scribe . Scribe uses AI to document your processes for you — turning any digital workflow into a written guide, with text, links and annotated screenshots.

Use Scribe to outline the steps you need to take to set up a new business workflow and distribute or store it.

💡 ‎ Learn more: How Operations Teams Use Scribe

4. Implement best practices

After mapping out processes, you want to capture and implement best practices for process transformation .

Document your business process best practices in a clear and concise way, using tools like Scribe and Scribe Pages to build guides and longer documentation, that you can easily share and store in-platform.

Just discovered @ScribeHow and it's been game-changing. Saved so much time in building the knowledge base for @ShyftedApp . Will see how our clients @cuenorthbuilds like it for their process docs.

— Lorraine (@elorrainewong) May 5, 2022

‎Some best practices to consider are:

• Ways to streamline processes.
• Process automation.
• Quality control measures.

Remove any unnecessary steps, and make sure that everyone involved in the process understands their role and responsibilities. ‎This will not only improve efficiency but also reduce workplace stress .

5. Monitor & optimize

The final step is to monitor the process and make sure that it is running smoothly. If you find any problems, be sure to optimize the process so that it runs more efficiently. With tools like Scribe , you can take advantage of the universal updating and feedback features to keep each guide up-to-date.

Processes are never-ending and are always subject to change, so it’s important to be proactive in making sure that they are running as smoothly as possible.

6. Document & repeat

Last but not least, don’t forget to document the process standardization . If you have to replicate the same process in the future, or if the process needs to be changed, this will be useful.

Business process documents help employees easily adapt to each process and software. Tools like Scribe make it easier by allowing you to capture a whole process in a step-by-step guide — in seconds. Here's a Scribe in action.

Easily edit, share, export or embed a Scribe. Or, combine it with images, video and more with Scribe Pages.

Now that you know what operational processes are, put them into practice!

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• Learn how to do operational planning th ...

Learn how to do operational planning the right way

Some of this planning will be developed yearly—things like your yearly objectives and key results, for example, will naturally grow as time goes on. But to make sure you’re staying on track and executing against your long-term goals, you need an operational plan. 

What is operational planning?

Operational planning is the process of turning your strategic plan into a detailed map that outlines exactly what action your team will take on a weekly, or sometimes even daily, basis. An operational plan will include action items and milestones that each team or department needs to complete in order to execute your strategic plan. 

During the operational planning process, outline each team or person’s responsibilities for the next quarter, six months, or fiscal year. The level of detail and timeline you select for your operational plan should depend on how quickly your organization typically moves—if you’re a fast-paced team with an accelerated roadmap, consider creating an operational plan for the next quarter or half year. But if your organization tends to think more long-term, create an operational plan for the entire fiscal year.

Operational planning vs. strategic planning

A strategic plan is a business-level plan of your long-term strategy for the next three to five years. An operational plan is smaller in both scope and timeline. The goal of operational planning is to outline the daily actions you need to take to hit your strategic goals. 

Unlike a strategic plan, an operational plan should also focus on implementation . What daily and weekly actions does your team need to take in order to accomplish your longer-term strategic plan? What specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) do you need to track on a regular basis in order to ensure that your team is progressing towards your objectives? These details should be captured in your operational plan.

Who should create an operational plan?

To capture exactly who is doing what by when, an operational plan needs to be very detailed. For this reason, create an operational plan at a smaller scale than your strategic plan—both in terms of timeline and scope. Instead of trying to create an operational plan for your entire company, create one at the department or team level. At a larger company, you could even create an operational plan for a specific initiative—similar to a detailed work plan .

For example, create an operational plan to explain the daily tasks your IT department needs to do in order to support the company. Your IT department’s operational plan might include how frequently IT team members will check the IT requests project inbox , budgeting details for the program, how the IT team will onboard and equip new employees, and how frequently the team will meet. 

There are three levels to who should create an operational plan:

Scope: Your operational plan will capture the who, what, and when of each activity. It should be laser-focused on a team or initiative.

Timeline: Depending on how fast your organization moves, your operational plan should span a quarter, six months, or a fiscal year. 

Stakeholders: Make sure the people involved in operational planning are close to the work, so they can accurately project and predict what work should be included in the plan.

The benefits of operational planning

A strategic plan is a great way to proactively align your team around a shared purpose. By defining long-term goals, you can outline exactly where you want to go.

An operational plan helps you hit your strategic goals. According to our research, only 26% of knowledge workers have a very clear understanding of how their individual work relates to company goals. By creating a detail-oriented operational plan, you can define exactly what short-term goals you need to achieve in order to be on track towards your long-term objectives. It can help you think through the actions you’re currently taking or need to take in order to execute against your goals. 

In particular, an operational plan:

Clarifies exactly what your team will be doing on a weekly and daily basis.

Provides a comprehensive guide of the day-to-day operations your team members need to take in order to accomplish your long-term goals.

Sets a benchmark for daily expectations, so you can avoid getting off track.

5 steps to making an operational plan

During the operational planning process, you're not creating new plans or developing new goals. Rather, to create an operational plan, assess everything your team is currently working on and everything you need to do on a daily or weekly basis to hit your strategic goals. Here’s how:

1. Start with a strategic plan

If you haven’t already, create a strategic plan first. You need a long-term vision and goals before you can break down the day-to-day details. There are four steps to creating a strategic plan:

Determine your position

Develop your strategy

Build your strategic plan

Share, monitor, and manage your strategic plan

To learn more, read our article on strategic planning .

2. Narrow down your scope

In order to create a detail-oriented operational plan, you need to narrow the scope to a team, department, or focus area. The scope of your operational plan will depend on the size of your company.

For example, imagine you’re breaking down your strategic plan into action plans for various company departments. Your marketing team spans multiple functions—for example, design , product marketing, social media, content creation, and web promotion. To capture specific, daily functions within each team, you should create an operational action plan for each smaller team. 

3. Identify key stakeholders

Before creating an operational plan, decide who will be involved in the operational planning process. The team members creating the operational plan should be relatively close to the actions the plan describes. 

To continue our example, the design team’s operational plan should be created by the head of the design team and the team leads (depending on the size of the team). Once they’ve created their operational plan, the team should share the plan with the head of marketing for final approval.

4. Create the plan

Your operational plan explains the actions your team will take to achieve your goals within a set time frame. To create an operational plan, outline:

Your team’s objectives

The deliverables that will be achieved by the operational plan

Any desired outcomes or quality standards

Staffing and resource requirements , including your operating budget

How you will monitor and report on progress

If you’re struggling to figure out all the details that should be included in your operational plan, ask yourself the following questions: 

What do we need to accomplish? This information should come from your strategic plan or yearly goals.

What daily tasks do we need to complete in order to hit our goals? These can be daily tasks you’re currently doing or new work that needs to be kicked off.

Who are the people responsible for those tasks? Make sure each task has one owner so there’s no confusion about who to go to for questions or updates.

What are our metrics for success? If you haven’t already, make sure your goals follow the SMART framework . 

To continue our example, here’s the framework the design team might use to create their operational plan:

Part of the strategic plan for the marketing team is to increase share of voice in the market—which means more eyes on marketing materials and increased engagement with potential customers. To support these goals, the design team will: 

Create additional promotional materials for the social team

Revamp the website home page to attract more potential customers

To accomplish these two goals in the next year, the design team will:

Hire two new team members to focus on social media engagement

Partner with the web development team within the marketing department to create an interactive home page

To track and report on their progress, the design team will use Asana as their central source of truth for key performance metrics, including:

What designs they are creating

The level of engagement they’re getting on social media

The progress of the website update

This is just the framework the design team would use to create their operational plan. Bring this plan to life within a work management tool like Asana to share clarity on all of the work the team needs to do to hit their goals. With work management, every task can be tracked in real-time from inception to completion.

5. Share and update your operational plan

Once you’ve created the plan, share it with key stakeholders so they understand your team’s most important goals and the daily tasks it will take to get there. Manage your plan and updates in a shared tool that captures real-time progress, like Asana .

Like any element of project planning, things will inevitably change. Actively monitor your operational plan and report on progress so key stakeholders and team members can stay updated on how you’re tracking against your goals. Report on progress monthly through written status updates . 

Get started with operational planning

An operational plan can help you ensure you’re making progress on long-term goals. But in order for this plan to be effective, make sure you’re tracking your work in a centrally-accessible tool. Siloed information and goals don’t help anyone—instead, track your action items and goals in a work management tool.

Related resources

Everything you need to know about requirements management

How to streamline compliance management software with Asana

15 creative elevator pitch examples for every scenario

How Asana streamlines strategic planning with work management

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First Steps: Writing the Operations Section of Your Business Plan This quick guide offers tips that will help you create the operations section for your business plan.

By Teresa Ciulla Jan 4, 2015

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In their book Write Your Business Plan , the staff of Entrepreneur Media, Inc. offer an in-depth understanding of what's essential to any business plan, what's appropriate for your venture, and what it takes to ensure success. In this edited excerpt, the authors discuss what type of information you should include in the operations section of your business plan.

Operations is concerned with how you buy, build and prepare your product or service for sale. That covers a lot of ground, including sourcing raw materials, hiring labor, acquiring facilities and equipment, and shipping the finished goods. And it's different depending on whether you're a manufacturer, a retailer or a service firm.

The basic rule for your operations section is to cover just the major areas—labor, materials, facilities, equipment and processes—and provide the major details—things that are critical to operations or that give you competitive advantage. If you do that, you'll answer investors' questions about operations without overwhelming them.

The simplest way to treat operations is to think of it as a linear process that can be broken down into a sequence of tasks. Once the initial task listing is complete, turn your attention to who's needed to do which tasks. Keep this very simple and concentrate on major tasks such as producing a product or delivering a service.

Operations for Retail and Service Firms

Retail and service firms have different operations requirements from manufacturers. Companies that maintain or repair things, sell consulting or provide health care or other services generally have higher labor content and lower investments in plants and equipment.

That's not to say operations are any less important for retailers and service firms. But most people already understand the basics of processes such as buying and reselling merchandise or giving haircuts or preparing tax returns. So you don't have to do as much explaining as, say, someone who's manufacturing microprocessors.

For service and retail firms, people are the main engines of production. The cost of providing a service is largely driven by the cost of the labor it entails. A service-firm plan, then, has to devote considerable attention to staffing. You'll want to include background information and, if possible, describe employment contracts for key employees such as designers, marketing experts, buyers, and the like. You'll want to walk the reader through the important tasks of these employees at all levels so they can understand how your business works and what the customer experience is like.

Operations plans for retailers also devote considerable attention to sourcing desirable products. They may describe the background and accomplishments of key buyers. They may detail long-term supply agreements with manufacturers of in-demand branded merchandise.

Operations for Manufacturers

The lead actor in manufacturing is the process of production, and the better your production process, the better a manufacturer you'll be. Business plan readers look for strong systems in place to make sure that personnel and materials are appropriately abundant. In your operations section, don't go into too much detail -- stick to the important processes, those essential to your production or that give you a special competitive advantage and be sure you show that you have adequate, reliable supply sources for the materials you need to build your products. Estimate your needs for materials and describe the agreements with suppliers, including their length and terms that you have arranged to fulfill those needs. You may also give the backgrounds of your major suppliers and show that you have backup sources available should problems develop.

You'll also need to include information on how you'll ensure a reliable supply of adequately trained people to run your processes. You'll first need to estimate the number and type of people you'll require to run your plan. Then show that you can reasonably expect to be able to hire what you need. Look at local labor pools, unemployment rates and wage levels using information from chambers of commerce or similar entities.

Manufacturing a product naturally requires equipment. Naturally, investors are very interested in your plans for purchasing equipment. Many plans devote a separate section to describing the ovens, drill presses, forklifts, printing presses and other equipment they'll require. This part of your plan doesn't have to be long, but it does have to be complete. Make a list of every sizable piece of equipment you anticipate needing. Include a description of its features, its functions, and, of course, its cost.

Be ready to defend the need to own the more expensive items. Bankers and other investors are loath to plunk down money for capital equipment that can be resold only for far less than its purchase price. Also consider leasing what you need if you're starting out.

The Facilities Section

Unless you're a globe-trotting consultant whose office is his suitcase, your plan will need to describe the facilities in which your business will be housed. Land and buildings are often the largest capital items on any company's balance sheet, so go into detail about what you have and what you need. Decide how much space you require in square feet. Don't forget to include room for expansion if you anticipate growth. Now consider the location. You may need to be close to a labor force and materials suppliers. Transportation needs, such as proximity to rail, interstate highways, or airports, can also be important. Next determine whether there's any specific layout that you need.

To figure the cost of facilities, first decide whether you'll lease or buy space and what your rent or mortgage payments will be. Don't forget to include brokerage fees, moving costs and the cost of any leasehold improvements you'll need. Finally, take a look at operating costs. Utilities including phone, electric, gas, water, and trash pickup are concerns; also consider such costs as your computer connections, possibly satellite connections, as well as maintenance and general upkeep.

These aren't the only operations concerns of manufacturers. You should also consider your need to acquire or protect such valuable operations assets as proprietary processes and patented technologies. For many businesses, intellectual property is more valuable than their sizable accumulations of plants and equipment.

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Expertly Writing the Operations Plan Section of Your Business Plan

Written by Dave Lavinsky

Operational plans are important for any effective business plan . They provide a roadmap for how the company will operate on a day-to-day basis. The operational strategic plan should outline the company’s goals and objectives, as well as the strategies and actions that will be taken to achieve them.

Business Operations Section of a Business Plan

The operational plan or operations section of a business plan is where you describe how your business will function on a day-to-day basis. This includes everything from the resources you’ll need to run your business, to the people who will be responsible for carrying out various tasks, to the processes and procedures you’ll use to get work done.

Purpose of the Operational Plan Section of a Business Plan

An operational plan is essential for any business because it provides a roadmap for how it will function. It ensures that everyone involved in the business is on the same page and knows what their roles and responsibilities are. Having an operational plan also makes it easier to track and accomplish goals, while driving cost reduction and improving overall results. Finally, your operations plan section helps show readers that you can turn your vision and goals into reality.

Benefits of an Operations Plan Include:

• Identifying the key processes your company must perform to achieve its goals
• Mapping out short-term and long-term milestones so you have specific goals and a roadmap for achieving them
• Understanding the human and other resources required to execute your vision

Writing an Operations Section of a Business Plan

When writing the operations section of a business plan, there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind. First, be sure to describe the resources that will be required to run your business. This includes everything from office space and equipment to human resources. Next, detail the processes and procedures that will be used to get work done. Be as specific as possible so that there is no confusion about how things should be done. Finally, identify the people who will be responsible for carrying out various tasks. This includes both employees and contractors.

Tracking Key Performance Indicators with Operational Planning

As a business owner, it’s important to track your progress against your company goals. This is where KPIs come in. KPIs are performance indicators and an important part of creating a strategic plan that can help you track your progress and identify areas of improvement. You should document your KPIs in the operation plan of your business plan

There are a few things to keep in mind when choosing KPIs for your business:

• Make sure that the KPIs you choose are relevant to your company’s goals.
• Choose KPIs that can be easily measured.
• Avoid choosing too many KPIs, as this can be overwhelming. Stick to a few key ones that will give you the most insights into your business’s progress.
• Set realistic targets for each KPI. This will help you track your progress and identify areas of improvement.
• Review your KPIs on a regular basis to ensure that they are still relevant and accurate, while also being in line with strategic plans.

Some Examples of KPIs that You Could Track with an Operational Plan

When creating an operations plan, it’s important to track key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure your progress against your company goals. Some examples of KPIs that you could track are:

• Sales growth
• Delivery times
• Customer satisfaction ratings
• Product Quality
• Production Process
• Employee retention
• Operational costs

Creating an operational plan with KPIs will help you track your progress, identify areas of improvement, improve strategic planning and make necessary changes to reach your company’s strategic objective.

Example of an Operations Section of a Business Plan

Here is what an operations plan example might look like:

The XYZ Company will require the following resources to operate:

• 1,000 square feet of office space
• $10,000 for office furniture and equipment
• 3 full-time employees
• 2 part-time employees
• 1 contractor

The XYZ Company will use the following processes and procedures to get work done:

• All new clients will be contacted within 24 hours of the initial inquiry
• Initial consultations will be scheduled within 48 hours of contact
• Proposals will be presented within 10 days of the initial consultation
• Work will begin within 2 weeks of proposal acceptance

The following people will be responsible for carrying out these tasks:

• John Smith, full-time employee, will contact new clients
• Jane Doe, full-time employee, will schedule initial consultations
• John Smith and Jane Doe will conduct initial consultations
• John Smith and Jane Doe will prepare proposals
• John Smith and Jane Doe will manage projects
• Joe Johnson, contractor, will provide support as needed

An operations plan is a critical part of any business planning work. It provides a roadmap for how the business will function on a day-to-day basis. This includes everything from the resources you’ll need to run your business, to the people who will be responsible for carrying out various tasks, to the processes and procedures you’ll use to get work done. Having operational plans in place will ensure that everyone involved in the business is on the same page and knows what their roles and responsibilities are. It will also make it easier to track and accomplish goals.

Key Takeaways

A few key things to remember when writing your operations plan:

• Describe the resources that will be required to run your business
• Detail the processes and procedures that will be used to get work done
• Identify the people who will be responsible for carrying out various tasks

Following these tips will help you create a comprehensive and effective operations plan for your business.

A strategic plan is one of the critical components of any successful company. The operations plan outlines the roadmap for your business, outlining the steps you need to take to achieve your goals. If you’re not sure where to start, we can help. Our team of experts has created a comprehensive business plan template that will guide you through the process of creating an operational plan tailored to your specific business needs. Ready to get started? Download our template today and get access to all the tools and information you need to create a thriving business.

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Operational Planning Guide for SaaS Companies (With Examples)

Joe Garafalo

Founder and COO

The 2024 Financial Planning Blueprint

When building plans for your SaaS company, it’s easy enough for finance to come up with strategic business goals — a revenue increase of 25%, a phased roll-out of new product features in Q3 and Q4, or a 1% reduction in customer churn each month. The hard part? Determining whether or not these company goals are realistic .

Does your org have the capacity to achieve the goals it has set? If not, will it be able to expand its capacity fast enough, all while ensuring new expenses don’t overrun revenue growth and shorten your cash runway to dangerous levels?

Answering questions like these is the purpose of operational planning and the bread and butter of your org’s short- and long-term strategy. Operational planning revolves around building financial models that track progress toward your goals, helping you create strategies that get you from A to Z in the most efficient way possible.

While efficiency and tight resource allocation are key to strategic finance , the best operational business plans leave room for flexibility, allowing the org to respond to crises or changes in the SaaS landscape while still remaining on track toward those goals.

Table of Contents

What Is Operational Planning?

Operational planning is the process of setting budgets and goals on a departmental level within your company. It transforms your annual strategic plan into a week-by-week, day-by-day roadmap for specific departments like sales, marketing, and customer success to follow.

Since operational planning works at the departmental level, it’s best to use a bottom-up approach. As opposed to a top-down approach, a bottom-up approach involves working with departmental heads, asking them questions about workflows or specific line items and how they contribute to the success of the operational plan.

This benefits the company in two ways: first, finance can optimize resource allocation based on leaders’ unique knowledge of their departmental workflows. Second, by involving everyone in the planning process, it increases buy-in and commitment. You have a collaborative game plan where team members understand how their daily activities are contributing to strategic objectives.

Operational Planning vs. Strategic Planning

The most obvious difference between operational and strategic planning is scale, with strategic planning considering the big picture, and operational planning more focused on the day-to-day.

A strategic plan includes your overarching, annual goals — they’re your long-term vision, the goals the whole company is working towards. Operational plans, on the other hand, are specifically built for individual departments. They’re the division of those long-term annual goals into smaller, achievable milestones that highlight the relevant stakeholders and detail things like resource requirements and timeframe.

So, operational and strategic planning are two sides of the same “ operational finance ” coin. The challenge is building realistic operational plans to understand what’s actually achievable within a fiscal year. When finance can build a deep understanding of departmental workflows, they can construct strategic and operational plans with the perfect rhythm, and that’s when your org really starts to see results.

Operational Planning Examples

So, what does an operational plan look like? Let’s say a SaaS company aims to increase revenue by 20% over the course of one year.

To build your operational plan, you’ll need to determine what each relevant department will have to do — and how many resources they’ll need — to achieve this. How many conversions will the sales team need to make each month? What are staffing requirements? What about marketing initiatives? Which channels will be prioritized based on the amount of new customers required?

Another example of operational planning would be to retain customer loyalty by adding new product features. How many engineers will you need?

The best way to answer business operations questions like these is with robust, data-driven financial models. To get a clear sense of why, let’s break it down and look at the key elements of a successful operational planning process.

5 Key Components of Effective Operational Planning

Key components of operational planning include:

• Defining realistic goals
• Allocating resources to those goals
• Building out an achievable timeline
• Collaboration
• Flexibility

The first three involve the construction of the plan, while inter-departmental collaboration helps secure the necessary details as well as company-wide buy-in. Flexibility, the final component, allows finance leaders to alter the plan if the assumptions it was built on change.

1. Clear, Realistic Goals

The first thing you’ll need for your operational plan is a clear, strategic, number-based goal. Common goals for SaaS companies include reducing customer churn, increasing revenue, or increasing market share.

Get an exact number and, as mentioned, use financial models to determine if it’s realistic. For example, let’s say the strategic goal your company decides on is to increase revenue by 20%. Why 20%, not 25% or 30%?

Because, using your financial model, you’ve determined that revenue won’t grow fast enough to make up for the money you’d need to pay for the increase in headcount required to hit a 25% increase in revenue. 20% is your sweet spot — your strategic goal that’ll guide your operational plans.

Get the SaaS Financial Model Template

2. proper allocation of resources.

Once you’ve decided on a goal, it’s time to build a strategic budget .

Especially in the early stages, most SaaS companies don’t have a huge amount of resources. In an environment where employees have to wear many hats, a well-designed operational plan is built with an understanding of how specific resource allocation correlates with specific results.

In other words, the best operational plans are driver-based. A driver-based plan ties your business drivers to specific key performance indicators (KPIs). For example, the key driver for revenue growth is the number of sales reps, while for customer acquisition , it’s marketing spend.

Get a head-start on driver-based planning with a sales capacity model

Keep in mind, it’s not always necessary to increase your budget from last year. Use historical data only insofar as it contributes to your strategic goals. For instance, if historical data shows a specific marketing channel, say social media, brought in 10% of new customers, you may want to increase funding on social media to bring in 5% more new customers, to match with the number of new sales reps you’re bringing on board over the next year.

3. Timeline

Next, you’ll need to think about how each component of your operational plan will be spaced out over time. This is where you divide it into short-term goals for each department.

Continuing with the revenue example, this means modeling out how long it’ll take to grow your topline by a specific percentage. How do you do that? Since the key driver for revenue is your number of sales reps, you’ll need to consider related metrics like headcount and sales capacity planning .

Plugging these values into your financial model helps your org plan out its hiring cadence and understand how fast you can realistically grow revenue. Furthermore, this information will feed back into your operating budget.

Tools like Mosaic’s Topline Planner help you get a more exact timeline as to sales rep ramp rate , so you know how long you’ll need for that driver-based KPI — revenue growth — to hit full stride when you make a hire.

According to CJ Gustafson, CFO of PartsTech, missing the sales rep ramp rate can “totally kill your plan.” Get it right from the beginning so that you don’t have to readjust your timeframe and push back your strategic goals.

When you do headcount planning using a tool like Mosaic, you can see the effects of hiring new sales reps. You can also stagger start dates to see the effects on revenue over time.

So, let’s say hypothetically, you determine you need to add 4 new heads every quarter to meet the revenue target of 20% over a year. That’s an operational goal for HR. Using your model and based on ARR , you determine that sales reps need to secure 15 new customers each month — an operational goal for the sales department.

4. Collaboration

Buy-in is crucial for your operational plans to succeed. That means everyone needs to be “speaking the same language,” understanding how their actions are contributing to the overarching, strategic goals.

A tool like Mosaic empowers finance to act as a central hub, showing departments how they’re tracking against specific KPIs in a way that’s understandable. With customizable metrics and dashboards, everybody “gets” what they need to be doing and why they’re doing it.

5. Flexibility

So you’ve ensured your operational goal is clear and attainable, have set out an exact timeline, and have ensured buy-in and collaboration across the org.

Congrats! Your operating plan is complete. But that’s just the first step. You’ll still need to refresh it month to month by reforecasting . The idea is to continuously monitor progress so that, if necessary, you can reallocate resources. This way, whatever factors pop up will be reflected in your model, and you can readjust accordingly.

Successful Operational Planning With Mosaic

Galley , a series A startup, helps food organizations prioritize purchases and inventory based on recipes. Towards the beginning of 2022, they were successful in raising over $14 million.

But sailing wasn’t always so smooth for Galley.

Granted, they did get things started right by leveraging flexible, driver-based planning and connecting short- and long-term goals to operational metrics .

The only problem? Their driver-based planning relied on spreadsheets. Things got very complicated, very quickly.

In order to keep on top of things, Galley ended up having to pay an outside firm to create and update their spreadsheets and dashboards.

Fortunately, they quickly realized paying someone to have an outsourced model was unnecessary and began searching for a new solution. When Jason Peretz, Galley’s chief business officer, saw a Mosaic demo, he thought, “That’s what we need!” Mosaic would allow Galley to build their own financial models and dashboards by integrating directly with their systems — no more outsourced, spreadsheet-based models.

After making the switch, Galley has a clear, continuously updated view of how they’re tracking against KPIs. This allows them to stay in line with their operational goals simply by logging into the platform.

Common Pitfalls of Operational Planning and How To Avoid Them

Operational planning is no simple task. Even at a small- or medium-sized org, finance leaders have to align different departments, different mindsets, and a range of resources all on one common goal. And that leaves room for plenty of pitfalls. Awareness is the first step to avoiding them.

Lack of Alignment

First things first — your operational plans won’t get you anywhere if they don’t align with your strategic plans. Seems obvious, right? But it’s not necessarily as easy as it sounds. Use financial models to test your operational plans. See if, when you model them out, your forecasts line up with your long-term plans.

Lack of alignment can also refer to a lack of buy-in from individual departments. To get them on board, it’s best to provide easy access to relevant KPIs through a tool like Mosaic. Involve departmental heads in planning, too.

Lack of Flexibility

Predicting a year out isn’t easy. While your strategic goals may remain largely the same, your pathway to those goals — that is, your operational plan — may need to change. To keep yourself from getting tied to outdated budgets, leverage agile financial planning processes such as driver-based planning and rolling forecasts so that you can shift if needed.

Lack of Transparency

Buy-in is important for the success of your operational plan. They’re bottom-up, departmentally-based plans, after all. With a tool like Mosaic, complicated metrics and KPIs that were formerly confined to finance become a guidepost for the entire company. Team members can see how their daily actions are contributing to those goals with clear, beautiful dashboards that display complex information in an easy-to-understand way.

Lack of Clear Visibility

Especially as an early-stage SaaS company, every resource counts. Disconnected spreadsheets are not going to give you a clear, real-time view. You need a platform that integrates your working capital, cash flow from operating activities , ERP, and CRM data, to name just a few, in order to get data to key stakeholders right when they need it.

Instead of relying on templates, it’s also best to build your own financial models. That’s because free templates available on Google can be hard-coded with assumptions — assumptions that don’t reflect your unique org.

Getting Too Ambitious

We get it — startups want to grow fast. But, to save yourself a lot of pain in the future, you need to make sure that growth is sustainable.

Use financial models to see what’s realistic and what isn’t. Understand headcount costs and sales rep ramp rate to achieve the right balance between your largest expense and revenue, always keeping your cash runway in view.

Use sensitivity analysis to understand which of your business levers are most critical, then model best and worst-case scenarios.

Using Tools That Can’t Scale

When your goal is to grow, it doesn’t make sense to rely on spreadsheets in Excel. As you secure more and more customers, the amount of user and transaction data will outpace spreadsheet capacity. They’re also very prone to human error, which builds flaws into your financial models.

For operational success — not to mention your own sanity — it’s better to use tools that have built-in integrations so you can automatically consolidate data from your org’s enterprise software and financial statements.

Future-Proofing Your Operational Plan With Mosaic

For SaaS companies, a year is a long time — arguably much longer than it is for other types of companies. That’s because, in the SaaS world, things move very fast, and quite a lot can change, even quarter to quarter. Sources of funding can dry up, competition can increase, or your target audience may shift. Without the ability to pivot, your best-laid annual operating plans could be laid to waste.

That’s why it’s important to build flexibility into them right from the get-go. With an agile, resilient approach to financial modeling, Mosaic was designed with SaaS companies in mind. By combining driver-based planning with rolling forecasts , you get a moving picture of the future of your business. With 150 out-of-the-box SaaS metrics, staying on track with your operational goals has never been easier.

Create accurate rolling forecasts with real-time data

Your goal is to future-proof your plan so that, even if the market shifts, your day-to-day, week-to-week action plans can still remain on target towards your long-term, strategic goals, and you can bring your startup to the next level. Request a demo to see Mosaic in action.

Operational Planning FAQs

How does operational planning differ from strategic planning for saas companies.

The difference between strategic planning and operational planning is one of scale. Strategic planning involves building high-level, long-term goals for the company. Operational plans detail the work each department will put in month-to-month, week-to-week, or even day-to-day to help make those high-level, strategic goals a reality.

What are some common challenges in operational planning for SaaS businesses?

SaaS companies often grow quickly. This can make it difficult to keep tabs on all the data and metrics required to build successful operational models, especially if you’re relying on spreadsheets.

SaaS companies are also subject to a constantly changing landscape. High levels of competition, shifting customer preferences, and unreliable access to funding can all make it difficult to determine what to prioritize in a SaaS business strategy.

How can Mosaic help in operational planning for SaaS companies?

Successful operational planning ultimately comes down to financial models. With a catalog of over 150 SaaS metrics, Mosaic helps you benchmark driver-based financial models that guide daily tasks and decision-making.

For SaaS companies, it’s critical that operational plans remain flexible. Mosaic helps you do this by simplifying driver-based planning and helping you build continuously updating rolling forecasts tied to your objectives.

Related Content

• 9 Financial Dashboard Examples for Strategic Decision Making
• How to Use AI for Business Financial Planning
• Revenue Forecasting Guide: 4 Models For Planning Your Top Line

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Blog Business 10+ Operational Planning Examples to Fulfill your Strategic Goals

10+ Operational Planning Examples to Fulfill your Strategic Goals

Written by: Danesh Ramuthi Oct 25, 2023

An operational plan is a comprehensive, action-driven document that maps out how daily activities within an organization fuel the journey towards achieving strategic objectives.

Essentially acting as the nexus between high-level strategy and practical execution, this plan ensures that every department, from human resources to specific departments, operates in synchrony, aligning their day-to-day activities with the broader strategic goals.

By streamlining processes, it fosters cohesive efforts amongst diverse cross-functional teams, ensuring that both individual team members and entire departments work together harmoniously towards the company goals.

Ready to sculpt your organization’s future? Start your journey with venngage business plan maker and leverage their expertly crafted operational plan templates . 

Click to jump ahead: 

Why is an operational plan important?

10 operational plan examples, what should an operational plan include, how to write an operational plan.

• Strategic plan vs operational plan: What is the difference? 

In summary 

An operational plan is crucial because it serves as a bridge between a company’s high-level strategic planning and its day-to-day activities, ensuring that the business operations align with the strategic goals. 

While a strategic plan provides a long-term vision, outlining the company’s objectives and goals to gain competitive advantages in the business environment, the operational plan outlines the specific actions, key elements and resource allocation required to achieve those objectives. 

For example, while the strategic plan might set a goal for revenue growth over the fiscal year, the operational plan provides a detailed roadmap, breaking down major projects, assigning responsibilities to individual team members or specific departments and setting key performance indicators to monitor progress and ensure the entire organization works together effectively.

Operational planning, in essence, transforms the strategic objectives into actionable plans, ensuring that the entire team, from department heads to diverse cross-functional teams, is aligned and works in tandem to support revenue growth, increase productivity, and achieve the desired outcomes. 

Operational plans, through a well-structured operational planning process, also provide a clear understanding of the day-to-day activities, allowing team members to know their roles, leading to better collaboration and synergy. 

Moreover, by having clear operational plan examples or templates, businesses can ensure realistic expectations, manage their operating budget effectively and track progress through key performance metrics, thus ensuring that the company stays on course to realize its long-term vision.

Operational plans play a pivotal role in the business landscape, bridging the gap between strategic vision and tangible actions. They translate the overarching goals of an organization into detailed procedures, ensuring that daily operations are in line with the desired strategic outcomes. 

In the section below, I will explore a few operational plan examples, shedding light on their structure and importance.

Business operational plan example

A business operational plan is a comprehensive document that elucidates the specific day-to-day activities of a company. It presents a detailed overview of the company’s organizational structure, management team, products or services and the underlying marketing and sales strategies. 

For businesses, irrespective of their size, an operational plan can prove invaluable. By laying down the business goals and objectives, it acts as a blueprint, guiding entrepreneurs through the creation and implementation of strategies and action plans. The planning process also incorporates mechanisms to track progress and performance. 

Additionally, for startups or companies looking to scale, a meticulously crafted operational plan can be pivotal in securing funds from potential investors and lenders.

Layered on this are details about the company’s organizational structure, its products or services and its marketing and sales strategies. 

The document also delineates the roles and responsibilities of each team member, especially the management and key personnel. Given the dynamic nature of the business environment, it is imperative to revisit and update the operational plan regularly.

Related: 15+ Business Plan Templates for Strategic Planning

Simple operational plan example

A simple operational plan, often used by startups or smaller enterprises, emphasizes the basics, ensuring that the fundamental aspects of the business operations are captured succinctly. While it might not delve into the intricacies of every operation, it provides an overview of day-to-day activities, highlighting the goals and objectives the business aims to achieve in the short term.

In essence, this plan revolves around core elements like the company’s main objectives for the fiscal year, key responsibilities assigned to individual team members and basic resource allocation. A straightforward market analysis might also be included, offering insights into customer needs and competitive advantages the business hopes to leverage.

Though simple, this operational plan example remains pivotal for the organization. It provides a roadmap, guiding team members through their daily responsibilities while ensuring that everyone is working together towards shared goals. It becomes especially essential for diverse cross-functional teams, where clarity of roles can lead to increased productivity.

Modern operational plan example

In today’s fast-paced business environment, the emphasis on efficiency and innovative processes is paramount. The modern operational plan example caters precisely to this demand. Ideal for organizations aiming to streamline processes and highlight workflow, this type of operational plan emphasizes a more dynamic approach to planning. 

It not only reflects the evolving nature of business operations but also provides a modern backdrop for content, ensuring that the presentation resonates with the current trends and technological advancements. The use of modern tools and platforms within this plan enables diverse cross-functional teams to work together seamlessly, ensuring that day-to-day activities are synchronized with the company’s long-term vision.

Furthermore, such an operational plan helps the entire organization stay agile, adapting rapidly to changes in the business environment and ensuring alignment with strategic goals.

Minimalist operational plan example

The minimalist operational plan example champions simplicity and clarity. By focusing on clear and concise business strategies, it eliminates any potential ambiguity, ensuring that team members and stakeholders have an unclouded understanding of the company’s objectives and goals. 

The minimalist design not only promotes easy comprehension but also aligns with the modern trend of decluttering, ensuring that only the most vital components of the operational planning process are highlighted. 

This approach leaves no room for confusion, streamlining the planning process and making sure that individual team members and departments are aligned with the business’s key objectives. 

Moreover, the flexibility offered by a minimalist design allows businesses to craft an operational plan template that is not only functional but also accurately reflects their brand image and core values, ensuring cohesion across all aspects of the business strategy.

Clean operational plan example

The clean operational plan example stands as a testament to this principle. Ideal for businesses that prioritize clarity and directness, this format seeks to convey goals and strategies without overwhelming stakeholders. 

While maintaining a neat and organized layout, it ensures that tasks are managed effectively, helping team members grasp their roles and responsibilities without getting lost in excessive details.

One of the primary advantages of a clean operational plan is its ability to eliminate distractions and focus solely on the critical aspects of operational planning. 

Such a design aids in making sure that diverse cross-functional teams can work together harmoniously ensuring that day-to-day activities align seamlessly with the company’s long-term vision. 

The simplicity of the clean operational plan not only supports revenue growth by ensuring efficiency but also reinforces the company’s strategic goals, making it an excellent tool in the arsenal of businesses that believe in clear communication and precise execution.  

An effective operational plan acts as a roadmap, directing how resources should be allocated and tasks should be performed to meet the company’s objectives. Here’s what a comprehensive operational plan should encompass:

• Goals and objectives : Whether short-term or long-term, the operational plan should define clear goals and objectives that align with the company’s strategic plan. This gives direction to the entire organization, ensuring everyone is working towards a common aim.
• Clear responsibilities for team members : It’s essential that team members understand their roles within the operational plan. By outlining who is responsible for what, the plan ensures that there are no overlaps or gaps in duties and that everyone has clarity on their day-to-day activities.
• Assigned tasks: Alongside responsibilities, specific tasks need to be allocated to individual team members or specific departments. This granularity in assignment ensures that every aspect of the operational plan is covered.
• Timeline: This provides a clear schedule for when each task or objective should start and finish. A well-defined timeline assists in monitoring progress and ensures that the plan stays on track.
• Budget and resources : Every operational plan needs to factor in the budget and resources available. This includes everything from the operating budget to human resources, ensuring that the business has everything it needs to execute the plan effectively.

Read Also: 6 Steps to Create a Strategic HR Plan [With Templates]

As businesses evolve, it’s essential to have a comprehensive and adaptive operational plan in place to navigate the complexities of the business environment. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you craft an effective operational plan:

Step 1: Define your goals and objectives

Begin with a clear understanding of your strategic goals and objectives. This will act as a foundation for your operational plan. Ensure that these goals are in alignment with your company’s strategic plan and provide both short-term and long-term visions for the business.

Step 2: Determine roles and responsibilities

Identify the key stakeholders, department heads and team members who will play pivotal roles in executing the plan. Assign responsibilities to ensure that everyone knows their part in the planning process and day-to-day activities.

Step 3: Develop a timeline and milestones

Establish a clear timeline that breaks down the operational planning process. Include key milestones to track progress and ensure the plan remains on target.

Step 4: Allocate budget and resources

Determine the resources required to achieve your goals and objectives. This includes estimating the operating budget, identifying human resources needs and other resource allocations, ensuring you have everything in place to support revenue growth and other business needs.

Step 5: Outline day-to-day operations

Detail the day activities that are integral to the business operations. This will provide clarity on how different tasks and functions work together, ensuring efficiency across diverse cross-functional teams.

Step 6: Monitor and measure performance

Integrate key performance metrics and indicators to regularly monitor progress. Using both leading and lagging indicators will provide a comprehensive view of how well the operational plan is being executed and where improvements can be made.

Step 7: Review and adjust regularly

The business environment is dynamic and as such, your operational plan should be adaptable. Regularly review the plan, comparing actual outcomes with desired outcomes and adjust as necessary to account for changes in the business environment or company goals.

Step 8: Document and communicate

Create an operational plan document, potentially using operational plan examples or an operational plan template for guidance. Ensure that the entire team, from individual team members to the entire organization, is informed and aligned with the plan.

Related: 7 Best Business Plan Software for 2023

Strategic plan vs operational plan: What is the difference?

When running an organization, both strategic and operational planning play pivotal roles in ensuring success. However, each has a distinct purpose, time horizon and scope. Here’s a breakdown of the differences between these two essential business plans:

• Strategic plan : This plan sets the course for the organization’s future. It embodies the long-term vision and mission, detailing the objectives necessary to achieve it. The essence is how everyone, from C-suite executives to individual team members, collaborates towards realizing this vision.
• Operational plan : This is the roadmap for the day-to-day activities of the organization. While the strategic plan looks at the bigger picture, the operational plan hones in on the tactics and execution. It is crafted to support organizational goals with a focus on short-term activities specific to departments or functions.

Time horizon :

• Strategic plan : Long-term in nature, usually spanning three to five years.
• Operational plan : Concentrates on the short-term, with plans laid out yearly, quarterly, or even monthly.

Modification and updates :

• Strategic plan : This evolves over longer intervals, typically three to five years. There might be minor adjustments year over year based on changing business needs and the external business environment.
• Operational plan : Due to its short-term focus, it requires frequent assessments. Plans might be adjusted yearly, quarterly or even monthly to ensure alignment with the strategic objectives and current business environment.

Created by :

• Strategic plan : Crafted by the upper echelons of management – think CEO, CFO and other C-suite members.
• Operational plan : These plans come to life through mid-level management and department heads, ensuring alignment with the broader strategic vision while catering to specific departmental needs.
• Strategic plan : Broad in its outlook, it takes into account external factors like market trends, competition, customer needs and technological innovations.
• Operational plan : This narrows down the focus to the internal workings of the organization. It revolves around technology in use, key performance indicators, budgeting, projects, tasks and the allocation of responsibilities among team members.

As we’ve traversed through the importance of operational planning to various operational plan examples, it becomes evident that having a detailed and efficient operational plan is pivotal. 

From the business-centric to the minimalist approach, every operational plan serves as the backbone, guiding team members and ensuring that day-to-day activities align with the long-term vision and strategic goals.

By knowing what should be included in these plans and how to craft them, businesses can navigate the complexities of their operational environment with greater confidence.

For those looking to refine their planning process or start from scratch, the world of digital tools has made it significantly easier. Venngage offers business plan maker and operational plan templates designed to simplify the process. 

Whether you need to create an operational plan or draft a business strategy, their intuitive platform can guide you every step of the way.

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Create an Operational Plan that Makes an Impact

Companies often confuse strategic, tactical, and operational planning. Strategic planning sets your organization’s long-term vision and goals. Tactical planning is the process of figuring out how to achieve your strategic plan. And operational planning links the two, outlining the procedural steps you’ll take to meet your goals. A sound operational plan is critical for achieving success in your organization.

What Is Operational Planning?

Operational planning is the process of creating actionable steps that your team can take to meet the goals in your strategic plan. An operational plan outlines daily, weekly, and monthly tasks for each department or employee. During operational planning, you’ll also create milestones that help you achieve your strategic plan. For example, if your strategic plan aims to grow your customer base by 20%, your operational plan will include incremental steps to gain new leads and customers.

What Are the Benefits of an Operational Plan?

A well-constructed operational plan makes everyone’s jobs easier. The benefits include:

• Clear guidance: With actionable steps for each department, operational plans help teams understand if they are performing well or need to improve.
• Better workflow : Each team knows what they’ll be working on over the month or quarter, and they can adjust their workflow as needed.
• Improves morale : All employees can see how their day-to-day work connects to the company’s broader goals.

Creating an Effective Operational Plan

Operational plans help you hit strategic goals, so start by reviewing your strategic plan. Your operational plan should be specific to a department or team, so your organization will likely have more than one operational plan. Identify the key stakeholders for a particular team: they’ll be best suited to develop the plan, which should include:

• Departmental objectives
• Key performance indicators
• Staffing and budget needs
• Process for tracking and reporting on progress

Once the plan is complete, you can replicate this process for each department. Plans should be shared department-wide for feedback and questions.

Operational Goals

Also referred to as departmental goals or objectives, operational goals are the short-term targets that your organization wants to hit. An operational plan includes operational goals and the steps to achieve them. Typically, organizational goals are:

• Tied to a specific department or team
• Tied to a budget line or item
• Tied to a specific short time frame, such as a month or a quarter

Operational Goals Examples

All operational goals should be measurable and actionable. Actionable means your team can achieve them – so the goal cannot be dependent on an outside factor. For example, your IT team may be tasked with training 10 new employees on security best practices each quarter. But if 10 employees aren’t hired in a particular quarter, that operational goal is not actionable.

To be measurable, there must be a clear way to tell if you met your operational goal or not. For example, one operational goal for an accounting team might be to process invoices more quickly. Their accounting software should be able to collect data on how quickly invoices are processed and paid, so the team can measure their performance over time and see if they are working more efficiently.

Share Your Operational Plan

An operational plan shouldn’t be static – it’s a living document. As time goes on, you may need to adjust your operational goals. That isn’t a sign of failure – it means you’re doing a better job of understanding how each team functions and setting your targets accordingly. You should keep your plan up to date and revisit it regularly, whether once a year or at the end of each fiscal quarter. Include key stakeholders in this process so that the plan works for everyone.

Start Your Operational Plan with Spider Impact

Creating an operational plan might seem challenging at first – but once you get started, it can help all your teams run more smoothly. See how Spider Impact helps you define, measure, manage and report on your operational goals. Click for a free test drive or demo .

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Operations Strategy: 5 Key Elements of an Operations Strategy

Written by MasterClass

Last updated: Dec 17, 2021 • 3 min read

Learn how businesses use operations strategies to identify and implement cost-effective processes for creating and distributing products and services.

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Business Process Operations: Improve the Quality of Your Company

Having a firm understanding of business process operations can make a  big difference . It is the missing link that can take your company to new heights. This article will explain why. Before we get into the specifics, let’s go over the basics. We will begin by defining what  business process operations  are.  

What Does Business Process Operations Mean?

Some readers may be familiar with “core business processes.” Others may understand the basics of “operation processes.” Well, here’s some great news. These two terms mean the exact same thing. In fact, here are three other terms that all refer to the same concept.

• Essential processes .
• Primary processes .
• Core processes .

Companies always break up their business processes into certain categories. These categories are business process operations. This alludes to actions that provide paying customers with value. Value is often gained when a customer purchases a service or product.  

Understanding business process operations is important to the success of any company. Otherwise, how can upper management recognize how to please prospects and clients? Each process in a company must get defined in a very clear manner.

This is so employees from all departments will understand upper management’s expectations. Not to mention, recognizing business processes helps companies adapt to  all  changes. These include both  industry and market changes .  

What Are Operational Business Processes?

Business processes refer to making a company’s operations more organized. Any process operation is a group of tasks/activities that focus on the organization. This relates to the production of any type of product or service. Keep in mind that any type of business features many unique processes.

Let’s use a barbershop as an example. A barber engages in the following three-step process at his or her business.

•  Washing the client’s hair.
•  Cutting the client’s hair.
•  Styling the client’s hair using a hairdryer and gel or paste.

What Are the 5 Core Business Processes?

Business processes within any type of organization are in need of specific practices. Management must have a strong understanding of relevant practices, concepts, and methods. Here are the five business processes and concepts that any manager should recognize.

• Budgeting and planning . This process is crucial to the success of any company.
• Business process management . This article will explain many key concepts related to business process management.
• Approval . A system should exist within any business where managers can approve all processes.
• Reusability . If a business process cannot get repeated with ease, then it should not exist.
• Measurement . Managers have to have a process in place that can measure the success of  any  outcome.

What Is an Example of a Business Process?

Business processes vary depending on the industry of any company. So, let’s use three different industries as an example. First up, let’s assess the key processes of a company that specializes in finance. Here are three important business processes.

•  The process of billing.
•  The risk management process.
•  The process of invoicing.

Let’s now use a company that specializes in banking as the second business process example. Here are three crucial business processes that relate to banking.

•  The process of customer onboarding.
•  The risk assessment process.
•  The process of conducting credit checks.

Let’s move on to the third business process example . Here are three business processes for a company that specializes in health.

•  The medical assessment process.
•  The financial process that relates to billing patients.
•  The drug approval process.

No matter your industry, setting up any business process requires consistent testing. You’ve got to test out  each  business process until you find a  long-term solution .

Four Steps to Improve the Quality of Your Business Process Operations  

Many smart business minds view identifying business process operations as being difficult. After all, focusing on so many details at once can seem overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Follow the four-step process below to  strengthen  your  business process operations .  

Business Process Step #1: Management Must Recognize the Outputs/Inputs of Their Enterprise

Step number one involves management making a list of  all  outputs and inputs. These relate to your company or organization’s financial standing. Once the list is complete, it’s time for you to test out each item one-by-one. The resources of your brand serve as the inputs.

These include all materials and elements of knowledge. The outputs serve a much different purpose for management. They exist to control the inputs. In fact, outputs can get used to lessen the long-term usage of your company’s resources.  

What is the main difference between outputs and inputs? The cost that management must pay. More inputs in a company lead to a higher cost in both the short-term and long-term. This makes sense due to inputs involving resources. But keep in mind that a company  can  cut the cost of outputs.

How so? When management uses outputs in a frequent manner. In fact, your company may want to start having its management do that today. Focusing on outputs can improve the processes of  any  operational business.

Business Process Step #2: Management Should Gather Feedback of Process Operations

Best practices cannot get determined if management does not have access to  feedback . And the more feedback, the better. The key here is for upper management to poll the employees. This will help the higher-ups understand which procedures are working. They will also become aware of which procedures are failing. Management will then be able to identify crucial needs.

Employees do not have to be the only people providing feedback. Who else can do so? Your company’s customers. And, thanks to the internet, customer feedback is easier to receive than ever before. This is important because no one’s opinion should matter more than your customers.

They are the ones who are keeping your business afloat. You  can ask questions such as the following three.

•  Are you satisfied with the products you have purchased?
•  Do you think anything is missing from our company’s code of business processes?
•  What operations would you like to see get improved soon?  

Business Process Step #3: Analyze the Quality of Business Processes in Your Enterprise

This is the step in which  every   metric  and  dollar amount  should get reviewed. Taxes. Sales numbers. ROI. Marketing results. Capital costs. Error rates. Profit margin. Make sure that your team does not forget about any metric or financial figure. Why? Because your goal should be to reduce costs as much as possible. But costs are not the only thing that should get reduced. Your team should also focus on reducing the time it takes for employees to conduct tasks. Always keep in mind that  time is money and money is time .  

Business Process Step #4: Analyze the End-Results of All Business Process Operations

The results of your business process operations must get evaluated often. In fact, this needs to take place on a regular basis. Doing so will ensure that your organization is always on the right track toward success. Upper management can even hold monthly meetings to analyze operation results. This will keep  your  team on the same page. Let’s now go over the advantages of maintaining great business process operations.  

8 Benefits of Management Having High-Quality Business Process Operations

Consider each business process operation benefit below. The more you adjust your company’s processes, the more benefits you’ll experience. But keep in mind that ether is many more business process benefits than the ones we’ve listed. Contact our firm today for a free list of all  benefits.

Business Process Benefit #1: Problem-Detection of All Operations

Your team will be able to glimpse into the future and catch problems before they happen. But they don’t need superhero powers to do so. All they need is to  test out  business process operations on a regular basis. Testing is a  key process  that can improve the operation of any service.

How to conduct testing is up to any business manager. Keep in mind that testing (and modeling) takes a lot of work. But that hard work is  well worth it  once process operations run at a strong level.

Business Process Benefit #2: Conduct Trending Analysis & Edit Process Operations

Analyzing important business figures will do wonders for any company or organization. Staff members will be able to recognize when performance is not at its best level. Employees should contact their respective managers whenever they take note of this. The right trending analysis operations can improve  most  services of business operations.

Business Process Benefit #3: Management Can Use Operations to Reduce the Failure Rate

Business failure (in all aspects) should, of course, get reduced as fast as possible. What is the key to doing so? It is  automating  all winning business processes. The biggest shortcut to making this a reality is to take care of all background jobs. Operational processes improve with the right automation solutions. Contact our firm today for more information about how  automation benefits operational processes . Remember that almost all services can improve by using key technologies.

Business Process Benefit #4: Use Knowledge to Confirm the Quality of All Data

Data in any company should get analyzed and validated on a consistent basis.  Separate data targets  should always get compared. Here is an example. An employee could confirm the information between non SAP and SAP databases. Sure, this might take a lot of work and testing. But that work and testing is  well worth the effort.  Next thing you know, your business could get recognized by the media. This has happened to some of our clients before. And SAP was the missing solution.

Business Process Benefit #5: Management Can Study & Edit All Operations Interfaces

Taking care of important business process interfaces can make or break a company. There are three key interfaces to pay attention to the most. 1.  ECC . 2.  PI: Process Integration . 3.  BI/BW : this refers to Business Intelligence. All three of these interfaces benefit  many  operational processes.

Business Process Benefit #6: Use Operations Knowledge to Create Alerts

Key employees should have  alerts  going to them on an automatic basis. The alerts can either get sent in the form of email or text messages. Important business process criteria should get included in each alert. This will keep your employees in the loop about operations that affect their roles. Next thing you know, their operational processes can improve  all  services.

Business Process Benefit #7: Dashboards Can Improve the Quality of Operations  

Each dashboard should focus on a specific business process situation. They can also focus on certain authorized users. This is another way to ensure that people stay focused on the tasks at hand. Spare  no expense  when it comes to testing out every dashboard. Your hard work will pay off when your company’s operational processes improve.

Business Process Benefit #8: Improved Tracking of SAP Systems & Operations

Your employees must be aware of the  SAP systems . But that’s not all. They should also keep an eye on the SAP hosts and SAP database software. Employees can receive alerts about SAP severity levels and specific thresholds. This is so people will recognize SAP related problems as soon as possible. Do you need to find out more about SAP services? If so, you could check out SAP Solman. It’s a  great SAP solution  that benefits all sorts of operational processes.  

Edit Your Business Processes Until Your Operations Are High Quality

Many companies assume that only a Solution Manager can improve the quality of a business. But that is often not the case.  Any  type of manager can improve the quality of business processes. Sure, it will take a lot of work and testing. But adjusting process operations does not mean that you need any special code.

You also won’t need to view or read any advanced modeling technologies. Instead, improving the quality of business operations comes down to following specific steps. What those steps consist of is up to you and your team. One key step is to read about every aspect of your current business processes.

If there isn’t a manual, you could have a technical writer start creating one today. This is more realistic than hoping that automation technologies will improve your processes. The odds of automation technologies improving all business processes are low. (But they might not stay as low in the future.) Yes, there’s conduct modeling software that simulates the quality of process operations. But it won’t stay on the same page as your business manager.  

Say that you have every business process typed out in front of you. Read each process  page by page . You can then edit the process manually and add relevant data. The more data you edit and add, the more knowledge your employees will soon have. This will position the manager to improve the quality of every position. It can lead to better interactions with every customer.

But don’t assume that the quality of your processes/operations will improve overnight. Editing operational business processes is a full-time job for weeks or even months. Please contact our firm if you need help finding a solution for your business processes. Our experts can start providing free advice over the phone. We can even direct you to business process monitoring technologies.

Our firm has helped companies like Appian improve every operation. These technologies are at the center of modeling any type of business solution. Also, please check out our site for more free operational business solutions .  

Management Can Improve the Quality of Any Enterprise Through Business Process Operations

As you can see, business process operations are important. They can make or break a company’s future. It all depends on how the management treats the operations. This is why it’s best to focus on the business processes. They can get prioritized from most important to least important. This will help create a structure that your company can turn to for years to come.

The more support elements in your operations, the greater security a company has. Make sure every new hire gets trained on your organization’s process operations. The smoother your company’s operations, the more revenue  can appear in your pocket.