Planning is an essential part of every business, whether that is in the form of laying out a strategic framework, or making contingency plans for emergencies. Organizations that are not well-planned may be faced with serious consequences. The four main plans are strategic, tactical, operational, and contingency.
The four main plans of business are strategic, tactical, operational and contingency.
- Strategic planning looks at the long-term issues of the organization, and helps develop a plan for growth or change of business function. Goals developed at the strategic planning-level are often increased by dividing them into tactical and operational levels.
- Operations planning focuses on day-to-day issues, such as staffing levels or inventory quantities. Operational-level planning includes more detailed objectives with concrete deadlines and task assignments.
- Tactical planning is used to reach the goals set out by strategic and operational planning. Tactical planning includes short-term objectives and tasks designed to create specific results within a limited time span. Tactical plans often include operational level plans, and make way for the development of contingency level plans.
- Contingency-level planning includes more detailed action items with specified responses in case of unexpected events or emergencies, such as natural disasters or extreme weather events that disrupt business operations.
All four levels of planning are necessary for a business, or individual business projects to succeed.
Strategic Planning
Strategic planning is a management process for defining a company's long-term vision, direction, and actions. It is a strategy to figure out what potential business opportunities exist for the company. It helps to align different initiatives, and get people focused on a single goal.
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A good example of strategic planning is when an organization wants to expand their business globally. They will first need to define their current situation which might include mapping out all their resources, setting goals for what they want to achieve, and assessing how much resources are available in various regions. Once they have all this information, they can then create a map of where they want to expand and what steps need to be taken in order for them to get there.
Tactical Planning
Tactical planning is the practice of prioritizing tasks and delegating them to team members in a way that will get the task accomplished. Tactical planning means figuring out what needs to be done in order to achieve a goal, which team member can do it, and when they can get it done.
The tactical planning process begins with a strategic plan. The strategic plan establishes the goals for an organization or business unit. These goals are then translated into tactical plans by identifying processes, and necessary tasks required to achieve these goals. Tactical plans are assigned to individual team members who prioritize their tasks, in order for these tasks to be completed in the most effective manner possible.
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Tactical planning could be applied to a company's marketing strategy by considering what content to create, who its target demographic is, and how to reach them. For example, a company may decide that they want to create a piece of content on a specific topic or theme for an event. The next step would be figuring out which type of content they want to produce - written blog post, video, email campaign- and then deciding who their target audience is, and how they will reach them (topics on social media or through targeted ads).
Operational Planning
Operational planning is used to define the processes, procedures, and tasks that are needed to effectively coordinate the physical resources involved in an operation. In practice, operational planning is the process of deciding what tasks need to be done to create a product or service. It can be defined as the detailed routing of resources, efforts, and time in the production of goods and services.
Operational planning starts with identifying what needs to be done (building on tactical planning), then organizing these into chronological order. This means that it is necessary to know how long each task will take (based on previous experience) and how much staff, equipment, material will be needed for each task.
In order to do this, the organization needs to take into account four key factors:
1. The current demand
2. The current supply
3. The forecasted demand
4. The forecasted supply
Operational planning can be broken up into two categories: ongoing plans, and single-use plans.
Ongoing plans are procedures that are developed to create routine processes within a department, such as taking inventory, or filling out status reports.
Single-use plans are procedures that are designed to be used once. While parts of these single-use plans can be repeated in future projects, the main characteristic of a single-use plan is that it is used to complete an individual project. An example of a single-use plan would be a holiday marketing campaign, or a product launch party.
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An example of operational planning in practice can be seen in Disney's operations planning workflow.
They use their operational plan to make sure they are optimizing the company's resources through forecasting, scheduling, and alignment with organizational goals. This is done by creating full schedules for each department with predetermined production numbers, based on the requirements of the company's production plans.
Disney also utilizes resource management, which includes staffing levels, equipment maintenance, and the ability to streamline operations.
Contingency Planning
In the field of risk management, contingency planning is a strategy that organizations develop as a backup plan should they experience an event that disrupts their operations. This can be qualified as any situation where a company experiences a significant change in circ*mstances from a power outage, to a natural disaster, to a major cybersecurity breach.
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For example, a company might have a backup power generator that they can use if their building has no power for more than 12 hours. They might also have emergency lights, emergency exits, and emergency procedures that they were trained on before the building was built. But if there is no backup generator, and their building has no power for more than 24 hours, then they may need to evacuate and find other accommodations while the problem is solved.
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