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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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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.
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.
Some of the factors that affect the operations plan are:
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
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 .
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.
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.
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.
Without a plan, your business operations are as good as a children’s playground—everyone’s doing their own thing with no care in the world.
An operational plan brings order to your organization. It defines the functional aspects of your long-term strategy, like goals, milestones, responsibilities and timelines, to build collaboration and make real progress toward your vision.
Teams often overlook the importance of operational plan management, leading to miscommunication, unnecessary roadblocks and slow growth.
If you don't want to end up in a chaotic playground with everything going south, read this start-to-finish guide on operational planning. We'll share a 6-step process of making your own operational plan with a few examples to inspire you.
An operational plan is a roadmap designed to implement your business strategies. It operationalizes your strategic plan by defining:
An operational plan clarifies all the finer details about your strategy—like what, who, when and how—to help you realize the bigger vision. It’s a work plan for transferring the available inputs into the desired outputs.
While operational and strategic planning might sound the same, they have significantly different meanings. Let's take a quick look at these differences to understand what an operational plan stacks up against a strategic plan.
Strategic Plan | Operational Plan |
---|---|
Conveys the bigger picture with the long-term vision for the business | Communicates more concrete and short-term goals to realize the vision |
Includes high-level inputs from various stakeholders to move forward | Has a detailed action plan with milestones and metrics to track progress |
Remains weatherproof for a longer period | Subject to change based on performance |
Focuses on org-wide goals that are relatively vague | Focuses on tactical plans for every team/function within the company |
Created by the senior leadership | Created by individual departments |
Only setting goals without a solid operational plan to implement them is like making new year’s resolutions that never come true.
Without a clear direction of what to do and how, you’d end up wasting your resources with little to no progress to show for it. An operational plan helps move the needle for your company by clarifying the steps to success and bringing more accountability.
Still wondering how an operational plan can keep you on track? These five benefits will clue you in:
If a strategic plan defines the destination, an operational plan chalks out the itinerary to reach that destination. This actionable roadmap covers all bases to streamline collaboration within the team and set up the right systems to hit your milestones.
Making an operational plan allows you to assign responsibilities to all internal and external stakeholders. It clarifies who’s responsible for what and sets expectations from the start. This is key for bringing everyone on the same page and avoiding roadblocks once the work is underway.
Timelines and milestones are two of the most crucial components of an operational plan in business. They empower teams to analyze their performance and review progress objectively. You can use these insights to tweak your game plan for greater success and to improve operational efficiency .
An operational plan outlines the parameters for success and metrics to monitor the same. These metrics give you a clear picture of your progress at every stage to ensure you’re moving as per the plan. They also highlight any potential red flags that can potentially derail the plan and need your attention.
One of the most important benefits of making an operational plan is the clarity it brings to everyone. Instead of leaving your team clueless about the next steps, this work plan clarifies how and where they can start. It also reduces errors by laying down the ground rules for every task and process.
📌 Related resource: Operations Teams: How to Assemble and Lead a High-Performing Team
There’s no standard rulebook for creating an operational plan. It’s a fully customizable document that depends entirely on your company’s goals, resources, timelines and overall approach.
For example, a fast-paced team can work with shorter timelines and hit more goals than a large-scale organization with more levels of checks and a bigger hierarchy.
So, instead of replicating other companies’ operational plans, let’s help you create your own plan with this 6-step process:
A strategic plan is to an operational plan what a storyline is to a movie—it conveys the essence and creates a direction for the operational plan to become a masterpiece.
So, naturally, the first step to operational planning is creating a strategic plan; here’s how:
Once done, you can rely on this strategic plan throughout the operational planning process to prepare for what lies ahead.
💡 Use these 14 free customizable project plan templates to enhance communication, save time and achieve your strategic planning goals.
The next step is breaking your high-level goals into shorter, more actionable objectives. For example, you can divide the goal of achieving an X% growth in revenue into smaller targets, like increasing inbound leads, doubling down on cold outreach and rolling out a referral program. Implementing effective referral tracking within the program will allow you to monitor and optimize the success of your referral initiatives, providing valuable insights into the sources and impact of referred business.
Goal-setting makes your operational plan realistic and feasible. You're ideating the means to realize the long-term vision by hitting the right milestones.
More importantly, once you have a list of goals, it's easier to determine the budget and resources required to achieve them. Before moving ahead, do your homework to set a solid budget that allows you to implement your strategy without splurging too much.
Once you’re clear about your goals and resources, it’s time to define the finer details of your plan—specifying who’ll do what, when and how.
Create a comprehensive project scope by outlining:
This step brings more specificity to your operational plan. It concretely spells out each goal with details about milestones within each goal, roles and teams responsible for fulfilling these milestones and how they will work toward the end goals.
💡 Scribe top tip: Creating a project scope document is a breeze when you use Scribe. You can use Scribe's project scope template to get cracking at the earliest.
By this point, you've done all the legwork to get to work and start writing your operational plan finally.
Make it as actionable and value-packed as possible by answering these five main questions:
Use Scribe's free AI Writer for Operations tool to capture and document operational procedures.
Additionally, a good operational plan also lists the metrics to track your progress. Pick and explain relevant metrics in your plan to show employees how you'll analyze their efforts.
No plan is perfect and there's always scope for improving your operational plan to make it perfect. So, once you've drafted the plan, don't forget to run it by a few select stakeholders to identify the gaps you can cover.
Actively seek feedback from people in different ranks and departments to understand the missing links in your plan. Your plan will go through 2-3 rounds of iterations before it’s finally ready to roll out.
The final step in the process is publishing the plan. The most important thing to remember is that your plan should be:
Clueless about the best way to hit all three points to roll out your operational plan? We have just the solution you need — Scribe .
Scribe is a documentation tool designed to create intuitive documents, like an operational plan, in a few seconds. It significantly reduces the time spent on creating such documents and improves team efficiency in more ways than one.
You can create a single Scribe to explain a process or compile instructions with SOPs in a single place with Pages. You can even ask the AI to write your operational plan — just add a simple prompt and your Scribes, and the AI will build a customized document!
It's the easiest way to bring your team on the same page and power up your operations!
✨ See how operations teams use Scribe to tackle even the most daunting operational challenges.
If you’re looking for some inspiration to get cracking with your planning process, looking at a few operations plan examples can help big time! Let’s look at three great examples, see why they work and how you can replicate the results.
This detailed risk management plan by Carter Supply covers several aspects of managing risk at the organization. This 10-page document lists the key components of this plan, like a summary, the approval process and the end-to-end risk management process.
As an operational plan, it gives the entire team clear insights into the risk management plan, highlights why it’s in place and explains how this plan will be used.
This plan also covers different aspects of the plan and lays down the process of working on each element. For example, for risk quantification, the plan specifies that the risk manager will work with the risk owner to understand the exposure.
Upscope ’s go-to-market (GTM) plan is another excellent example of operational planning. The SaaS company created this plan to execute its strategy for breaking into the co-browsing market.
Pursuing this goal, the team created an airtight plan with a rundown of its target audience, pain points the product solves and the buyer journey.
The Upscope marketing and sales teams could use this GTM plan to launch targeted campaigns and reach the right people. They were also well aware of the main value propositions to share with the target buyers, nudging them towards a purchase.
📌 Related resource: How Product Operations Can Help Your Team Build Better Products 📌
The quality management plan by SmartNet is a detailed document explaining the company’s entire operations framework, from the management structure to project reporting, risk assessment, deliverable production and more.
Instead of a single department, this operational plan documents the complete business operations. Despite being so lengthy, the document is easy to read and understand—exactly how the plan should look like.
It also includes all the critical information to guide new employees about the company's operations from scratch.
When done right, operational planning can be a game-changer for streamlining your operations. It’s an in-depth roadmap to work toward your vision and hit all goals.
Even though making an operational plan isn’t the most exciting task and it can get extremely time-consuming, the right process and tools can do the trick for you. Follow the six steps we’ve highlighted in this guide and when you’re ready to roll, use Scribe to put the plan in place.
Scribe takes the pain out of documentation to empower teams for seamless operational planning. Try it today to see how it works!
Related content, related templates, related tools.
How to create a business plan: examples & free template.
This is the ultimate guide to creating a comprehensive and effective plan to start a business . In today’s dynamic business landscape, having a well-crafted business plan is an important first step to securing funding, attracting partners, and navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship.
This guide has been designed to help you create a winning plan that stands out in the ever-evolving marketplace. U sing real-world examples and a free downloadable template, it will walk you through each step of the process.
Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or launching your very first startup, the guide will give you the insights, tools, and confidence you need to create a solid foundation for your business.
Table of Contents
Embarking on the journey of creating a successful business requires a solid foundation, and a well-crafted business plan is the cornerstone. Here is the process of writing a comprehensive business plan and the main parts of a winning business plan . From setting objectives to conducting market research, this guide will have everything you need.
The Executive Summary serves as the gateway to your business plan, offering a snapshot of your venture’s core aspects. This section should captivate and inform, succinctly summarizing the essence of your plan.
It’s crucial to include a clear mission statement, a brief description of your primary products or services, an overview of your target market, and key financial projections or achievements.
Think of it as an elevator pitch in written form: it should be compelling enough to engage potential investors or stakeholders and provide them with a clear understanding of what your business is about, its goals, and why it’s a promising investment.
Example: EcoTech is a technology company specializing in eco-friendly and sustainable products designed to reduce energy consumption and minimize waste. Our mission is to create innovative solutions that contribute to a cleaner, greener environment.
Our target market includes environmentally conscious consumers and businesses seeking to reduce their carbon footprint. We project a 200% increase in revenue within the first three years of operation.
In the Overview and Business Objectives section, outline your business’s core goals and the strategic approaches you plan to use to achieve them. This section should set forth clear, specific objectives that are attainable and time-bound, providing a roadmap for your business’s growth and success.
It’s important to detail how these objectives align with your company’s overall mission and vision. Discuss the milestones you aim to achieve and the timeframe you’ve set for these accomplishments.
This part of the plan demonstrates to investors and stakeholders your vision for growth and the practical steps you’ll take to get there.
Example: EcoTech’s primary objective is to become a market leader in sustainable technology products within the next five years. Our key objectives include:
The Company Description section is your opportunity to delve into the details of your business. Provide a comprehensive overview that includes your company’s history, its mission statement, and its vision for the future.
Highlight your unique selling proposition (USP) – what makes your business stand out in the market. Explain the problems your company solves and how it benefits your customers.
Include information about the company’s founders, their expertise, and why they are suited to lead the business to success. This section should paint a vivid picture of your business, its values, and its place in the industry.
Example: EcoTech is committed to developing cutting-edge sustainable technology products that benefit both the environment and our customers. Our unique combination of innovative solutions and eco-friendly design sets us apart from the competition. We envision a future where technology and sustainability go hand in hand, leading to a greener planet.
Defining Your Target Market is critical for tailoring your business strategy effectively. This section should describe your ideal customer base in detail, including demographic information (such as age, gender, income level, and location) and psychographic data (like interests, values, and lifestyle).
Elucidate on the specific needs or pain points of your target audience and how your product or service addresses these. This information will help you know your target market and develop targeted marketing strategies.
Example: Our target market comprises environmentally conscious consumers and businesses looking for innovative solutions to reduce their carbon footprint. Our ideal customers are those who prioritize sustainability and are willing to invest in eco-friendly products.
The Market Analysis section requires thorough research and a keen understanding of the industry. It involves examining the current trends within your industry, understanding the needs and preferences of your customers, and analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors.
This analysis will enable you to spot market opportunities and anticipate potential challenges. Include data and statistics to back up your claims, and use graphs or charts to illustrate market trends.
This section should demonstrate that you have a deep understanding of the market in which you operate and that your business is well-positioned to capitalize on its opportunities.
Example: The market for eco-friendly technology products has experienced significant growth in recent years, with an estimated annual growth rate of 10%. As consumers become increasingly aware of environmental issues, the demand for sustainable solutions continues to rise.
Our research indicates a gap in the market for high-quality, innovative eco-friendly technology products that cater to both individual and business clients.
A SWOT analysis in your business plan offers a comprehensive examination of your company’s internal and external factors. By assessing Strengths, you showcase what your business does best and where your capabilities lie.
Weaknesses involve an honest introspection of areas where your business may be lacking or could improve. Opportunities can be external factors that your business could capitalize on, such as market gaps or emerging trends.
Threats include external challenges your business may face, like competition or market changes. This analysis is crucial for strategic planning, as it helps in recognizing and leveraging your strengths, addressing weaknesses, seizing opportunities, and preparing for potential threats.
Including a SWOT analysis demonstrates to stakeholders that you have a balanced and realistic understanding of your business in its operational context.
Weaknesses:
Opportunities:
In this section, you’ll analyze your competitors in-depth, examining their products, services, market positioning, and pricing strategies. Understanding your competition allows you to identify gaps in the market and tailor your offerings to outperform them.
By conducting a thorough competitive analysis, you can gain insights into your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, enabling you to develop strategies to differentiate your business and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Example: Key competitors include:
GreenTech: A well-known brand offering eco-friendly technology products, but with a narrower focus on energy-saving devices.
EarthSolutions: A direct competitor specializing in sustainable technology, but with a limited product range and higher prices.
By offering a diverse product portfolio, competitive pricing, and continuous innovation, we believe we can capture a significant share of the growing sustainable technology market.
Provide an overview of your company’s organizational structure, including key roles and responsibilities. Introduce your management team, highlighting their expertise and experience to demonstrate that your team is capable of executing the business plan successfully.
Showcasing your team’s background, skills, and accomplishments instills confidence in investors and other stakeholders, proving that your business has the leadership and talent necessary to achieve its objectives and manage growth effectively.
Example: EcoTech’s organizational structure comprises the following key roles: CEO, CTO, CFO, Sales Director, Marketing Director, and R&D Manager. Our management team has extensive experience in technology, sustainability, and business development, ensuring that we are well-equipped to execute our business plan successfully.
Describe the products or services your business offers, focusing on their unique features and benefits. Explain how your offerings solve customer pain points and why they will choose your products or services over the competition.
This section should emphasize the value you provide to customers, demonstrating that your business has a deep understanding of customer needs and is well-positioned to deliver innovative solutions that address those needs and set your company apart from competitors.
Example: EcoTech offers a range of eco-friendly technology products, including energy-efficient lighting solutions, solar chargers, and smart home devices that optimize energy usage. Our products are designed to help customers reduce energy consumption, minimize waste, and contribute to a cleaner environment.
In this section, articulate your comprehensive strategy for reaching your target market and driving sales. Detail the specific marketing channels you plan to use, such as social media, email marketing, SEO, or traditional advertising.
Describe the nature of your advertising campaigns and promotional activities, explaining how they will capture the attention of your target audience and convey the value of your products or services. Outline your sales strategy, including your sales process, team structure, and sales targets.
Discuss how these marketing and sales efforts will work together to attract and retain customers, generate leads, and ultimately contribute to achieving your business’s revenue goals.
This section is critical to convey to investors and stakeholders that you have a well-thought-out approach to market your business effectively and drive sales growth.
Example: Our marketing strategy includes digital advertising, content marketing, social media promotion, and influencer partnerships. We will also attend trade shows and conferences to showcase our products and connect with potential clients. Our sales strategy involves both direct sales and partnerships with retail stores, as well as online sales through our website and e-commerce platforms.
The Logistics and Operations Plan is a critical component that outlines the inner workings of your business. It encompasses the management of your supply chain, detailing how you acquire raw materials and manage vendor relationships.
Inventory control is another crucial aspect, where you explain strategies for inventory management to ensure efficiency and reduce wastage. The section should also describe your production processes, emphasizing scalability and adaptability to meet changing market demands.
Quality control measures are essential to maintain product standards and customer satisfaction. This plan assures investors and stakeholders of your operational competency and readiness to meet business demands.
Highlighting your commitment to operational efficiency and customer satisfaction underlines your business’s capability to maintain smooth, effective operations even as it scales.
Example: EcoTech partners with reliable third-party manufacturers to produce our eco-friendly technology products. Our operations involve maintaining strong relationships with suppliers, ensuring quality control, and managing inventory.
We also prioritize efficient distribution through various channels, including online platforms and retail partners, to deliver products to our customers in a timely manner.
In the Financial Projections Plan, lay out a clear and realistic financial future for your business. This should include detailed projections for revenue, costs, and profitability over the next three to five years.
Ground these projections in solid assumptions based on your market analysis, industry benchmarks, and realistic growth scenarios. Break down revenue streams and include an analysis of the cost of goods sold, operating expenses, and potential investments.
This section should also discuss your break-even analysis, cash flow projections, and any assumptions about external funding requirements.
By presenting a thorough and data-backed financial forecast, you instill confidence in potential investors and lenders, showcasing your business’s potential for profitability and financial stability.
This forward-looking financial plan is crucial for demonstrating that you have a firm grasp of the financial nuances of your business and are prepared to manage its financial health effectively.
Example: Over the next three years, we expect to see significant growth in revenue, driven by new product launches and market expansion. Our financial projections include:
These projections are based on realistic market analysis, growth rates, and product pricing.
The income statement , also known as the profit and loss statement, provides a summary of your company’s revenues and expenses over a specified period. It helps you track your business’s financial performance and identify trends, ensuring you stay on track to achieve your financial goals.
Regularly reviewing and analyzing your income statement allows you to monitor the health of your business, evaluate the effectiveness of your strategies, and make data-driven decisions to optimize profitability and growth.
Example: The income statement for EcoTech’s first year of operation is as follows:
This statement highlights our company’s profitability and overall financial health during the first year of operation.
A cash flow statement is a crucial part of a financial business plan that shows the inflows and outflows of cash within your business. It helps you monitor your company’s liquidity, ensuring you have enough cash on hand to cover operating expenses, pay debts, and invest in growth opportunities.
By including a cash flow statement in your business plan, you demonstrate your ability to manage your company’s finances effectively.
Example: The cash flow statement for EcoTech’s first year of operation is as follows:
Operating Activities:
Investing Activities:
Financing Activities:
This statement demonstrates EcoTech’s ability to generate positive cash flow from operations, maintain sufficient liquidity, and invest in growth opportunities.
Section | Description | Example |
---|---|---|
Executive Summary | Brief overview of the business plan | Overview of EcoTech and its mission |
Overview & Objectives | Outline of company's goals and strategies | Market leadership in sustainable technology |
Company Description | Detailed explanation of the company and its unique selling proposition | EcoTech's history, mission, and vision |
Target Market | Description of ideal customers and their needs | Environmentally conscious consumers and businesses |
Market Analysis | Examination of industry trends, customer needs, and competitors | Trends in eco-friendly technology market |
SWOT Analysis | Evaluation of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats | Strengths and weaknesses of EcoTech |
Competitive Analysis | In-depth analysis of competitors and their strategies | Analysis of GreenTech and EarthSolutions |
Organization & Management | Overview of the company's structure and management team | Key roles and team members at EcoTech |
Products & Services | Description of offerings and their unique features | Energy-efficient lighting solutions, solar chargers |
Marketing & Sales | Outline of marketing channels and sales strategies | Digital advertising, content marketing, influencer partnerships |
Logistics & Operations | Details about daily operations, supply chain, inventory, and quality control | Partnerships with manufacturers, quality control |
Financial Projections | Forecast of revenue, expenses, and profit for the next 3-5 years | Projected growth in revenue and net profit |
Income Statement | Summary of company's revenues and expenses over a specified period | Revenue, Cost of Goods Sold, Gross Profit, Net Income |
Cash Flow Statement | Overview of cash inflows and outflows within the business | Net Cash from Operating Activities, Investing Activities, Financing Activities |
1. Be clear and concise: Keep your language simple and straightforward. Avoid jargon and overly technical terms. A clear and concise business plan is easier for investors and stakeholders to understand and demonstrates your ability to communicate effectively.
2. Conduct thorough research: Before writing your business plan, gather as much information as possible about your industry, competitors, and target market. Use reliable sources and industry reports to inform your analysis and make data-driven decisions.
3. Set realistic goals: Your business plan should outline achievable objectives that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Setting realistic goals demonstrates your understanding of the market and increases the likelihood of success.
4. Focus on your unique selling proposition (USP): Clearly articulate what sets your business apart from the competition. Emphasize your USP throughout your business plan to showcase your company’s value and potential for success.
5. Be flexible and adaptable: A business plan is a living document that should evolve as your business grows and changes. Be prepared to update and revise your plan as you gather new information and learn from your experiences.
6. Use visuals to enhance understanding: Include charts, graphs, and other visuals to help convey complex data and ideas. Visuals can make your business plan more engaging and easier to digest, especially for those who prefer visual learning.
7. Seek feedback from trusted sources: Share your business plan with mentors, industry experts, or colleagues and ask for their feedback. Their insights can help you identify areas for improvement and strengthen your plan before presenting it to potential investors or partners.
To help you get started on your business plan, we have created a template that includes all the essential components discussed in the “How to Write a Business Plan” section. This easy-to-use template will guide you through each step of the process, ensuring you don’t miss any critical details.
The template is divided into the following sections:
A business plan is a strategic document that outlines an organization’s goals, objectives, and the steps required to achieve them. It serves as a roadmap as you start a business , guiding the company’s direction and growth while identifying potential obstacles and opportunities.
Typically, a business plan covers areas such as market analysis, financial projections, marketing strategies, and organizational structure. It not only helps in securing funding from investors and lenders but also provides clarity and focus to the management team.
A well-crafted business plan is a very important part of your business startup checklist because it fosters informed decision-making and long-term success.
Understanding the importance of a business plan in today’s competitive environment is crucial for entrepreneurs and business owners. Here are five compelling reasons to write a business plan:
In today’s fast-paced business world, having a well-structured roadmap is more important than ever. A traditional business plan provides a comprehensive overview of your company’s goals and strategies, helping you make informed decisions and achieve long-term success. There are various types of business plans, each designed to suit different needs and purposes. Let’s explore the main types:
Type of Business Plan | Purpose | Key Components | Target Audience |
---|---|---|---|
Startup Business Plan | Outlines the company's mission, objectives, target market, competition, marketing strategies, and financial projections. | Mission Statement, Company Description, Market Analysis, Competitive Analysis, Organizational Structure, Marketing and Sales Strategy, Financial Projections. | Entrepreneurs, Investors |
Internal Business Plan | Serves as a management tool for guiding the company's growth, evaluating its progress, and ensuring that all departments are aligned with the overall vision. | Strategies, Milestones, Deadlines, Resource Allocation. | Internal Team Members |
Strategic Business Plan | Outlines long-term goals and the steps to achieve them. | SWOT Analysis, Market Research, Competitive Analysis, Long-Term Goals. | Executives, Managers, Investors |
Feasibility Business Plan | Assesses the viability of a business idea. | Market Demand, Competition, Financial Projections, Potential Obstacles. | Entrepreneurs, Investors |
Growth Business Plan | Focuses on strategies for scaling up an existing business. | Market Analysis, New Product/Service Offerings, Financial Projections. | Business Owners, Investors |
Operational Business Plan | Outlines the company's day-to-day operations. | Processes, Procedures, Organizational Structure. | Managers, Employees |
Lean Business Plan | A simplified, agile version of a traditional plan, focusing on key elements. | Value Proposition, Customer Segments, Revenue Streams, Cost Structure. | Entrepreneurs, Startups |
One-Page Business Plan | A concise summary of your company's key objectives, strategies, and milestones. | Key Objectives, Strategies, Milestones. | Entrepreneurs, Investors, Partners |
Nonprofit Business Plan | Outlines the mission, goals, target audience, fundraising strategies, and budget allocation for nonprofit organizations. | Mission Statement, Goals, Target Audience, Fundraising Strategies, Budget. | Nonprofit Leaders, Board Members, Donors |
Franchise Business Plan | Focuses on the franchisor's requirements, as well as the franchisee's goals, strategies, and financial projections. | Franchise Agreement, Brand Standards, Marketing Efforts, Operational Procedures, Financial Projections. | Franchisors, Franchisees, Investors |
Creating a comprehensive business plan can be intimidating, but business plan software can streamline the process and help you produce a professional document. These tools offer a number of benefits, including guided step-by-step instructions, financial projections, and industry-specific templates. Here are the top 5 business plan software options available to help you craft a great business plan.
1. LivePlan
LivePlan is a popular choice for its user-friendly interface and comprehensive features. It offers over 500 sample plans, financial forecasting tools, and the ability to track your progress against key performance indicators. With LivePlan, you can create visually appealing, professional business plans that will impress investors and stakeholders.
2. Upmetrics
Upmetrics provides a simple and intuitive platform for creating a well-structured business plan. It features customizable templates, financial forecasting tools, and collaboration capabilities, allowing you to work with team members and advisors. Upmetrics also offers a library of resources to guide you through the business planning process.
Bizplan is designed to simplify the business planning process with a drag-and-drop builder and modular sections. It offers financial forecasting tools, progress tracking, and a visually appealing interface. With Bizplan, you can create a business plan that is both easy to understand and visually engaging.
Enloop is a robust business plan software that automatically generates a tailored plan based on your inputs. It provides industry-specific templates, financial forecasting, and a unique performance score that updates as you make changes to your plan. Enloop also offers a free version, making it accessible for businesses on a budget.
5. Tarkenton GoSmallBiz
Developed by NFL Hall of Famer Fran Tarkenton, GoSmallBiz is tailored for small businesses and startups. It features a guided business plan builder, customizable templates, and financial projection tools. GoSmallBiz also offers additional resources, such as CRM tools and legal document templates, to support your business beyond the planning stage.
Software | Key Features | User Interface | Additional Features |
---|---|---|---|
LivePlan | Over 500 sample plans, financial forecasting tools, progress tracking against KPIs | User-friendly, visually appealing | Allows creation of professional-looking business plans |
Upmetrics | Customizable templates, financial forecasting tools, collaboration capabilities | Simple and intuitive | Provides a resource library for business planning |
Bizplan | Drag-and-drop builder, modular sections, financial forecasting tools, progress tracking | Simple, visually engaging | Designed to simplify the business planning process |
Enloop | Industry-specific templates, financial forecasting tools, automatic business plan generation, unique performance score | Robust, user-friendly | Offers a free version, making it accessible for businesses on a budget |
Tarkenton GoSmallBiz | Guided business plan builder, customizable templates, financial projection tools | User-friendly | Offers CRM tools, legal document templates, and additional resources for small businesses |
What is a good business plan.
A good business plan is a well-researched, clear, and concise document that outlines a company’s goals, strategies, target market, competitive advantages, and financial projections. It should be adaptable to change and provide a roadmap for achieving success.
The three main purposes of a business plan are to guide the company’s strategy, attract investment, and evaluate performance against objectives. Here’s a closer look at each of these:
Yes, you can write a business plan by yourself, but it can be helpful to consult with mentors, colleagues, or industry experts to gather feedback and insights. There are also many creative business plan templates and business plan examples available online, including those above.
We also have examples for specific industries, including a using food truck business plan , salon business plan , farm business plan , daycare business plan , and restaurant business plan .
Yes, a one-page business plan is a condensed version that highlights the most essential elements, including the company’s mission, target market, unique selling proposition, and financial goals.
A typical business plan ranges from 20 to 50 pages, but the length may vary depending on the complexity and needs of the business.
A business plan outline is a structured framework that organizes the content of a business plan into sections, such as the executive summary, company description, market analysis, and financial projections.
The five most common business plan mistakes include inadequate research, unrealistic financial projections, lack of focus on the unique selling proposition, poor organization and structure, and failure to update the plan as circumstances change.
A business plan should address questions such as: What problem does the business solve? Who is the specific target market ? What is the unique selling proposition? What are the company’s objectives? How will it achieve those objectives?
A business plan focuses on the overall vision, goals, and tactics of a company, while a strategic plan outlines the specific strategies, action steps, and performance measures necessary to achieve the company’s objectives.
Nonprofit business planning focuses on the organization’s mission, social impact, and resource management, rather than profit generation. The financial section typically includes funding sources, expenses, and projected budgets for programs and operations.
Image: Envato Elements
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The truth is, not all of us are writers and some of us don’t have time to spare. The good news is that we have a solution for you in the newest software designed for entrepreneurs and business owners who need a complete business plan–without having to write one.
If you would like to easily create a comprehensive business plan, you can join over 100,000 entrepreneurs and business leaders who’ve created their business plans with PlanBuildr.
Why do we offer PlanBuildr? We are business owners. We know your time is valuable. And, we know a comprehensive business plan is vital when it’s time to obtain funding or secure investors. Not all of us are writers, but we all know good value when we see it. Try PlanBuildr for free !
Do you even need one? Perhaps your organization excels at executing business strategies, keeping everything on track while you monitor performance in real-time.
That's the hope, isn't it?
But let's be honest. You wouldn't be here reading this article if you were confident in your existing annual operating planning process.
So let’s dive in and explore the step-by-step process to create your annual operating plan. This guide also includes a free planning template that will help you flesh out the plan’s details.
An annual operating plan (AOP) is a forward-looking blueprint that translates your business strategy into actionable steps. It’s a detailed roadmap that outlines your organization's strategic objectives, annual budget, detailed action plans, and resource allocation for a specific fiscal year.
With an AOP (also known as the annual business plan), you get a 10,000-foot view of how to allocate project resources and what risks to manage so you can execute key priorities. The plan serves as a bridge between high-level business goals and day-to-day operations.
💡What is the difference between a business strategy and an annual operating plan (AOP)? Business strategy outlines the choices you need to make for your organization to win. AOP involves budget allocation, timelines, and deliverables, empowering your team to execute your strategy successfully.
Organizations can realize the full benefits of an annual operating plan when it's tightly integrated with their strategic plan and financial budget. Here’s how:
An AOP ensures efficient resource allocation to projects and initiatives that align with the business strategy and financial budget. It helps you direct human, financial, and other assets toward achieving strategic objectives , minimizing resource waste by linking daily operations with long-term goals.
An annual operating plan provides a clear roadmap toward a shared vision and helps everyone in your team understand their roles in meeting business objectives. It promotes collaboration and communication while eliminating silos, fostering a unified, goal-driven work environment.
By defining specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and milestones in your AOP, you can easily assess whether the company is on track to achieve its goals. These metrics will help you identify areas that require immediate course correction to stay aligned with the overall strategy.
A well-rounded AOP provides you with data to help you make the right decisions. These insights empower proactive responses to opportunities and challenges, ensuring that all team actions are focused on outcomes.
Here’s a step-by-step guide for you to follow:
To kick off the planning process, assess the current state of your organization. Review the previous year's performance, considering various data sources, including financial statements and operational reports .
By doing a thorough business review , you ensure that your annual operating plan for next year is grounded in reality.
This helps you create a holistic plan that considers your business’s needs, strengths, and weaknesses. It also sets the stage for subsequent operational and financial planning —more on this later in the article.
👉How Cascade helps you:
With Cascade’s extensive library of 1,000+ integrations , you can centralize all your business data in one place. This simplifies data analysis and gives you easy access to past performance for an objective and thorough review.
The effectiveness of your annual operating plan (AOP) hinges on its alignment with your overarching company goals. Without it, you’re just creating a set of plans that, when executed, will have little to no impact on the overall business strategy.
To ensure organizational alignment , discuss with the CEO and CFO about key business priorities. Also, meet with other key stakeholders like department heads to gather insights on departmental needs and priorities.
Their input will help you set realistic and achievable objectives and also get them fully onboard when the time comes to put the plan in motion.
👉How Cascade helps you:
Cascade’s Metrics Library helps you tie metrics with your business objectives so you can have total visibility of what’s happening across the organization and achieve data-driven organizational alignment from top to bottom.
First, look at your revenue goals and identify how much will you actually need to sell to hit your targets.
Collaborate with department heads to assess the availability of manpower, equipment, and other resources. Verify whether these are sufficient to meet your set targets.
List out expenses, covering everything from materials and labor to marketing and new equipment. This exercise provides a clear picture of how much of resources you’ll need to allocate across various projects and functions to fulfill the objectives of your annual plan.
👉How Cascade helps you:
Cascade makes budget tracking possible with custom fields that can capture data and link them to objectives. The budget custom field is a numerical field type where you can set the allocated, forecast, and spent values. As you work on your plan, you can update the relevant values and see a progress bar of the allocation vs. actuals.
📹 Check out this short video and learn how to set your custom field for budget tracking:
In this step, you should define your metrics and go beyond mere measurement. Set concrete targets. Then, link these targets to initiatives , projects, and actions that will drive you toward those numbers.
Whether your organization operates with multiple departmental plans or a single, unified annual operating plan, ensure each department head outlines key projects and action plans aimed at achieving their annual targets.
When setting your KPIs to track progress, don’t forget to focus on both leading and lagging indicators .
Cascade’s free operational plan template gives you a clear and simple plan structure that you can use to easily collaborate with other department heads or team leaders. It’s pre-filled with examples and fully customizable to fit your needs.
📚 Are you an organization with multiple business units, each requiring its own AOP aligned with a central strategic plan? Explore our case study to see how a customer uses Cascade for strategic alignment between AOPs of different business units and the organization’s overarching 3-year strategy.
Ensure your AOP is well-rounded and considers the needs of different stakeholders . Have different departments review the plan to promote alignment and collaboration. This step also ensures everyone is on the same page from the start.
After an internal review, secure approval from decision-makers, such as board members or executives, to gain buy-in at the highest levels. This buy-in makes it easier to implement your annual plan.
Everyone involved must start working on their assigned initiatives. Ensure every team member knows that their duties are time-bound and remains accountable for completing them.
To make sure you're staying on course, it's vital to keep an eye on the progress through the KPIs established earlier. Monitoring progress against objectives ensures that you stay on track throughout the year.
💡 Tip: Set a regular schedule to review your annual operating plan. Depending on your needs, this could be weekly, monthly, quarterly, or semi-annually.
Cascade can help with monitoring through its user-friendly dashboards and comprehensive reporting capabilities.
Dashboards use chart widgets and graphs populated with real-time data so you can understand what’s happening in different time frames.
Cascade’s reports empower decision-making by providing the context of the data presented.
Cascade’s Operational Strategy Template is suitable for organizations of all sizes, and you can use it for free.
This template comes with pre-filled fields to guide you on where to enter your data so you can quickly set it up within minutes. You can choose your focus areas and write down the objectives. Then you can set the KPIs that will be measured and tracked as you progress with the plan.
Once set, designate responsible team members and use Cascade's real-time dashboard for monitoring.
It’s a tried and tested template that aligns your employees with the business strategy and provides clear guidelines on how to execute it.
You can’t simply make an AOP without tying it to the larger picture. Executing a plan without clear alignment to the overall business strategy is futile. Yes, your company is busy, but you’re getting nowhere.
With Cascade , you can centralize your strategy. By doing so, you can easily see how the execution aligns with your business strategy.
With its dynamic dashboards, real-time reports, and various other features, you can create seamless plans, execute them, and not worry that they’re being completed in silos. Every action your teams take, and every small goal they achieve, is connected to a bigger strategy that helps achieve your organization’s long-term vision.
Want to give it a try? Sign up today for free or book a 1:1 product tour with one of Cascade’s strategy experts.
What should be included in an annual operating plan .
A well-structured annual operating plan should include:
Annual operating plans and budgets are both financial planning tools used to manage performance. An AOP is a comprehensive blueprint that includes your overarching goals and the details to execute them, including the financial and human resources needed.
On the other hand, CFOs use budgets to focus mostly on the financial aspect of the organization’s plan and are highly numbers-driven. They provide detailed projections of revenue, expenses, and cash flows but lack the strategic depth of AOPs. Unlike AOPs, they’re also less flexible once approved and are primarily intended for financial and accounting teams.
Your toolkit for strategy success.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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:
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.
Here is what an operations plan example might look like:
The XYZ Company will require the following resources to operate:
The XYZ Company will use the following processes and procedures to get work done:
The following people will be responsible for carrying out these tasks:
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.
A few key things to remember when writing your operations plan:
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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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 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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Use this free Operational Plan Template for Word to manage your projects better.
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.
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.
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 .
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 .
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.
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.
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 .
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.
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.
Note any potential risks, assumptions and time or resource constraints that might affect your business operations.
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.
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.
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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Praburam Srinivasan
Growth Marketing Manager
June 27, 2024
Every business starts with an idea, but it takes disciplined execution to bring it to life. That’s why operational plans are indispensable—they require you to think about the steps and resources you need to make your vision come true. By writing down these processes, you create a roadmap for your organization and empower your teams to work together towards the same goal.
There are lots of components that make up an operational plan—from your business objectives and market analysis to your operational strategy and budget. You need to add clear details, tasks, and assignments for your plan to be useful.
The good news is you don’t need to start from scratch. Use an operational plan template to outline and manage the day-to-day activities and processes of your business, ensuring that you have the capacity to complete tasks efficiently and on time. With the right tools in hand, like Word or ClickUp templates, businesses of any size can create effective operational plans tailored to their individual needs.
In this article, we’ll explore 10 customizable and simple operational plan templates.
What makes a good operational plan template, 1. clickup annual operational plan template, 2. clickup business plan template, 3. clickup business requirements template, 4. clickup business continuity plan template, 5. clickup business development plan template, 6. clickup business roadmap template, 7. clickup compliance project plan template, 8. clickup contingency plan template, 9. clickup action plan template, 10. microsoft word business operational plan template.
An operational plan template is a document designed to help you turn your business strategy into action. It includes pre-designed pages, lists, and tables that you can fill in with details like:
Depending on the size and scope of your organization, operational plans can vary in complexity and length. That’s why you need to find a template that gives you flexibility in making it your own—and we’re here to help you do just that.
A good operational plan template is customizable to fit your specific needs. It offers you several ways to view, sort, and organize your data, and makes it easy for you to track responsibilities and progress. It provides visual cues and clear and concise instructions on how to fill out each section and page.
The best operational plan templates offer an intuitive, user-friendly experience so that anyone using them for the first time can easily navigate them. Think of how people in your organization will use the plan: Will they want to see your progress at a glance? Do they need to see workload distribution among your team? Choose a template with features that support those needs.
You also want your operational plan template to be able to scale with your organization as you grow. Choose a template that lets you adjust and update your plans without needing to start from scratch every time.
Whether you’re looking for an annual operational plan template or a simple project tracker , there are plenty of options available. Here we’ve rounded up 10 of the best templates in Word and ClickUp that you can use to create effective operational plans.
This Operational Plan Template by ClickUp helps you strategically plan your business by outlining processes , clearly defining individual responsibilities, and tracking your progress toward your goals. It’s designed to help you monitor all the moving parts of setting up a business.
With this ClickUp operation plan template, you get a range of view options. Use the List view for maximum flexibility in grouping and sorting tasks, and arranging tasks by priority.
Switch to Board View to examine Plan Phases: planning, implementation, monitoring, and management. Use other views like Gantt, Timeline, and Workload to visualize dependencies, keep track of schedules, and spread out work across your team.
Do more with this template using custom fields. These fields let you assign responsibilities to a team, add information and resources to a task, and update a project’s progress.
The ClickUp Business Plan Template is an excellent tool to help entrepreneurs move from ideation to launch. Start documenting your business strategy by going through the topics provided in the Topics List View. Add notes, files, and tasks to sections on your company background, market analysis, sales and marketing strategy, operational strategy, and milestones.
Each section has pre-filled tasks with short descriptions to help you flesh out the details of your business plan. For example, under the Company Background section, you have four “tasks” to fill out—The Team, Overview, Mission, and Vision.
Launching a business gets hectic pretty quickly, so use the Board and Timeline views to keep track of tasks and deadlines. And when you’re ready to zoom out and see what you’ve written, head over to the Business Plan Doc view, which presents the outputs of each section and task in one clean, professional document.
The ClickUp Business Requirements Template outlines the necessary steps and resources for an end solution to fulfill your business needs. For example, if you’re looking for an agency to help you build an app, you’d use a Business Requirements Document (BRD) to explain what you need, why you need it, and how the agency can help you. This helps you get buy-in from your company’s decision-makers, determine the project’s scope, and get all parties aligned on timelines, budgets, goals, and expectations.
This useful business requirements template starts with a list of subpages, and each one comes with brief instructions for filling it out. For example, the Project Objectives subpage comes with a note asking you to include the project’s purpose, current processes, challenges, and reasons for the undertaking.
It recommends using the SMART goals format (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound). Other subpages also come with tables that you can easily fill out.
When the unexpected happens, don’t be caught without a plan. The ClickUp Business Continuity Plan Template helps you plan how to manage risks in the event of a disruption to your business operations. This includes mapping out the steps you need to take in the event of a natural disaster, power outage, cyber attack, or other unforeseen (and unfortunate) events.
This template covers the core parts of a business continuity system—priorities, continuity coverage, and guiding principles. Dive into the details of your plan with a Priorities List view, a consolidated List view, and a Board view. Quickly spot tasks across different categories and progress stages with the use of distinct color coding.
With this template’s intuitive and minimalist design, you can focus on the crucial steps and resources to keep your business sailing through a storm (literal or figurative!).
Track your short-term and long-term business goals with this ClickUp Business Development Plan Template for beginners. The template dedicates one subpage each for operations, marketing, finance, and people, as well as an executive summary .
Each subpage gives you a structure to guide you in writing down your plans. For example, the Operations subpage comes with tables for facilities and equipment costs and also shares an example of a process map . The Financial Plan subpage gives you a template for projecting cash flow, forecasting your balance sheet, and running a break-even analysis.
Make this template your own, whether you’re planning for a short-term or long-term business development goal.
Avoid falling prey to fuzzy strategy syndrome by documenting your business roadmap . Use this ClickUp Business Roadmap Template to record your strategy, focus on your North Star, and say “no” to tactics that don’t align with your vision .
The ClickUp Business Roadmap Template helps you create a high-level strategic document that communicates your goal and how you plan to get there. It sets expectations for every team in your business and maps out project initiatives to strategic goals. Your team can collaborate on projects in List, Gantt, and Timeline views, helping to streamline communication and collaboration.
When you’re ready to dive into the details of your roadmap, use this template’s custom fields to add long text descriptions and upload files. And whenever you complete a subtask, checklist, or comment, the template automatically updates a progress bar, showing you how close you’re getting to reaching your goal.
Complying with legal and industry rules and standards involves keeping track of a lot of documents and tasks. This ClickUp Compliance Project Plan Template ensures nothing slips through the cracks as you work on your compliance project.
The template is organized into sections for regulatory, HR, and data compliance. Start by using forms for collecting information on various compliance requirements. You can use the form’s preset questions and add or delete items as you need. The answers will show up in the List view, where you can group, sort, explain, and assign each requirement. Track priorities, task statuses, point persons, and due dates in Board view as your compliance project progresses.
To provide more context to each requirement, use custom fields to fill in details like performance metrics and consequences of non-compliance. The template also has dropdown fields with pre-filled options—for example, fields for compliance threat category and degree of compliance.
No project goes off exactly as you imagine—even when you follow your plan to the letter. An employee goes on emergency leave, your website crashes and the WiFi stops working. For times like these, you need a plan B. And you can create it using the ClickUp Contingency Plan Template .
The ClickUp Contingency Plan Template offers three views that let you list down events, prioritize them based on risk level, and track progress across planning stages. When you add a task, the template automatically creates custom fields, such as the event’s risk level, likelihood, and potential impact on your organization. There are also fields for you to describe the preparations you’ve made to mitigate risk internally and provide details about your response plan.
Bonus: Contingency planning templates !
The ClickUp Action Plan Template is a colorful whiteboard template for reviewing an action plan daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly. You can add files from within ClickUp or from your device, or import them from G Suite or Figma. You can also embed YouTube videos and ClickUp tasks, making this template interactive, collaborative, and anything but boring!
This media-rich template gives you the space and flexibility you need for creating action plans that come with lots of contextual information. Zoom out for a bird’s eye view of your progress or zoom in to break down action plans into small steps. You can also use this Action Plan Template to assign tasks, track progress, set deadlines, and add notes.
Create a professional document with a Microsoft Word Operational Plan Template, such as this business plan template that gives you step-by-step instructions for creating a comprehensive plan. It comes with formatted text and simple layouts so you can focus on the content more than the presentation.
If you want more creative control, though, this template is completely customizable. Plus, it lets you add animations and transitions, as well as photos, videos, and graphics. Once you’re done, you can share and publish the doc with a few quick clicks.
Boost your chances of reaching your operational goals by creating an effective operational plan. With the right tools and templates, you can easily create a tailored document that helps you track your operational planning process and projects.
We hope our list of 10 simple operational plan templates has helped you find the perfect template for your needs!
Try them out by setting up a free ClickUp Workspace !
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Need support creating your business plan? Check out these business plan examples for inspiration and guidance.
Any aspiring entrepreneur researching how to start a business will likely be advised to write a business plan. But few resources provide business plan examples to really guide you through writing one of your own.
Here are some real-world and illustrative business plan examples to help you craft your business plan .
The business plan examples in this article follow this template:
Your executive summary is a page that gives a high-level overview of the rest of your business plan. While it appears at the beginning, it’s easiest to write this section last, as there are details further in the report you’ll need to include here.
In this free business plan template , the executive summary is four paragraphs and takes a little over half a page. It clearly and efficiently communicates what the business does and what it plans to do, including its business model and target customers.
You might repurpose your company description elsewhere, like on your About page , social media profile pages, or other properties that require a boilerplate description of your small business.
Soap brand ORRIS has a blurb on its About page that could easily be repurposed for the company description section of its business plan.
You can also go more in-depth with your company overview and include the following sections, like in this business plan example for Paw Print Post:
This section outlines how you registered your business —as an LLC , sole proprietorship, corporation, or other business type : “Paw Print Post will operate as a sole proprietorship run by the owner, Jane Matthews.”
“Paw Print Post sells unique, one-of-a-kind digitally printed cards that are customized with a pet’s unique paw prints.”
“Paw Print Post operates primarily in the pet industry and sells goods that could also be categorized as part of the greeting card industry.”
“Jane Matthews, the founder of Paw Print Post, has a long history in the pet industry and working with animals, and was recently trained as a graphic designer. She’s combining those two loves to capture a niche in the market: unique greeting cards customized with a pet’s paw prints, without needing to resort to the traditional (and messy) options of casting your pet’s prints in plaster or using pet-safe ink to have them stamp their ’signature.’”
“Jane will have Paw Print Post ready to launch at the Big Important Pet Expo in Toronto to get the word out among industry players and consumers alike. After two years in business, Jane aims to drive $150,000 in annual revenue from the sale of Paw Print Post’s signature greeting cards and to have expanded into two new product categories.”
“Jane Matthews is the sole full-time employee of Paw Print Post but hires contractors as needed to support her workflow and fill gaps in her skill set. Notably, Paw Print Post has a standing contract for five hours a week of virtual assistant support with Virtual Assistants Pro.”
Your mission statement may also make an appearance here. Passionfruit shares its mission statement on its company website, and it would also work well in its example business plan.
The market analysis consists of research about supply and demand , your target demographics, industry trends, and the competitive landscape. You might run a SWOT analysis and include that in your business plan.
Here’s an example SWOT analysis for an online tailored-shirt business:
You’ll also want to do a competitive analysis as part of the market research component of your business plan. This will tell you which businesses you’re up against and give you ideas on how to differentiate your brand. A broad competitive analysis might include:
This section of your business plan describes your offerings—which products and services do you sell to your customers? Here’s an example for Paw Print Post that explains its line of custom greeting cards, along with details on what makes its products unique.
It’s always a good idea to develop a marketing plan before you launch your business. Your marketing plan shows how you’ll get the word out about your business, and it’s an essential component of your business plan as well.
The Paw Print Post focuses on four Ps: price, product, promotion, and place. However, you can take a different approach with your marketing plan. Maybe you can pull from your existing marketing strategy , or maybe you break it down by the different marketing channels. Whatever approach you take, your marketing plan should describe how you intend to promote your business and offerings to potential customers.
The Paw Print Post example considered suppliers, production, facilities, equipment, shipping and fulfillment, and inventory. This includes any raw materials needed to produce the products.
The financial plan provides a breakdown of sales, revenue, profit, expenses, and other relevant financial metrics related to funding and profiting from your business.
Ecommerce brand Nature’s Candy’s financial plan breaks down predicted revenue, expenses, and net profit in graphs.
It then dives deeper into the financials to include:
You can use a financial plan spreadsheet to build your own financial statements, including income statement, balance sheet, and cash-flow statement.
Customer segmentation means dividing your target market into groups based on specific characteristics. These characteristics can be demographics, psychographics, behavior, or geography. Your business plan will provide detailed information on each segment, like its size and growth potential, so you can show why they are valuable to your business.
Airsign , an eco-friendly vacuum cleaner company, faced the challenge of building a sustainable business model in the competitive home appliance market. They identified three key customer personas to target:
The company utilized Shopify’s customer segmentation tools to gain insights and take action to target them. Airsign created targeted segments for specific marketing initiatives.
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The appendix provides in-depth data, research, or documentation that supports the claims and projections made in the main business plan. It includes things like market research, finance, résumés, product specs, and legal documents.
Readers can access detailed info in the appendix, but the main plan stays focused and easy to read. Here’s an example from a fictional clothing brand called Bloom:
Appendix: Bloom Business Plan
This lean business plan is meant to be high level and easy to understand at a glance. You’ll want to include all of the same sections in one-page business plan, but make sure they’re truncated and summarized:
A startup business plan is for a new business. Typically, these plans are developed and shared to secure funding . As such, there’s a bigger focus on the financials, as well as on other sections that determine viability of your business idea—market research, for example:
Your internal business plan is meant to keep your team on the same page and aligned toward the same goal:
A strategic, or growth, business plan is a big-picture, long-term look at your business. As such, the forecasts tend to look further into the future, and growth and revenue goals may be higher. Essentially, you want to use all the sections you would in a normal business plan and build upon each:
Your feasibility business plan is sort of a pre-business plan—many refer to it as simply a feasibility study. This plan essentially lays the groundwork and validates that it’s worth the effort to make a full business plan for your idea. As such, it’s mostly centered around research:
Nonprofit business plans are used to attract donors, grants, and partnerships. They focus on what their mission is, how they measure success, and how they get funded. You’ll want to include the following sections in addition to a traditional business plan:
Building a good business plan serves as a roadmap you can use for your ecommerce business at launch and as you reach each of your business goals. Business plans create accountability for entrepreneurs and synergy among teams, regardless of your business model .
Kickstart your ecommerce business and set yourself up for success with an intentional business planning process—and with the sample business plans above to guide your own path.
How do i write a simple business plan.
To write a simple business plan, begin with an executive summary that outlines your business and your plans. Follow this with sections detailing your company description, market analysis, organization and management structure, product or service, marketing and sales strategy, and financial projections. Each section should be concise and clearly illustrate your strategies and goals.
The best business plan format presents your plan in a clear, organized manner, making it easier for potential investors to understand your business model and goals. Always begin with the executive summary and end with financial information or appendices for any additional data.
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In today’s business environment, clear and consistent communication enables your team to have a shared understanding of the status and direction of your product. To this end, an operating plan collects your strategic objectives in one place, allowing everyone to grasp what they need to do, and how the product will remain successful.
In this article you will learn what a product operating plan is, how it can help you achieve your objectives, and best practices for effectively implementing one within your project team.
A product operating plan is a document that outlines the strategic actions your team will take to achieve a specific goal. Most operating plans only cover a period of one to two years and serve a crucial role in the product development process . You can expect your operating plan to include budgets, resource allocation, timelines, and key performance indicators (KPIs).
The operating plan moves away from the big picture vantage point of vision and strategy, towards a more granular and tactical plan for the execution of product strategy.
The operating plan helps product managers assess the impact of changing business priorities and customer needs on the product roadmap . Product managers can use the operating plan as a tool to factor in and communicate changes across the organization, allowing the product development process to remain agile.
An operating plan seeks to outline your product strategy to guide decisions and deliver on your stated goals. The operating plan comprises of the following:
To better understand what goes into an effective operating plan we will breakdown each step and discuss best practices for approaching the following:
Aligning with the strategy and vision of the product, selecting and tracking the product metrics.
The product goals derive from the product vision and strategy. To define these you should:
In order to align with the product strategy and vision, one should:
Identifying and tracking the right metrics is key to the success of any product and therefore the product team. Below are the steps to identify and track the right product metrics:
A product operating plan provides you with an instrument to ensure your product will deliver on the stated vision, strategy, and goals. However, the success of your operating plan depends upon your ability to manage and monitor it throughout the course of the product lifecycle. Proper management of the operating plan includes:
Adjusting and/or pivoting course, keeping stakeholders aligned.
You can measure the success of a product operating plan by developing product metrics which allow you to quantify and track the progress of the plan. Also, having a visual representation of the metrics allows you to make better interpretations and display your progress visually.
Product metrics let you determine whether a product operates to plan or not. When your team performs as planned, there’s no need for further adjustment.
However, when the team misses, or finds themselves falling short of the agreed upon target, you need to take corrective action and pivot course.
Here, corrective action could come from aligning or augmenting resources, changing the budget allocation, or moving around the tasks based on the dependencies in the plan.
Because the operating plan has many moving parts and stakeholders involved, you need to ensure that you have the buy-in from all the stakeholders involved.
The best practices for ensuring stakeholder buy-in include:
As with anything, challenges will arise while working with a product operating plan. Rather than allowing these to grow into a bigger problem, you should work to mitigate following issues before they impact the health of your product:
Communication challenges, visibility restraints.
Similar to the product manager role, the product operations or operating plan team has to work without direct authority, or people management responsibilities. You should be aware of this while trying to push the team towards your deliverables and use the operating plan as an influencing tool.
Communication is key to maintaining the flow of delivery across the product lifecycle. Insufficient communication or communication gaps can result in teams and stakeholders missing out on necessary changes or tasks. These knowledge gaps could result in misalignment, which impacts the product delivery timelines, as well as the scope.
Since the product operations team is a level above the product management, the product operations team may have limited visibility of the roadmap, customer needs, or the technical architecture/design information.
Below is an example of an operating plan that provides an illustration of what the process might look like for you. The operating plan focuses on two main steps:
Product operating plan components.
To provide a mobile based shopping experience for a retail grocery store shopper (in addition to in store shopping which is currently available)
Product goal(s):
To help you get started on your own operating plan, use this template . The template includes all the key parameters that need to be tracked and mobilized in order to make the product operating plan successful.
The product operating plan is a key component of the product development and delivery lifecycle. Having a product operating plan allows you to outline the tactical steps and ensure successful product delivery and tracking of your product.
The product operating plan also fosters alignment with the vision, stakeholder buy-in, and sets the product and the product organization up for success.
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In 2010, sean bandawat acquired jacob bromwell, a specialty housewares company that's been in existence since 1819. here, he shares his operational plan, focusing on his strategy to turn the company into a profitable business..
In most cases , entrepreneurs begin tackling the challenge of writing a business plan before the business exists. Doing that, of course, means that your plan will focus much more on the potential of the business and how you, as the entrepreneur, plan to take advantage of those opportunities. But, if you are writing a business plan for a 192-year-old business that you’ve just acquired, like Sean Bandawat did in 2010, with the intent to turn a money-losing operation into a cash cow, you’ll need to focus on an area neglected in many business plans produced by entrepreneurs: the Operating Plan.
The operating plan is the section of your business plan where you dig into more of the nuts and bolts of your business, areas like: production/manufacturing, inventory, and distribution. In other words, this is the time where you put aside the conceptual aspects of your business to get your hands dirty in terms of writing out the specific of how you’re going to make your product, store it, and then ship it out to your customers.
The topic you cover in your operational plan will vary based on the kind of business you run. For instance, if you are starting a retail business, you will want to think about things like inventory and distribution while a software company may be more focused on securing office space and computer equipment. Again, the point is that you need to think about the kinds of details you’ll be facing from the day you open the doors of your business.
Take it from Bandawat, who, as an undergraduate business student at the University of Southern California, crafted a business plan that involved turning around the operations of Jacob Bromwell , a specialty housewares company that has been continuously manufacturing authentic campfire, kitchen, and fireplace products for families since 1819. Bandawat, who comes from a family of successful entrepreneurs, teamed up with his longtime friend, Eric Stanton, to tap money from friends and family to buy Jacob Brownwell. But before they closed the deal in May 2010—just after Bandawat graduated—they wrote a business plan that won top undergraduate honors from the USC Marshall School of Business.
The challenge for Bandawat and Stanton was that they wanted to continue to leverage the “Made in America” nature of their new company's products, which range from campfire popcorn poppers to chestnut roasters. That meant that, in crafting their operational plan, they needed to come up with specific strategies and actions they planned to take. “Taking over a business with 192 years of history presented very different challenges than creating a business from scratch,” says Bandawat. “So we relied on our advisory team to come up with a direction to take the company in.”
The key decision Bandawat and Stanton made in changing the operations of their business was to close the factory the company had been using in Michigan City, Indiana, and move the specialized equipment to a contract manufacturing facility in Glendale, California.
Bandawat and Stanton agreed to share their operational business plan with us as an example of how you, too, can come up with one for your business. You’ll see how they focused on concepts like operational efficiency, who their suppliers are, and how they planned to sell to new customers. “The key is to put something down and then start executing on it,” says Stanton. “And you’ll need to keep changing and updating it as you go and learn. You won’t know everything from the start.”
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We’ve rounded up the most useful collection of free organizational plan templates to record and track the goals and resource needs of your business or organization.
Included on this page, you’ll find a basic operational plan template , a nonprofit operational plan template , a three-year operational plan template , and a five-year operational plan template .
Download Basic Operational Plan Template Microsoft Excel | Microsoft Word
Use this basic, customizable operational plan template to create a detailed roadmap for your organization. With this template, the path to reaching your goals will be clear to all stakeholders, and team members will know exactly what tasks need to be completed and when.
Having efficient and clear processes in place is critical for reaching your organizational goals. Learn more in this guide to operational excellence principles .
Download Nonprofit Operational Plan Template Microsoft Excel | Microsoft Word
Nonprofit organizations often have complex, long-term strategic goals. This operational plan template for nonprofits will help you develop a clear set of tasks and accountability measures to keep everyone apprised of next steps. Use this template to identify your goals, establish a clear plan, set and track your budgets, assign stakeholders, and implement reporting protocols.
This guide to operations strategies will give you an overview of the steps necessary to develop a comprehensive plan for your organization.
Download Three-Year Operational Plan Template — Microsoft Excel
Your operational plan might include long-term tasks and deliverables. Use this operational plan template to chart your organization’s needs over a three-year period. Enter specific goals, delivery dates, responsibilities, and necessary resources on this customizable template to track progress and ensure that you are on your way to reaching your strategic goals.
Your business or organization might also benefit from an operational audit, which is a chance to conduct a deep dive into strategic planning and to increase accountability. See this comprehensive guide to operational audits to learn more and gain access to additional resources and templates.
Download Five-Year Operational Plan Template — Microsoft Excel
Long-term planning is a key element of any organization. This five-year operational plan template gives you a detailed look at the steps and resources needed to reach your goals. Track deliverables, responsible parties, and resources in this customizable template. This template also helps team members visualize long-term needs and stay on top of their responsibilities and timelines.
See this guide to operations management for more information, tips, tricks, and future trends in managing your organizational resources.
An operational plan template is a form that captures key details about a work plan. An operational plan includes specific actions and resources needed to reach certain milestones. It is more detailed and specific than a strategic or business plan.
Operational plans help project managers identify resource needs, maintain accountability, implement a reporting process, and maintain a budget.
Operational plan templates templates vary by type but typically include the following:
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Success in business is rarely accidental and certainly isn’t a matter of luck. It hinges on careful planning and a clear strategic vision of the organization. The foundation of this strategy is an annual operating plan, which serves as the blueprint for the effective execution of business plans and objectives. Think of it as a roadmap for your company, showing you where to go and how to get there.
But, how do you create one?
If you have yet to build an operational plan for your organization, this article will walk you through the process. Read on to understand how writing an effective one can benefit your business.
An annual operating plan (AOP), also known as an annual business plan , is a detailed document that outlines a business’s yearly objectives, action plans, and resource allocation for a specific fiscal year. A successful AOP:
With an operating plan in place, you will get a general picture of how things work (or are supposed to work). This will allow you to identify potential bottlenecks, optimize resource utilization, and make informed decisions to realize goals. Typically, the key players that contribute to what goes into the plan are the executives and heads of the finance, sales, marketing, and operations departments. But overall, the CEO is responsible for aligning all these strategies and goals into one cohesive annual operating plan.
Although an operating plan and a budget plan may be closely related as they both address financial structure, they are two different things. As previously explained, operating plans are the roadmaps that guide the company to success. Budget plans, on the other hand, are the financial allocations that help execute that roadmap. Essentially, the AOP defines what to accomplish, and the budget determines how to fund it realistically.
While there’s no one-size-fits-all operating plan template, here are the fundamental components when creating one:
By constructing a clear path for the year ahead, businesses can enhance their day-to-day operations and drive growth. More importantly, a well-crafted AOP offers several key benefits, such as:
An operating plan ensures everyone in your organization works towards one shared goal. Clearly defining the plan of action and who is responsible for making each step happen gives everyone a sense of purpose and direction and prevents duplication of efforts.
What you can measure, you can improve. Specific KPIs from the operation measure progress and evaluate the effectiveness of all business decisions. Thus providing helpful insights for course correction and optimization.
Through a comprehensive assessment of potential challenges that the business might encounter throughout the year, an AOP helps identify the risks and develop strategies to mitigate them. This proactive approach can protect your business from unforeseen setbacks.
By setting clear KPIs, businesses can accurately measure performance and identify areas for improvement. Regularly reviewing the AOP ensures the company is on track to achieve its goals.
First, ask yourself, how do you see your organization a year from now? Once the vision is clear, plan your operations around it. To accomplish this, follow these steps:
Begin by comparing your current situation to last year’s performance. Review how closely aligned the results are with your vision. What worked and what didn’t? Are there actions or programs that didn’t yield the outcomes you wanted? For example, a marketing campaign might not have generated the expected return on investment, or a product launch might not have boosted the company’s revenue. Take the learnings from the previous year, the good and bad, and use them to guide your planning for the upcoming year.
Pursuing a plan that is not aligned with the current market trend is pointless. Why? Because there is almost a one-hundred percent chance of its failure. Before building a plan, you must consistently monitor industry trends and competitor activities to identify potential opportunities and threats. Knowing this will inform your strategic direction and help you set realistic, achievable goals. Make sure to collaborate with the upper management to develop adaptable strategies to navigate market fluctuations.
A thorough SWOT analysis will provide valuable insights into your organization’s position relative to competitors.
Determine what you want to achieve in parallel with market conditions and internal capabilities. Then, formulate a strategy to help you achieve it. Identify the resources needed, set realistic timelines, and establish clear metrics for tracking progress. Most importantly, ensure your strategy is flexible enough to adapt to changes and challenges that may arise during the year.
Here are some examples of what goals should look like:
While some goals may take more than a year to achieve, it is important to set realistic and achievable plans that one financial year can cover in your AOP.
Based on the information you have gathered, build a detailed operating plan. Allocate necessary resources efficiently and assign specific responsibilities to team members to ensure everyone contributes to the end goal.
Do not forget your finances. Integrate your budget to ensure financial viability, aligning it with your goals and resource allocation. Once you have a framework, communicate the plan clearly to all stakeholders and adjust according to their insights.
The digital era has revolutionized how businesses plan and manage their operations by providing tools that automate tasks and enhance accuracy. For example, project management software allows teams to collaborate seamlessly and ensure that tasks are completed on schedule. Data analytics tools help businesses gather and analyze vast amounts of data to make informed decisions and predict future trends in seconds.
As such, you need to find solutions that maximize your team’s skills and talents. These could include artificial intelligence and machine learning programs, which automate routine tasks so employees can focus more on strategic activities.
Another investment you can make is board meeting software . This helps simplify meeting management and increase productivity by streamlining the scheduling, agenda-setting, and documentation processes. This digital board portal allows everyone to meet and discuss important matters without geographical barriers.
Implement the operating plan at the start of the new fiscal year. Make sure that everyone is well-informed about these goals by utilizing internal communication channels, such as emails and group chats. You may also organize a town hall to address any questions or concerns from the team. This step is critical to guarantee that all are aware of their roles, responsibilities, and commitments. Now is also the time to lay down individual and team KPIs to track performance and progress. Regularly review these KPIs through scheduled check-ins and progress meetings to ensure continued alignment with the plan.
No matter how intricate your plan is, the possibility of failing due to unforeseen circumstances such as unexpected market shifts, supply chain disruptions, regulatory changes, or technological failures is never zero. During these times, you must ensure that operations will continue smoothly by having robust contingency plans in place. Pinpoint areas critical to maintaining business continuity and conduct risk assessments to identify potential threats and their impact. Once risks are identified, develop your contingency plan, which can include these two important things:
In addition, you must ensure that your backup plan is flexible and adaptable to whatever comes your way.
Every business is unique, but having a good foundation in standard annual operating plans might be helpful when crafting a plan tailored to your needs. Here are sample AOPs of two different types of organizations so you know what to expect and include in yours:
Please note that these are only rough samples of common AOPs. Depending on your organization’s specifics, they can be more detailed and comprehensive. To gain insights, check out these examples of operating plans from different industries.
Rolling out your operational plans requires countless meetings to ensure everyone is informed and aligned. Convene offers a suite of features designed to enhance collaboration and streamline execution.
The leading board management software , Convene, provides live video conferencing capabilities that enable real-time discussions and decision-making — keeping the members connected and engaged regardless of location. Its secure online document library offers easy access to essential files and resources. At the same time, annotation tools allow for collaborative review and feedback directly on documents using their gadget of choice at the members’ convenience.
Another helpful feature is the board meeting software’s built-in e-signature function , which can facilitate an end-to-end sign-off workflow without leaving the app. This allows for a seamless and efficient approval process, ensuring all necessary documents for your operating plan are signed and finalized promptly.
Learn more about Convene’s key features that can help put your plans into action here or schedule a one-on-one demo with one of our experts to get a more personalized Convene experience today.
Jess is a Content Marketing Writer at Convene who commits herself to creating relevant, easy-to-digest, and SEO-friendly content. Before writing articles on governance and board management, she worked as a creative copywriter for a paint company, where she developed a keen eye for detail and a passion for making complex information accessible and enjoyable for readers. In her free time, she’s absorbed in the most random things. Her recent obsession is watching gardening videos for hours and dreaming of someday having her own kitchen garden.
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Venngage's operational plan templates offer a systematic approach to optimize business processes and achieve organizational goals. Streamline operations, allocate resources effectively, and enhance productivity with these customizable and professionally designed templates.
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Running a busy is no easy task. There are so many aspects that need to be put into consideration. High points are the outcome of hard work while low points test a company’s strength to overcome obstacles. A company’s management must determine lapses and find appropriate solutions to problems that weaken overall operations. This is why it’s important for a company to develop a plan examples .
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A free business plan will help a company identify strategies to improve employee performance and increase product sales. To do so, company meetings are conducted for significant members of the company to formally discuss such issues. They work to develop effective company plans to garner positive outcomes.
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A company personal plan is an official statement that typically consists of defined goals and plans for attaining them.
It could include an executive summary of business operations, employee performance, and other relevant matters. It promotes proper communication for business partners, stakeholders, and significant members of the company. A company plan is important to ensure that a business stays on course with its operations. It sets a direction for the company in terms of what it aims to achieve over a period of time. It also creates a vision for a company to constantly evolve in this ever-changing world.
A company plan can be based on different topics. simple Business plans could center on safety, security, strategy, or even investment. To write a company plan, determine the goals that you want to achieve. You can the attain these goals by developing a plan, a mission for the company to carry out.
A company plan should consist of significant information that can provide a clear layout of company strengths and objectives. A plan needs to contain a detailed review of important aspect of a business. This could be anything from the marketing plan to the company’s inventory. It’s also essential to state financial statements and other supporting information.
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Customer satisfaction is one of the main factors that keeps a company alive. After all, how can a business continue operations without clients and customers. With this in mind, companies work on developing a good marketing plan.
A marketing plan example plays a significant role in developing a business plan. It covers everything from your target market to your marketing strategies. It also allows a company to constantly grow and develop in the industry. A solid marketing plan will help you establish your brand and achieve a good following of loyal customers. The primary goal of a marketing plan is to put yourself out there. You can do so through good advertising. A company website and publicity gimmicks can easily gather an audience.
A marketing plan works on making your company stand out amidst the long list of competitors as well. Without a proper marketing plan, you company will fall flat on the public radar. You need to consistently switch up your annual marketing plan to gain attention and see an increase in sales.
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Create a study plan for final exams in high school
Develop a project timeline for a middle school science fair.
How this versatile tool can help you identify and remedy areas of need in your manufacturing processes
A corrective action plan (CAP) is a systematic approach used to identify, investigate, and rectify deviations from established standards within a manufacturing process. Along with enhancing product quality and process efficiency, CAPs foster a culture of continuous improvement within manufacturing organizations. They can also drive efficient innovation and sustainable growth by encouraging proactive problem-solving and collaboration across teams.
A successful CAP will serve as your organization’s roadmap for addressing non-conformances, preventing recurrence, and most importantly, enhancing product quality and customer satisfaction.
Given the interconnected nature of manufacturing, you can only alter one area of productivity by impacting several others. Thankfully, corrective action planning lets you discern how manipulating one aspect of your business will influence other workflows, departments, and processes.
In other words, a well-crafted corrective action plan will enable you to effectively remedy a challenge without inadvertently creating new downstream problems.
A corrective action plan is a systematic approach used to identify, investigate, and rectify deviations from established standards within a manufacturing process.
It will serve as your organization’s roadmap for addressing non-conformances, preventing recurrence, and, most importantly, enhancing product quality and customer satisfaction.
Given the interconnected nature of manufacturing, you can only alter one area of productivity by impacting several others.
Thankfully, corrective action planning lets you discern how manipulating one aspect of your business will influence other workflows, departments, and processes.
Before diving into the specifics of creating a CAP, let’s explore some real-world examples that showcase the versatility of this planning tool.
Suppose that a batch of your products falls short of quality standards during inspection. Through a corrective action planning process, your team can analyze the root cause of the defects, which may include an issue with the inputs (i.e., faulty components or subpar raw materials) or a problem with one of your machines. Once you’ve identified the issue, you can correct it.
Here’s another corrective action plan example: Let’s say that one of your suppliers constantly delivers subpar materials. In such a scenario, your CAP may involve renegotiating contracts, sourcing alternative suppliers, or implementing stricter quality control measures at the receiving end.
Although corrective action plans are, by their nature, internal tools, you may often have to look outward for the solution, especially when you identify an issue with your input components and raw materials.
If your production processes are inefficient or prone to frequent errors, a CAP could entail redesigning workflows, retraining staff, upgrading legacy technology, or implementing automation could also help streamline operations.
In any corrective action plan example, the CAP itself helps provide your team with an organized, structured mechanism for identifying the root cause of deficiencies, remedying them, and achieving continuous improvement.
Other important use cases for corrective action plans include the following:
The specific benefits that your organization unlocks through its corrective action planning will vary based on the scope and severity of each individual problem.
In general, though, the key is to remedy issues as quickly and thoroughly as possible.
1. problem statement.
First, you must define the issue you’ve encountered and how that problem deviates from your standards. Be specific and concise.
Next, determine the underlying factors contributing to the problem. Never assume that the issue has only a single cause.
Outline specific measures to address the root cause(s), including tasks, responsibilities, timelines, and the resources you’ll need. Each team member should know their specific role, as well as how the elements of the overall plan work together.
Execute your plan after getting buy-in from relevant stakeholders. Some implementation processes may only take a few weeks, whereas others, such as installing new equipment, can take months.
After implementation, its important to continuously monitor the resolution of all issues to confirm that they’ve been completely resolved. If they have only been reduced, but not fixed entirely, conduct another root cause analysis to determine what other factors are at play.
Implement preventive measures to mitigate the risk of recurrence of similar issues. For example, if your supplier was to blame for the challenges, monitor their performance more closely moving forward.
Maintain comprehensive records of your actions throughout the corrective action planning process. Detail the findings of your investigations, what you did in response, and the outcomes.
There are several ways in which your organization can leverage a CAP to drive positive outcomes:
By applying the versatility of the corrective action plan framework, you can support a wide array of organizational goals and better meet the needs of your customer base.
Creating a concise, focused CAP requires careful planning and execution.
Right from the start, be thorough in your root cause analysis to identify all underlying factors contributing to the problem. Then build on this knowledge by defining clear and measurable objectives. These best practices can help things go smoothly:
The success of your corrective action plan hinges on the thoroughness of your root cause analysis. You must fully understand the problem, alongside all of the potential factors that may be causing and exacerbating the issue.
It’s important to take your time at this stage — differentiating between an aggravating factor and a causal one can be a bit challenging unless you dig deep.
For instance, a machine breakdown can lead to a production shortfall, but it may not necessarily be the causal factor. In reality, the causal factor could instead be traced back to poor maintenance or excessive wear and tear.
If you opt for a quick fix, know that the underlying issue will still persist and likely manifest again. Under the proper corrective action plan, you’ll take actions that gets positive results: revamping your preventive maintenance protocols or upgrading your machinery. This way, you address the issue at its source instead of simply removing an aggravating factor.
If you need additional insights to help guide the creation of your corrective action plan, we’re ready to work with you.
At Epicor, our team of industry-focused, ERP solutions providers can provide you with the guidance and tools necessary to elevate your CAP workflows and enhance business efficiency.
Contact us today to get started.
Christine Hansen serves as the Director of Product Marketing at Epicor, where she applies over 20 years of industry expertise to drive inventive solutions for the manufacturing sector. She holds BAs in Spanish and business administration from Augsutana College (SD) and is based in Minneapolis, MN.
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Strategy. Most business strategies have an operations component. For example, if a train manufacturer develops a plan to expand revenue by 50% that plan will include a marketing, sales and operations component. The operations component of the plan would include procurement, manufacturing and logistics strategies that enable the firm to boost ...
Create a goal that everyone is motivated to complete with the resources available. Timely - Provide a deadline so everyone has a date they are working towards. Different departments will have different operational objectives. However, each department objective should help the company reach the main objective.
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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
An operational plan outlines the parameters for success and metrics to monitor the same. These metrics give you a clear picture of your progress at every stage to ensure you're moving as per the plan. They also highlight any potential red flags that can potentially derail the plan and need your attention. 5.
Tips on Writing a Business Plan. 1. Be clear and concise: Keep your language simple and straightforward. Avoid jargon and overly technical terms. A clear and concise business plan is easier for investors and stakeholders to understand and demonstrates your ability to communicate effectively. 2.
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.
Step 1: Do the initial research and analysis. To kick off the planning process, assess the current state of your organization. Review the previous year's performance, considering various data sources, including financial statements and operational reports. By doing a thorough business review, you ensure that your annual operating plan for next ...
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:
Here are a few steps you can take to create an effective operations plan: 1. Create a strategic plan. Creating a strategic plan before an operational plan can help you clearly outline long-term goals and expectations to ensure alignment with business processes, values and initiatives. Your operations plan can then help you accomplish the goals ...
Here's a step-by-step guide to help you create a robust operational plan for business plan. Define Objectives and Align with Strategic Goals: ... Examples of operational plans in business 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.
2. ClickUp Business Plan Template. Get your new business moving with this business plan template. The ClickUp Business Plan Template is an excellent tool to help entrepreneurs move from ideation to launch. Start documenting your business strategy by going through the topics provided in the Topics List View.
A business operating plan outlines the steps, employees, and resources a company needs to achieve a significant goal, such as an increase in revenue. These types of plans are often created annually. A project operating plan refers to a roadmap for a specific project. Timelines will vary based on the scope and size of the project.
Whatever approach you take, your marketing plan should describe how you intend to promote your business and offerings to potential customers. 6. Logistics and operations plan. The Paw Print Post example considered suppliers, production, facilities, equipment, shipping and fulfillment, and inventory.
The operating plan comprises of the following: Product goals and objectives — Define the product goals and objectives based on your product vision. Objectives should have clear deadlines and measurable outcomes that align with the business strategy. Milestone based plan — Create a milestone oriented plan to map your goals and objectives ...
You'll see how they focused on concepts like operational efficiency, who their suppliers are, and how they planned to sell to new customers. "The key is to put something down and then start ...
Download Five-Year Operational Plan Template — Microsoft Excel. Long-term planning is a key element of any organization. This five-year operational plan template gives you a detailed look at the steps and resources needed to reach your goals. Track deliverables, responsible parties, and resources in this customizable template.
Examples of Annual Operating Plans. Every business is unique, but having a good foundation in standard annual operating plans might be helpful when crafting a plan tailored to your needs. Here are sample AOPs of two different types of organizations so you know what to expect and include in yours: 1. Retail Business Annual Operating Plan Example. 2.
Here are some ways on how an operational plan for business plan can be defined: 1. An operational plan for simple business plan deals with the daily activities of the business. It helps prepare specific action plans that can be used to support the requirements, needs, and demands of the operations.
How to write an operational plan. Here is a list of steps you can follow to write an operational plan: 1. Review your strategic plan. Your operational plan is a tool that allows you to execute your strategic plan. The strategic plan outlines your long-term goals and the strategy you can use to achieve these goals.
Venngage's operational plan templates offer a systematic approach to optimize business processes and achieve organizational goals. Streamline operations, allocate resources effectively, and enhance productivity with these customizable and professionally designed templates. 1/5. Simple Modern Operational Plan Template operational plans.
Updated 30 July 2024. An operational plan is a plan that outlines the key objectives and goals of a company while also outlining how the company can achieve them. A clear and concise operational plan can help to ensure that projects stay on track and can help to improve day-to-day operations. If you're planning a career in business or ...
Customer satisfaction is one of the main factors that keeps a company alive. After all, how can a business continue operations without clients and customers. With this in mind, companies work on developing a good marketing plan. A marketing plan example plays a significant role in developing a business plan. It covers everything from your ...
Thankfully, corrective action planning lets you discern how manipulating one aspect of your business will influence other workflows, departments, and processes. Corrective Action Plan Examples. Before diving into the specifics of creating a CAP, let's explore some real-world examples that showcase the versatility of this planning tool.