Would you try a cross-country trip to an unfamiliar location without a map? Not likely if you want to avoid getting completely lost.
However, it is surprising how many businesses either don’t have or have a poorly designed strategic plan in place. The strategic plan is the roadmap for successfully growing your Oklahoma CPA firm.
What Does a Strategic Plan Do?
A business plan describes what you’d like to accomplish. A strategic plan is a process you follow to achieve those goals. At its simplest, strategic planning involves answering a few fundamental questions.
- Who and where are you as a company? What end goal is your business trying to achieve (besides making money)? Where are you as far as meeting that goal? What do you have in place already that is driving you towards your objective?
- Where do you want to be? What are your long-term and short-term goals?
- What will it take to achieve these objectives? What are the exact steps that need to be made regarding financial, staff, client, and equipment issues to get to where you want to be?
Answer these questions and you will have an idea of where you are and where you need to be. In other words, it’s your location and destination - a roadmap to your goals.
What are the Parts of the Strategic Planning Template?
These are a few things strategic plans need to have. Start by creating an outline or template of what you need to put your plan together. You can use this template to create the plan and repurpose it when re-evaluating your strategic plan.
- Mission Statement – Simply stated, this is why your company exists.
- SWOT – This is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It helps you see what opportunities you are best suited for, and what areas you need to improve on. This is the section for “what do you have” and “what will you need” analysis.
- Long-Term and Short-Term Goals – To fill out this section of your template, you will start with 5-year goals, then shorter-term goals. A finely detailed strategic plan can get down to monthly goals.
- Wants and Needs of Customers and Industry Trends – Identify your desired clients and ways to target them. What direction is the market headed? What are the key strengths and weaknesses of your competition?
- Actions – What specific actions will be taken to accomplish certain goals? For example, if a goal is to be more cloud-based, you might have the action to consult a third party vendor, such as Emsco Solutions, to make that happen. These actions are detailed and laid out on a timeline.
- Financial Plans – The actions in step five cannot happen in a vacuum. Financials need to be projected and planned.
Bottom Line
There are many reasons Oklahoma CPA firms do not have strategic plans in place. Many feel they are not necessary, there’s too little time, or they are doing well without one.
The fact is, when companies create a plan, with clear objectives and actions to achieve them, they will not get sidetracked or lost along the way. With a strategic planning template to follow, it is much easier to achieve your goals.
Do you have a template to help you with strategic planning? Let us know your thoughts in the Comments box below.
If you own or manage an Oklahoma CPA firm and would like to find out how technology can help you, be sure to download your free Information Technology Guide for Oklahoma City CPAs.
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