Why Businesses Should Utilise the End of 2022 to Plan Ahead for 2023
by Team Pinnacle
As 2022 draws to a close, the economic landscape remains challenging for businesses across NI. With this in mind, it is important to ensure that your business is primed to embark on the new year in the strongest possible position.
For this, we would recommend crafting your 2023 business strategy now. Putting a robust plan in place will ensure that you are well placed to withstand the effects of any economic shocks that the new year brings.
Some simple ways to plan your 2023 business goals are:
- Look at Your Vision and Long-Term Goals
This is the first step in any strategic plan and allows you to identify how your long-term business needs and prioritise them over short-term solutions.
- Perform a SWOT Analysis
Undertaking an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats will allow you to self-evaluate your business both internally and externally and identify blind spots that you might not see daily.
- Set Your Macro Goals
Identify 3-4 overarching goals that will help your business to achieve its vision and ensure that they are in SMART format (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.)
- Define the KPIs You’ll Use to Track Success
Once your goals are established, you should shift your focus to monitoring your progress and defining your deadlines.
To do this, you should establish clear dates and milestones by which you want to achieve your SMART goals. To stay on track, you will need to identify the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you will use to track their success.
- Ensure that Initiatives Are Prioritized
Once your goals are in place, you should begin brainstorming strategic initiatives that will help to achieve them. We recommend coming up with 5 or 6 for each goal.
When these are in place, they will need to be prioritized. We would suggest examining your resources to do this, with a realistic expectation that your team will probably achieve about four initiatives per goal over the course of the year.
- Create Your Strategy Around the Initiatives
It’s now time to build your strategy and identify how you will implement these initiatives. The most efficient way to do this is to create a weekly schedule to keep yourself on track.
- Be Accountable
It is vital to hold yourself accountable and to consider what the outcome will be if you fail to achieve your KPIs.
Remaining accountable will help you to stay focused on the bigger picture. We recommend reflecting on how well you’re progressing and what you could improve on.
- Consider Funding Opportunities
Lack of funding is one of the primary reasons that many businesses fail to scale and reach their full potential, so it’s important to look at funding opportunities for the year ahead.
There are many grants and regional funding options available for both start-ups and scale-ups, but you may need to seek expert help with accessing these.
- Examine Opportunities for New Market Entry
It always pays to stay ahead of the curve and ensure comprehensive awareness of available markets by examining opportunities for new market entry.
If you are unsure of the first steps to do this, seek professional help to investigate new markets.
- Examine your processes
Once you have a strategy in place, we would suggest taking stock of your processes and procedures, to ensure that they are as efficient as possible.
When operating in a challenging economic landscape, it is essential to assess all wastes within your business.
- Ensure you get advice from professionals in areas where you have less expertise.
When you’re busy with day-to-day operations it’s useful to consult external experts to ensure you are on the right path. At Pinnacle Growth Group, we offer straightforward and honest advice to enable growth for clients across the UK and Ireland. We can help you to identify and access grants, funding and finance to accelerate business growth, and find programmes and tools to help increase profitability, manage change and create lasting improvement.
We can also provide support and practical assistance to help you access new markets, grow sales, develop exports and manage trade.
For more expert business advice, email: info@pinnaclegrowth.group
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