business planning analysis tools

9 Strategic Planning Models and Tools for the Customer-Focused Business

Published: July 11, 2023

As the economist and business strategy guru, Michael Porter, says, “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

With strategic planning, businesses identify their strengths and weaknesses, choose what not to do, and determine which opportunities should be pursued. In sales operations, having a clearly defined strategy will help your organization plan for the future, set viable goals, and achieve them.

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So, how do you get started with strategic planning? You‘ll begin with strategic planning models and tools. Let’s take a look at nine of the most prominent ones here.

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Strategic planning models.

Strategic planning is used to set up long-term goals and priorities for an organization. A strategic plan is a written document that outlines these goals.

Don't confuse strategic planning and tactical planning . Strategic planning is focused on long-term goals, while tactical planning is focused on the short-term.

Here are a few strategic planning models you can use to get started.

1. The Balanced Scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard is one of the most prominent strategic planning models, tailored to give managers a comprehensive overview of their companies' operations on tight timelines. It considers both financial and operational metrics to provide valuable context about how a business has performed previously, is currently performing, and is likely to perform in the future.

The model plays on these concerns: time, quality, performance/service, and cost. The sum of those components amount to four specific reference points for goal-setting and performance measurement:

• Customer: How customers view your business
• Internal Process: How you can improve your internal processes
• Organizational Capacity: How your business can grow, adapt, and improve
• Financial: The potential profitability of your business

Those four categories can inform goals that are more thoughtful and focused while surfacing the most appropriate metrics with which you can use to track them. But the elements you choose to pursue and measure are ultimately up to you. As there's no definitive list, they will vary from organization to organization.

That being said, there‘s a universally applicable technique you can use when leveraging the model—creating a scorecard. This is a document that keeps track of your goals and how you apply them. Here’s an example of what a scorecard might look like:

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The Balanced Scorecard is ideal for businesses looking to break up higher-level goals into more specific, measurable objectives. If you're interested in translating your big-picture ambitions into actionable projects, consider looking into a Balanced scorecard software .

Example of the Balanced Scorecard

Let‘s imagine a B2B SaaS company that sells a construction management solution. It’s been running into trouble from virtually all angles. It‘s struggling with customer retention and, in turn, is hemorrhaging revenue. The company’s sales reps are working with very few qualified leads and the organization's tech stack is limiting growth and innovation.

The business decides to leverage a Balanced Scorecard approach to remedy its various issues. In this case, the full strategic plan—developed according to this model—might look like this:

• The company sets a broad financial goal of boosting revenue by 10% year over year.
• To help get there, it aims to improve its customer retention rate by 5% annually by investing in a more robust customer service infrastructure.
• Internally, leadership looks to improve the company's lead generation figures by 20% year over year by revamping its onboarding process for its pre-sales team.
• Finally, the business decides to move on from its legacy tech stack in favor of a virtualized operating system, making for at least 50% faster software delivery for consistent improvements to its product.

The elements listed above address key flaws in the company‘s customer perception, internal processes, financial situation, and organizational capacity. Every improvement the business is hoping to make involves a concrete goal with clearly outlined metrics and definitive figures to gauge each one’s success. Taken together, the organization's plan abides by the Balanced Scorecard model.

2. Objectives and Key Results

As its name implies, the OKR (objectives and key results) strategic planning model revolves around translating broader organizational goals into objectives and tracking their key results. The framework rests on identifying three to five attainable objectives and three to five results that should stem from each of them. Once you have those in place, you plan tactical initiatives around those results.

After you‘ve figured out those reference points, you determine the most appropriate metrics for measuring their success. And once you’ve carried out the projects informed by those ideal results, you gauge their success by giving a score on a scale from 0 to 1 or 0%-100%.

For instance, your goal might be developing relationships with 100 new targets or named accounts in a specific region. If you only were able to develop 95, you would have a score of .95 or 95%. Here's an example of what an OKR model might look like:

It's recommended that you structure your targets to land at a score of around 70% — taking some strain off workers while offering them a definitive ideal outcome. The OKR model is relatively straightforward and near-universally applicable. If your business is interested in a way to work towards firmly established, readily visible standards this model could work for you.

Example of the Objectives and Key Results

Let's consider a hypothetical company that makes educational curriculum and schedule planning for higher-education institutions. The company decides it would like to expand its presence in the community college system in California, something that constitutes an objective.

But what will it take to accomplish that? And how will the company know if it's successful? Well, in this instance, leadership within the business would get there by establishing three to five results they would like to see. Those could be:

• Generating qualified leads from 30 institutions
• Conducting demos at 10 colleges
• Closing deals at 5 campuses

Those results would lead to initiatives like setting standards for lead qualification and training reps at the top of the funnel on how to use them appropriately, revamping sales messaging for discovery calls, and conducting research to better tailor the demo process to the needs of community colleges.

Leveraging this model generally entails repeating that process between two and four more times, ultimately leading to a sizable crop of thorough, actionable, ambitious, measurable, realistic plans.

3. Theory of Change (TOC)

The Theory of Change (TOC) model revolves around organizations establishing long-term goals and essentially “working backward” to accomplish them. When leveraging the strategy, you start by setting a larger, big-picture goal.

Then, you identify the intermediate-term adjustments and plans you need to make to achieve your desired outcome. Finally, you work down a level and plan the various short-term changes you need to make to realize the intermediate ones. More specifically, you need to take these strides:

• Identify your long-term goals.
• Backward map the preconditions necessary to achieve your goal, and explain why they're necessary.
• Identify your basic assumptions about the situation.
• Determine the interventions your initiative will fulfill to achieve your goals.
• Come up with indicators to evaluate the performance of your initiative.
• Write an explanation of the logic behind your initiative.

Here's another visualization of what that looks like.

This planning model works best for organizations interested in taking on endeavors like building a team, planning an initiative, or developing an action plan. It's distinct from other models in its ability to help you differentiate between desired and actual outcomes. It also makes stakeholders more actively involved in the planning process by making them model exactly what they want out of a project.

It relies on more pointed detail than similar models. Stakeholders generally need to lay out several specifics, including information related to the company's target population, how success will be identified, and a definitive timeline for every action and intervention planned. Again, virtually any organization — be it public, corporate, nonprofit, or anything else — can get a lot out of this strategy model.

Example of the Theory of Change

For the sake of this example, imagine a business that makes HR Payroll Software , but hasn‘t been doing too well as of late. Leadership at the company feels directionless. They think it’s time to buckle down and put some firm plans in motion, but right now, they have some big picture outcomes in mind for the company without a feel for how they're going to get done.

In this case, the business might benefit from leveraging the Theory of Change model. Let‘s say its ultimate goal is to expand its market share. Leadership would then consider the preconditions that would ultimately lead to that goal and why they’re relevant.

For instance, one of those preconditions might be tapping into a new customer base without alienating its current one. The company could make an assumption like, “We currently cater to mid-size businesses almost exclusively, and we lack the resources to expand up-market to enterprise-level prospects. We need to find a way to more effectively appeal to small businesses.”

Now, the company can start looking into the specific initiatives it can take to remedy its overarching problem. Let's say it only sells its product at a fixed price point that suits midsize businesses much more than smaller ones. So the company decides that it should leverage a tiered pricing structure that offers a limited suite of features at a price that small businesses and startups can afford.

The factors the company elects to use as reference points for the plan's success are customer retention and new user acquisition. Once those have been established, leadership would explain why the goals, plans, and metrics it has outlined make sense.

If you track the process I‘ve just plotted, you’ll see the Theory of Change in motion. It starts with a big-picture goal and works its way down to specific initiatives and ways to gauge their effectiveness.

4. Hoshin Planning

The Hoshin Planning model is a process that aims to reduce friction and inefficiency by promoting active and open communication throughout an organization. In this model, everyone within an organization—regardless of department or seniority—is made aware of the company's goals.

Hoshin Planning rests on the notion that thorough communication creates cohesion, but that takes more than contributions from leadership. This model requires that results from every level be shared with management.

The ideal outcomes set according to this model are also conceived of by committee to a certain extent. Hoshin Planning involves management hearing and considering feedback from subordinates to come up with reasonable, realistic, and mutually understood goals.

The model is typically partitioned into seven steps:

• establishing a vision
• developing breakthrough objectives
• developing annual objectives
• deploying annual objectives
• implementing annual objectives
• conducting monthly and quarterly reviews
• conducting an annual review.

Note: The first three steps are referred to as the “catchball process.” It's where company leadership sets goals and establishes strategic plans to send down the food chain for feedback and new ideas. That stage is what really separates Hoshin Planning from other models.

Example of Hoshin Planning

For this example, let‘s imagine a company that manufactures commercial screen printing machines. The business has seen success with smaller-scale, retail printing operations, but realizes that selling almost exclusively to that market won’t make for long-term, sustainable growth.

Leadership at the company decides that it's interested in making an aggressive push to move up-market towards larger enterprise companies. However, before they can establish that vision, they want to ensure that the entire company is willing and able to work with them to reach those goals.

Once they‘ve set a tentative vision, they begin to establish more concrete objectives and send them down the management hierarchy. One of the most pressing activities they’re interested in pursuing is a near-comprehensive product redesign to make their machines better suited for higher volume orders.

They communicate those goals throughout the organization and ask for feedback along the way. After the product team hears their ideal plans, it relays that the product overhaul that leadership is looking into isn‘t viable within the timeframe they’ve provided. Leadership hears this and adjusts their expectations before doling out any sort of demands for the redesign.

Once both parties agree on a feasible timeline, they begin to set more definitive objectives that suit both the company‘s ambitions and the product team’s capabilities.

Strategic Plan Example

The strategic plan above is for a fictitious shoe company and outlines the way in which it'll differentiate itself within the market. It effectively uses each step in the strategic planning model framework and is written in a way to give a brief overview of how the company will enter the market and sustain longevity.

If you're working on a strategic planning model for an existing business, your plan will look similar, but have a few tweaks to the goals, including more goals about improving sales and processes. When drafting the action plan and evaluation parts of the plan, be sure to think tactically about the actions that will help you achieve the goals, and use your mission, vision, and values to guide the choices you make.

Strategic Planning Tools

There are additional resources you can use to support whatever strategic planning model you put in place. Here are some of those:

1. SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool and acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It's used to identify each of these elements in relation to your business.

This strategic planning tool allows you to determine new opportunities and which areas of your business need improvement. You'll also identify any factors or threats that might negatively impact your business or success.

2. Porter's Five Forces

Use Porter‘s Five Forces as a strategic planning tool to identify the economic forces that impact your industry and determine your business’ competitive position. The five forces include:

• Competition in the industry
• Potential of new entrants into the industry
• Power of suppliers
• Power of customers
• Threat of substitute products

To learn more, check out this comprehensive guide to using Porter's Five Forces .

3. Visioning

Visioning is a goal-setting strategy used in strategic planning. It helps your organization develop a vision for the future and the outcomes you'd like to achieve.

Once you reflect on the goals you‘d like to reach within the next five years or more, you and your team can identify the steps you need to take to get where you’d like to be. From there, you can create your strategic plan.

4. PESTLE Analysis

The PESTLE analysis is another strategic planning tool you can use. It stands for:

• P: Political
• E: Economic
• T: Technological
• E: Environmental

Each of these elements allow an organization to take stock of the business environment they're operating in, which helps them develop a strategy for success. Use a PESTLE Analysis template to help you get started.

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20 top strategic planning tools and frameworks [templates & examples]

If you want homemade bread, you need access to the right appliances and ingredients. And if your strategic plan is a loaf of sourdough, your strategic planning tools are the measuring spoons, the framework is the recipe, and your model is the oven. Each component works together to create the desired result.

Whether it’s baking fresh bread or increasing revenue or customer satisfaction, all goals take strategic planning initiatives — and in some cases, all-purpose flour — to accomplish. Let's go over the 15 most popular frameworks and five of our favorite strategic planning tools to achieve organizational success.

What is strategic planning?

The goal of developing a strategic plan is to communicate where your organization wants to go and determine what each team member needs to do to help get it there. Strategic planning helps your organization develop and document action items for carrying out the company vision and achieving business goals. 

While there are several models that can help you determine opportunities, priorities, and overall objectives, most strategic planning processes follow five general steps:

• Identify your organization’s vision
• Assess your current internal and external environments
• Outline goals
• Determine stakeholder responsibilities
• Measure and assess outcomes

Regardless of the process you choose, each of these steps will lead to the next, allowing you to build out a comprehensive strategic plan.

15 types of strategic planning frameworks

Strategic planning frameworks help teams with brainstorming in order to create specific goals from an overall vision. Frameworks are essentially roadmaps to take teams from ideas to actions. You don’t necessarily need to use a framework within a model — just like you don’t necessarily need to follow a recipe to bake a loaf of bread — but it helps you produce the best outcome. And don’t feel limited to using only one framework within a particular model.

Although it’s not a complete list, the 15 frameworks listed below are some of the most commonly used.

1. Balanced scorecard

Created by Dr. Robert Kaplan and Dr. David Norton, the balanced scorecard is designed for organizations that want to focus on their business as a whole, rather than solely on financial performance. It helps give leadership teams a look at how their operations are performing, particularly within quick timelines.

When using the balanced scorecard, you’ll reference four factors to set goals and assess performance:

• Customers or clients: How your users perceive your business
• Internal processes: Your organization’s efficiency when developing quality products or services
• Organizational capacity: Your company culture and the ways in which your business can improve and grow
• Financial capacity: Your organization’s potential profitability and the effectiveness of resource allocation

Once you determine where your organization stands with regard to the factors above, you can develop specific goals, measurable objectives, and the steps you’ll need to take to achieve these.

2. Objectives and key results (OKR)

Objectives and key results (OKR) is a straightforward strategic planning framework used to translate overarching business goals into specific measurable objectives. It helps you define:

• Objectives: Identify three to five time-bound goals you want to achieve.
• Key results: Determine three to five quantitative outcomes per objective.

The OKR framework helps your team build connections between their individual contributions and your company’s success. Your team should shoot for a 70% key result success rate . If they’re hitting 100% right out of the gate, your organization’s goals weren’t ambitious enough.

Related: OKRs vs. KPIs: What’s the difference?

3. SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis is a framework for strategic planning that helps you identify your organization’s internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats. You should use the SWOT framework at the beginning of your strategic planning process to align stakeholders and provide a common lens through which to view your company’s current position.

List your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats within the four quadrants of a 2x2 box. Once outlined, your team can seek connections between quadrants that will inform your strategy. The goal of the SWOT framework is to help you create a strategy that takes advantage of growth opportunities but also prepares for worst-case scenarios.

4. PEST or PESTLE analysis

A PEST analysis is a strategic planning framework that helps teams analyze external political, economic, sociocultural, and technological factors that could impact your business goals. It could also be modified to include legal and environmental elements (PESTLE).

Like a SWOT analysis, considering each factor of PEST or PESTLE within your industry environment gives your team advanced warning about any significant or immediate threats to your organizational goals. It also enables teams to pinpoint business opportunities within each of the framework’s factors.

5. Gap analysis

The gap analysis framework should be used to compare where your organization currently stands with where you want it to be and help you understand how to bridge the gap between the two. 

With the gap analysis framework — also called the strategic planning gap, need assessment, or need-gap analysis — you’ll be able to determine weak points and root causes (or potential causes) of performance issues by comparing what you’re currently doing with what you intend to do. It helps you identify internal organizational deficiencies and create a plan that addresses them.

6. VRIO framework

The VRIO framework helps you identify your organization’s competitive advantages and is composed of four elements:

• Value: Do your resources help increase revenue or decrease costs, resulting in business value?
• Rarity: Is there a lot of competition in the market for your resources? Are other companies able to create your products and services using these resources?
• Imitability: Could a competing organization copy your products and services easily?
• Organization: Does your organization have the right systems in place to capitalize on your resources?

By analyzing these elements, you’ll be able to refine your organization’s vision and create a plan that helps you meet your customers’ needs.

7. Porter’s Five Forces

Developed in 1979 by Michael Porter, the Five Forces strategic planning framework helps you identify and understand the factors that put competitive pressure on your organization.

The five forces are:

• Bargaining power of buyers: If the same products and services are offered elsewhere with minimal differences in quality, consumers will have the power to influence pricing.
• Bargaining power of suppliers: If there are fewer product or service alternatives for consumers, suppliers like large retailers will have the power to drive down costs.  
• Threat of new entrants: What are your industry’s barriers to entry? New companies in your marketplace will increase pressure on the cost of your products and services.
• Threat of substitute products or services: Can consumers easily substitute a competitor’s product or service for yours? Your business offerings need to create value.
• Rivalry among existing competitors: How'll your competitors’ growth impact your business? The more competition in the marketplace, the harder it'll be to create value with your business offerings.

These forces determine how economic value is divided among your competitors, so using this framework for strategic planning will help you identify your company’s position in the industry.

8. 7S model

The 7S model was developed by McKinsey consultants, and it emphasizes the value of strategically aligning internal departments with business processes. The key elements organizations should be looking to align include:

• Strategy: Your organization’s business plan for outperforming your competitors supported by your company’s mission and vision.
• Structure: How your internal departments and teams are organized; the chain of command.
• Systems: The procedures, daily duties, and technical infrastructure your organization uses to perform.
• Shared values: The beliefs and norms that guide your business decisions and actions; these reflect your company’s work ethic.
• Style: The way management and other stakeholders approach leadership.
• Staff: How employees are sought out and trained and what motivates them; your workers’ general capabilities.
• Skills: Your team members’ capabilities; the level of employee competence. 

The 7S model encourages leadership teams to explore the interconnectedness of these elements within the company and look for inconsistencies or areas of weakness. Once you’ve noted the areas that need to be strengthened, you can work toward realigning these elements to accomplish strategic goals in your organization.

Related: Tactical vs. strategic planning: Why you need both

9. Ansoff Matrix

The Ansoff Matrix framework was developed to help companies plan their growth strategies. The base for this framework is a 2x2 matrix with “products” on the x-axis and “markets” on the y-axis.

Each box within the matrix corresponds to a particular growth strategy. These are:

• Market penetration: Sell an existing product in an existing market.
• Market development: Sell an existing product in a new market.
• Product development: Sell a new product in an existing market.
• Diversification: Sell a new product in a new market.

Each business strategy is increasingly risky, with diversification being the biggest swing. The Ansoff Matrix helps organizations with financial decision-making and developing an action plan for business growth.

10. Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix

This matrix was developed by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in the early 1970s to help companies categorize products or business units based on their market growth rate and relative market share. The BCG matrix helps you prioritize resource allocation by identifying where to invest, divest, or maintain products or business units.

The four groups under the BCG matrix include:

• Stars: Products with a high market share in a fast-growing market. These top performers need investment to maintain growth.
• Cash cows: Products with a high market share in a slow-growth market. They churn out cash and require minimal investment.
• Question marks: Products or business units with a low market share in a high-growth market. They have the potential to be stars if given high investment.
• Dogs: Products with low market share in a stagnant market. They often drain resources and are candidates for divestment.

11. Feature market analysis

Feature market analysis is a strategic approach used to assess the potential of new product features or innovations in the market. 

Key steps in feature market analysis typically include:

• Segmentation: Identifying specific market segments or customer groups with distinct needs and preferences to target with new features.
• Market needs: Gathering data on customer preferences, pain points, and trends through surveys, interviews, focus groups, or other methods.
• Competitor analysis: Studying competitors' products and features to understand what is currently available in the market and identify gaps or areas for differentiation.
• Feature prioritization : Evaluating potential features based on criteria such as customer demand, feasibility, competitive advantage, and alignment with the overall product strategy.

12. Lean canvas

The lean canvas is a one-page strategic management framework adapted from the Business Model Canvas by Ash Maurya. It helps startups and entrepreneurs efficiently develop and iterate on business strategy. 

Lean canvas provides a structured framework for identifying key elements of a business model, including:

• Problem: Describes the top three problems your customers face.
• Solution: Outlines your solution to the identified problems.
• Key metrics: Lists the key performance indicators (KPIs) you'll use to measure success.
• Unique value proposition: States the unique value your product or service offers to customers.
• Unfair advantage: Highlights any strengths or advantages that give your business an edge over competitors.
• Customer segments: Identifies the target customer segments for your product or service.
• Channels: Specifies the channels through which you'll reach and acquire customers.
• Revenue streams: Details how your business will generate revenue.
• Cost structure: Outlines the fixed and variable costs associated with running your business.

13. Four corners analysis

The four corners analysis, developed by Michael Porter, helps you understand a competitor's intent, objectives, and strengths. It addresses four core questions:

• Drivers : This corner examines the driving forces behind your competitors' actions, such as market trends, customer preferences, and industry dynamics.
• Current strategy: This corner looks at your competitor's current strategy, including its objectives, goals, and the tactics it employs to achieve them.
• Management assumptions: This corner explores your competitors' beliefs and assumptions on market conditions and competitive dynamics.
• Capabilities and resources: This corner evaluates the competitor's strengths and weaknesses, such as technology, talent, brand reputation, and financial resources.

14. Pareto analysis

Pareto analysis helps you prioritize tasks, issues, or factors based on the principle that a small number of inputs (20%) typically lead to a large majority of outputs (80%).

During the strategic planning process, you often identify multiple issues or challenges you need to address to achieve your goals. With Pareto analysis, you focus on the ones that have the most significant impact on your organization's performance or objectives.

15. The 3 horizons model

This strategic framework is developed by McKinsey to help you balance focus between short-term optimization, medium-term innovation, and long-term transformation. 

The three horizons represent different timelines and levels of innovation:

• Horizon 1: Represents products, services, and business models that drive current profitability and performance. The focus is on optimizing operations and improving efficiency.
• Horizon 2: Includes emerging opportunities and initiatives that have the potential to become significant contributors to future growth and profitability.
• Horizon 3: Represents disruptive innovations and future possibilities that have the potential to reshape industries and create entirely new markets.

5 great strategic planning tools

Strategic planning tools are software programs that help teams put frameworks into action. There are many tools out there, each offering a unique specialty or perspective.

There's no one platform that's perfect for every single company. But these five are all exceptional at helping companies build their strategic plans. Find the one that best fits your company to help with planning.

Not to brag, but… Mural’s visual work platform makes strategic collaboration easier. It gives teams the tools — like custom templates and asynchronous collaboration features (like anonymous voting) — to outline business goals, identify key performance metrics, and measure results.

Mural’s templates for strategy and alignment help teams start the planning process by providing structure for frameworks like OKR or SWOT analysis . And each template features facilitation assistance to walk your team through strategic planning activities .

Cross-functional collaboration is easy in Mural — in real time or asynchronously. The anonymous voting feature, for example, lets teams come to a consensus and reach internal alignment quickly. 

ClickUp is a project management tool that helps teams prioritize tasks and organize strategic plans.

ClickUp offers templates like matrices and visual timeliness so you’re able to plug in content quickly, process this information, and start coming up with plans faster.

There’s also a feature called ClickUp Goals that helps teams break objectives down into smaller tasks using Targets or ways to measure each item. These targets include number, true/false, currency, and task.

ClickUp is comprehensive, but the pre-built automations may be limiting to some users if too many are triggered at the same time or if your organization requires more customization.

Hive marries task management with strategic planning by helping teams manage complex timelines, large-scale projects, and workflows.

Hive has goal-setting and milestone-tracking features that help teams set task dependencies, follow progress, and share reports with relevant stakeholders. Its visualization tools allow you to toggle between overarching organizational goals and individual teammate objectives. 

You can use the Hive Pages feature as a dashboard for your workspace’s hub. You can set Pages as public or private, add and customize widgets within your Pages, and even export Pages to non-Hive users.

A chat function is available within the tool, but some users have reported losing messages within the platform. So, some may find other collaboration tools more reliable for communication.

Airtable is a next-generation platform that gives teams the power of relational databases in the form of user-friendly spreadsheets. It lets users organize, collaborate on, and store strategic plans within these databases.

Airtable offers an OKR tracking template that helps align teams and manage goals while maintaining accuracy. It also includes a Sync feature that updates workflows seamlessly across teams.

Airtable is a flexible tool but may have limitations, like lagging, when dealing with complex projects or datasets. Data processing functions and complicated calculations could lead to slower response times within the platform.

Trello is a Kanban-based project management tool. Its intuitive design features boards and cards, which can be used to structure strategic models and frameworks. 

Trello offers board templates for project and task management that provide organizational structures to help teams outline deliverables and assign tasks. It also features Timeline and Calendar views, so it’s easy to envision goals and schedule deadlines.

Power-Ups are Trello board features that allow you to use your favorite third-party apps directly within the platform. However, some users may find that combining Power-Ups from different vendors may cause friction in Trello’s functionality.

Bring your organization’s vision to life

There’s no one best framework or strategic planning tool — the right options for you'll depend on your organization’s vision, mission, and available resources. 

Regardless of methodology, most strategic planning begins with analyzing your current internal business environment and external factors, developing specific objectives, and creating action items to achieve these goals. 

Not sure where to start your strategic planning? Mural's template library includes preformatted, customizable frameworks (like this radar template !) to get your team on the path to success.

About the authors

Bryan Kitch

Tagged Topics

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10 Essential Business Analysis Tools and Techniques

In the ever-changing landscape of business analysis, professionals rely on a diverse set of tools and techniques to succeed in their roles.

These tools and techniques are instrumental in gathering and analysing data, understanding business requirements, and effectively communicating insights to stakeholders.

In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the top 20 essential business analysis tools and techniques that every aspiring or seasoned business analyst should master.

From data analysis and stakeholder management to requirements elicitation and process mapping, these tools form the core of effective business analysis practices.

1. Data Analysis:

Data analysis is the process of examining, cleaning, transforming, and interpreting data to uncover valuable insights and support decision-making.

For BAs, data analysis is the backbone of their work, as it empowers them to understand complex business problems, identify patterns, and provide actionable solutions.

By collecting and analysing data from various sources, BAs gain a comprehensive understanding of the organization’s performance, customer behaviour, market trends, and operational efficiency.

Microsoft Excel is a versatile and widely used tool in the realm of Business Analysis . BAs harness the power of Excel for a multitude of data analysis tasks due to its user-friendly interface, powerful functions, and diverse capabilities.

Here are some ways BAs use Excel for data analysis:

Data Cleaning and Transformation:

Data is often messy and requires cleaning before analysis. BAs use Excel’s features like filtering, sorting, and data validation to cleanse data and prepare it for analysis.

They can easily remove duplicates, correct errors, and standardize formats using Excel’s functions, ensuring the data is accurate and reliable.

Data Visualization:

Excel offers a range of chart types, such as bar graphs, pie charts, and line charts, enabling BAs to visually represent data patterns and trends.

Visualization makes it easier for stakeholders to grasp complex information quickly and make data-driven decisions.

Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts:

BAs use PivotTables to summarize and analyse large datasets with ease. Pivot Tables allow them to aggregate data, perform calculations, and create interactive reports.

Pivot Charts complement PivotTables, providing dynamic and visually appealing representations of data.

Statistical Analysis:

Excel includes built-in statistical functions that BAs use to calculate averages, standard deviations, correlations, and perform regression analysis.

These functions help in identifying patterns and relationships within the data.

What-If Analysis:

BAs use Excel’s scenario manager and data tables to perform what-if analysis, exploring various scenarios and understanding how changes in variables impact outcomes.

This aids in forecasting and strategic planning.

While Business Analysts and Data Analysts share some similarities in their work, their roles differ in focus and objectives.

BAs focus on understanding business needs, identifying opportunities for improvement, and proposing solutions. They work closely with stakeholders to align data insights with business goals.

Data Analysts, on the other hand, concentrate primarily on processing and analysing data to provide insights and support decision-making.

Both roles require strong analytical skills , but BAs also need excellent communication, stakeholder management, and problem-solving abilities to bridge the gap between business and technology.

Data Analysts often have a deeper expertise in data manipulation, statistics, and data visualization techniques.

Objectives:

The primary objective of a BA is to drive business success and contribute to the organization’s growth. They are concerned with the big picture and focus on overall business strategy.

Data Analysts are primarily concerned with extracting insights from data to answer specific questions or solve particular problems.

2. Process Mapping:

Process mapping is a fundamental tool in the arsenal of Business Analysis, enabling analysts to create visual representations of business processes.

Through this technique, inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and areas for improvement within a process can be easily identified.

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a widely used technique that offers a standardized and intuitive approach to process mapping.

With BPMN, analysts can depict complex workflows, decision points, and interactions among different stakeholders, providing a clear and comprehensive understanding of the process.

This aids in streamlining operations, enhancing efficiency, and guiding organizations towards optimal process design.

3. Stakeholder Analysis:

Stakeholder Analysis is a vital technique employed by Business Analysts to gain a comprehensive understanding of the individuals or groups who have a stake in a project.

This process involves identifying and assessing the influence, interests, and expectations of stakeholders to effectively manage their engagement and ensure project success.

By conducting Stakeholder Analysis , business analysts can identify key stakeholders, determine their level of influence, and understand their specific needs and concerns.

This knowledge helps in developing appropriate communication strategies, managing expectations, and addressing potential conflicts or challenges.

Ultimately, the insights obtained from Stakeholder Analysis enable business analysts to build strong and positive relationships with stakeholders, align project objectives with their interests, and drive successful project outcomes.

4. Requirements Elicitation Techniques:

Requirements Elicitation Techniques play a critical role in the business analysis process, enabling analysts to gather valuable information from stakeholders and understand their needs and expectations.

These techniques involve various methods such as interviews, workshops, surveys, and observations, each tailored to suit different project scenarios and stakeholder preferences.

Interviews provide a one-on-one interaction with stakeholders, allowing for in-depth discussions and personalized insights.

Workshops, on the other hand, facilitate group collaboration, encouraging brainstorming and consensus-building among stakeholders.

Surveys are useful for collecting large amounts of data from a broad audience, while observations allow analysts to witness processes or behaviours directly.

By employing these Requirements Elicitation Techniques, business analysts can effectively define the project scope and ensure alignment with the organization’s business objectives.

Through interviews and workshops, analysts gain a deeper understanding of stakeholders’ expectations, pain points, and specific requirements.

Surveys enable them to gather feedback from a wide range of stakeholders, helping identify common trends and patterns.

Observations provide first-hand insights into existing processes and workflows, highlighting potential areas for improvement.

Overall, mastering these elicitation techniques is essential for business analysts to successfully identify and document stakeholders’ needs, which serves as a solid foundation for the rest of the business analysis process and project success.

5. Use Case Diagrams:

Use Case Diagrams are powerful tools used by business analysts to visually represent the interactions between users and a system.

These graphical representations illustrate how users interact with the system to achieve specific goals, outlining various scenarios and potential outcomes.

By employing Use Case Diagrams, business analysts gain a comprehensive understanding of the system’s functionality and the flow of user interactions, which is crucial for effective requirement elicitation and system design.

In a Use Case Diagram, actors represent users or external systems, and use cases depict specific actions or tasks that the users perform within the system.

The relationships between actors and use cases showcase how different actors interact with the system to achieve their objectives.

This clear visual representation aids in the identification of user requirements, system functionalities, and potential constraints or limitations.

By leveraging Use Case Diagrams during the analysis phase, business analysts can elicit detailed and accurate requirements, ensuring that the final system design aligns with the needs and expectations of the stakeholders.

6. Prototyping:

Prototyping is a valuable technique used by business analysts to create a preliminary version of a product or system, allowing stakeholders to provide feedback and validate requirements.

By developing a basic working model, business analysts can better understand user needs and expectations, and stakeholders can visualize the final product.

This iterative approach enables continuous refinement and improvement, ensuring that the end product aligns with the desired outcome and maximizes user satisfaction.

Prototyping is a powerful tool in the business analyst’s toolkit, as it facilitates effective communication, reduces risks, and enhances the overall success of projects.

7. Gap Analysis:

Gap Analysis is a fundamental technique utilized by business analysts to assess the variance between the existing state of a system or process and the desired future state.

By conducting a thorough evaluation, analysts identify discrepancies, shortcomings, and areas for improvement.

This critical analysis empowers them to develop strategic plans and actionable recommendations to bridge the gap and align the organization’s objectives with its actual performance.

Gap Analysis serves as a crucial tool in the business analyst’s toolkit, enabling them to make data-driven decisions, optimize processes, and drive successful business transformations.

8. Brainstorming:

Brainstorming sessions are vital tools employed by business analysts to foster creativity and innovative thinking within teams.

During these sessions, team members come together to generate a wide range of ideas and potential solutions to address specific challenges or project requirements.

By encouraging open communication and collaboration, brainstorming sessions enable diverse perspectives and insights to emerge, leading to the identification of unique approaches and creative solutions.

As a result, business analysts can leverage the power of brainstorming to facilitate effective problem-solving, explore new opportunities, and make informed decisions that drive project success and meet stakeholder expectations.

9. User Stories:

User Stories are a fundamental technique used in Agile development to capture and define user requirements from an end-user perspective.

They are concise, easy-to-understand narratives that describe the desired functionality of a software feature or system.

Business analysts play a crucial role in eliciting, creating, and refining user stories to ensure that the development team understands and delivers on the needs of the users.

To effectively use user stories, business analysts should follow a few key tips. Firstly, focus on the user and their needs, emphasizing the “who,” “what,” and “why” of the requirement.

Secondly, keep the user stories small and manageable, so they can be easily implemented within a single development iteration.

Thirdly, prioritize user stories based on business value and complexity to guide the development team’s efforts.

Additionally, use clear and specific acceptance criteria to define the conditions that must be met for the user story to be considered complete.

Regularly communicate with stakeholders and the development team to ensure a shared understanding of the user stories, and be open to refining and reprioritizing them as project needs evolve.

By following these tips, business analysts can harness the power of user stories to deliver valuable, user-centric solutions in an Agile development environment.

10. MoSCoW Prioritization:

MoSCoW Prioritisation is a powerful technique that business analysts employ to effectively prioritize requirements during the project planning phase.

It helps categorize requirements into four main groups: Must-have, Should-have, Could-have, and Won’t-have. The key to successful MoSCoW Prioritisation lies in understanding the project’s objectives, stakeholders’ needs, and the overall scope of work.

Here are some essential tips for business analysts to effectively implement MoSCoW Prioritisation:

Collaboration with Stakeholders:

Engage in active discussions with stakeholders to gain insights into their priorities and expectations. Understanding their perspectives will help in accurately categorizing requirements based on their importance.

Define Clear Criteria:

Establish clear criteria for each category (Must-have, Should-have, Could-have, Won’t-have) to ensure consistent and objective decision-making.

Criteria could include factors such as business impact, regulatory compliance, and project feasibility.

Involve the Development Team:

Collaborate with the development team to understand their capacity and limitations. Their input is vital in determining the feasibility of implementing certain requirements, especially for Must-have items.

Re-evaluate Regularly:

Priorities may evolve during the course of the project. It is essential to revisit and re-evaluate requirements regularly to ensure they align with changing business needs and project progress.

Document Clearly:

Create comprehensive documentation that outlines the prioritization decisions and the rationale behind them. This documentation will serve as a valuable reference point for all stakeholders throughout the project.

By following these tips, business analysts can successfully implement MoSCoW Prioritisation and ensure that the project team focuses on delivering the most critical requirements, maximizing value, and meeting stakeholders’ expectations.

Mastering these top essential business analysis tools and techniques is crucial for aspiring and seasoned business analysts alike.

These tools empower professionals to gather and analyse data effectively, understand stakeholder needs, and make informed decisions.

Whether you are just starting your career in business analysis or looking to enhance your skillset, investing time and effort in mastering these tools and techniques will undoubtedly contribute to your success in this dynamic and rewarding field.

Embrace the power of these tools, stay updated with industry trends, and continuously refine your business analysis expertise to excel in your career.

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What is Strategic Analysis? 8 Best Strategic Analysis Tools + Examples

A huge part of developing a strategic plan is a reliable, in-depth strategic analysis. An organization is separated into internal and external environments. Both components should be scrutinized to identify factors influencing organizations and guiding decision-making.

In this article, we'll cover:

What Is Strategic Analysis?

Types of strategic analysis, benefits of strategic analysis for strategy formulation, strategic analysis example - walmart, how to do a strategic analysis: key components, strategic analysis tools, how to choose the right strategic analysis tool, the next step: from analysis to action with cascade 🚀.

⚠️ Remember, insights aren't enough! Understanding your internal & external environment is vital, but true strategy comes from action. Cascade Strategy Execution Platform bridges the gap between analysis and execution. Talk to our strategy experts to turn your strategic analysis into a winning roadmap with clear goals and measurable results.

Strategic analysis is the process of researching and analyzing an organization along with the business environment in which it operates to formulate an effective strategy. This process of strategy analysis usually includes defining the internal and external environments, evaluating identified data, and utilizing strategic analysis tools.

By conducting strategic analysis, companies can gain valuable insights into what's working well and what areas need improvement. These valuable insights become key inputs for the strategic planning process , helping businesses make well-informed decisions to thrive and grow.

When it comes to strategic analysis, businesses employ different approaches to gain insights into their inner workings and the external factors influencing their operations.

Let's explore two key types of strategic analysis:

Internal strategic analysis

The focus of internal strategic analysis is on diving deep into the organization's core. It involves a careful examination of the company's strengths, weaknesses, resources, and competencies. By conducting a thorough assessment of these aspects, businesses can pinpoint areas of competitive advantage, identify potential bottlenecks, and uncover opportunities for improvement.

This introspective analysis acts as a mirror , reflecting the organization's current standing, and provides valuable insights to shape the path that will ultimately lead to achieving its mission statement.

External strategic analysis

On the other hand, external strategic analysis zooms out to consider the broader business environment. This entails conducting market analysis, trend research, and understanding customer behaviors, regulatory changes, technological advancements, and competitive forces. By understanding these external dynamics, organizations can anticipate potential threats and uncover opportunities that can significantly impact their strategic decision-making.

The external strategic analysis acts as a window , offering a view of the ever-changing business landscape.

The analysis phase sets “the stage” for your strategy formulation.

The strategic analysis informs the activities you undertake in strategic formulation and allows you to make informed decisions. This phase not only sets the stage for the development of effective business planning but also plays a crucial role in accurately framing the challenges to be addressed.

These are some benefits of strategic analysis for strategy formulation:

• Holistic View : Gain a comprehensive understanding of internal capabilities, the external landscape, and potential opportunities and threats.
• Accurate Challenge Framing : Identify and define core challenges accurately, shaping the strategy development process. ‍
• Proactive Adaptation : Anticipate potential bottlenecks and areas for improvement, fostering proactive adaptability. ‍
• Leveraging Strengths : Develop strategies that maximize organizational strengths for a competitive advantage.

At the very least, the right framing can improve your understanding of your competitors and, at its best, revolutionize an industry. For example, everybody thought that the early success of Walmart was due to Sam Walton breaking the conventional wisdom:

“A full-line discount store needs a population base of at least 100,000.”

But that’s not true.

Sam Walton didn’t break that rule, he redefined the idea of the “store,” replacing it with that of a “network of stores.” That led to reframing conventional wisdom, developing a coherent strategy, and revolutionizing an industry.

📚 Check out our #StrategyStudy: How Walmart Became The Retailer Of The People

Strategy is not a linear process.

Strategy is an iterative process where strategic planning and execution interact with each other constantly.

First, you plan your strategy, and then you implement it and constantly monitor it. Tracking the progress of your initiatives and KPIs (key performance indicators) allows you to identify what's working and what needs to change. This feedback loop guides you to reassess and readjust your strategic plan before proceeding to implementation again. This iterative approach ensures adaptability and enhances the strategy's effectiveness in achieving your goals.

Strategic planning includes the strategic analysis process.

The content of your strategic analysis varies, depending on the strategy level at which you're completing the strategic analysis.

For example, a team involved in undertaking a strategic analysis for a corporation with multiple businesses will focus on different things compared to a team within a department of an organization.

But no matter the team or organization's nature, whether it's a supply chain company aiming to enhance its operations or a marketing team at a retail company fine-tuning its marketing strategy, conducting a strategic analysis built on key components establishes a strong foundation for well-informed and effective decision-making.

The key components of strategic analysis are:

Define the strategy level for the analysis

• Complete an internal analysis
• Complete an external analysis

Unify perspectives & communicate insights

Strategy comes in different levels depending on where you are in an organization and your organization's size.

You may be creating a strategy to guide the direction of an entire organization with multiple businesses, or you may be creating a strategy for your marketing team. As such, the process will differ for each level as there are different objectives and needs.

The three strategy levels are:

• Corporate Strategy
• Business Strategy
• Functional Strategy

👉🏻If you're not sure which strategy level you're completing your strategy analysis for, read this article explaining each of the strategy levels .

Conduct an internal analysis

As we mentioned earlier, an internal analysis looks inwards at the organization and assesses the elements that make up the internal environment. Performing an internal analysis allows you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your organization.

Let's take a look at the steps involved in completing an internal analysis:

1. Assessment of tools to use

First, you need to decide what tool or framework you will use to conduct the analysis.

You can use many tools to assist you during an internal analysis. We delve into that a bit later in the article, but to give you an idea, for now, Gap Analysis , Strategy Evaluation , McKinsey 7S Model , and VRIO are all great analysis techniques that can be used to gain a clear picture of your internal environment.

2. Research and collect information

Now it’s time to move into research . Once you've selected the tool (or tools) you will use, you will start researching and collecting data.

The framework you use should give you some structure around what information and data you should look at and how to draw conclusions.

3. Analyze information

The third step is to process the collected information. After the data research and collection stage, you'll need to start analyzing the data and information you've gathered.

How will the data and information you've gathered have an impact on your business or a potential impact on your business? Looking at different scenarios will help you pull out possible impacts.

4. Communicate key findings

The final step of an internal analysis is sharing your conclusions . What is the value of your analysis’ conclusions if nobody knows about them?

You should be communicating your findings to the rest of the team involved in the analysis and go even further. Share relevant information with the rest of your people to demonstrate that you trust them and offer context to your decisions.

Once the internal analysis is complete , the organization should have a clear idea of where they're excelling, where they're doing OK, and where current deficits and gaps lie.

The analysis provides your leadership team with valuable insights to capitalize on strengths and opportunities effectively. It also empowers them to devise strategies that address potential threats and counteract identified weaknesses.

Beginning strategy formulation after this analysis will ensure your strategic plan has been crafted to take advantage of strengths and opportunities and offset or improve weaknesses & threats. This way, the strategic management process remains focused on the identified priorities, enabling a well-informed and proactive approach to achieving your organizational goals.

You can then be confident that you're funneling your resources, time, and focus effectively and efficiently.

Conduct an external analysis

As we stated before, the other type of strategic analysis is the external analysis which looks at an organization's environment and how those environmental factors currently impact or could impact the organization.

A key difference between the external and the internal factors lies in the organization's level of control.

Internally, the organization wields complete control and can actively influence these factors. On the other hand, external components lie beyond the organization's direct control, and the focus is on scanning and reacting to the environment rather than influencing it.

External factors of the organization include the industry the organization competes in, the political and legal landscape the organization operates in, and the communities they operate in.

The steps for conducting an external analysis are much the same as an internal analysis:

• Assessment of tools to use
• Research and collect information
• Analyze information
• Communicate key findings

You'll want to use a tool such as SWOT analysis , PESTLE analysis , or Porter's Five Forces to help you add some structure to your analysis. We’ll dive into the tools in more detail further down this article!

Chances are, you didn't tackle the entire analysis alone. Different team members likely took responsibility for specific parts, such as the internal gap analysis or external environmental scan. Each member contributed valuable insights, forming a mosaic of information.

To ensure a comprehensive understanding, gather feedback from all team members involved. Collate all the data and share the complete picture with relevant stakeholders across your organization.

Much like strategy, this information is useless if not shared with everyone.

Remember : There is no such thing as overcommunication.

If you have to keep only one rule of communication, it’s that one. Acting on the insights and discoveries distilled from the analysis is what gives them value. Communicating those findings with your employees and all relevant (internal and external) stakeholders enables acting on them.

Setting up a central location where everyone can access the data should be your first step, but it shouldn't end there. Organize a meeting to go through all the key findings and ensure everyone is on the same page regarding the organization's environment.

There are a number of strategic analysis tools at your disposal. We'll show you 8 of the best strategic analysis tools out there.

The 8 best strategic analysis tools:

Gap analysis, vrio analysis, four corners analysis, value chain analysis.

• SWOT Analysis

Strategy Evaluation

Porter's five forces, pestel analysis.

Note: Analytical tools rely on historical data and prior situations to infer future assumptions. With this in mind, caution should always be used when making assumptions based on your strategic analysis findings.

The Gap Analysis is a great internal analysis tool that helps you identify the gaps in your organization, impeding your progress towards your objectives and vision.

The analysis gives you a process for comparing your organization's current state to its desired future state to draw out the current gaps, which you can then create a series of actions that will bridge the identified gap.

The gap analysis approach to strategic planning is one of the best ways to start thinking about your goals in a structured and meaningful way and focuses on improving a specific process.

👉 Grab your free Gap Analysis template to streamline the process!

The VRIO Analysis is an internal analysis tool for evaluating your resources.

It identifies organizational resources that may potentially create sustainable competitive advantages for the organization. This analysis framework gives you a process for categorizing the resources in your organization based on whether they hold certain traits: Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, and Organized.

The framework then encourages you to begin thinking about moving those resources to the “next step'' to ultimately develop those resources into competitive advantages.

👉 Grab your free VRIO strategy template that will help you to develop and execute a strategy based on your VRIO analysis.

The Four Corners Analysis framework is another internal analysis tool that focuses on your organization's core competencies.

However, what differentiates this tool from the others is its long-term focus. To clarify, most of the other tools evaluate the current state of an entity, but the Four Corners Analysis assesses the company’s future strategy, which is more precise because it makes the corporation one step ahead of its competitors.

By using the Four Corners, you will know your competitors’ motivation and their current strategies powered by their capabilities. This analysis will aid you in formulating the company’s trend or predictive course of action.

Similar to VRIO, the Value Chain Analysis is a great tool to identify and help establish a competitive advantage for your organization.

The Value Chain framework achieves this by examining the range of activities in the business to understand the value each brings to the final product or service.

The concept of this strategy tool is that each activity should directly or indirectly add value to the final product or service. If you are operating efficiently, you should be able to charge more than the total cost of adding that value.

A SWOT analysis is a simple yet ridiculously effective way of conducting a strategic analysis.

It covers both the internal and external perspectives of a business.

When using SWOT, one thing to keep in mind is the importance of using specific and verifiable statements. Otherwise, you won’t be able to use that information to inform strategic decisions.

👉 Grab your free SWOT Analysis template to streamline the process!

Generally, every company will have a previous strategy that needs to be taken into consideration during a strategic analysis.

Unless you're a brand new start-up, there will be some form of strategy in the company, whether explicit or implicit. This is where a strategy evaluation comes into play.

The previous strategy shouldn't be disregarded or abandoned, even if you feel like it wasn't the right direction or course of action. Analyzing why a certain direction or course of action was decided upon will inform your choice of direction.

A Strategic Evaluation looks into the strategy previously or currently implemented throughout the organization and identifies what went well, what didn't go so well, what should not have been there, and what could be improved upon.

👉To learn more about this analysis technique, read our detailed guide on how to conduct a comprehensive Strategy Evaluation .

Complementing an internal analysis should always be an analysis of the external environment, and Porter's Five Forces is a great tool to help you achieve this.

Porter's Five Forces framework performs an external scan and helps you get a picture of the current market your organization is playing in by answering questions such as:

• Why does my industry look the way it does today?
• What forces beyond competition shape my industry?
• How can I find a position among my competitors that ensures profitability?
• What strategies can I implement to make this position challenging for them to replicate?

With the answer to the above questions, you'll be able to start drafting a strategy to ensure your organization can find a profitable position in the industry.

👉 Grab your free Porter’s 5 Forces template to implement this framework!

We might sound repetitive, but external analysis tools are critical to your strategic analysis.

The environment your organization operates in will heavily impact your organization's success. PESTEL analysis is one of the best external analysis tools you can use due to its broad nature.

The name PESTEL is an acronym for the elements that make up the framework:

• Technological
• Environmental

Basically, the premise of the analysis is to scan each of the elements above to understand the current status and how they can potentially impact your industry and, thus, your organization.

PESTEL gives you extra focus on certain elements that may have a wide-ranging impact, and a birds-eye view of the macro-environmental factors.

There are as many ways to do strategy as there are organizations. So not every tool is appropriate for every organization.

These 8 tools are our top picks for giving you a helping hand through your strategic analysis. They're by no means the whole spectrum. There are many other frameworks and tools out there that could be useful and provide value to your process.

Choose the tools that fit best with your approach to doing strategy. Don’t limit yourself to one tool if it doesn’t make sense, don’t be afraid to combine them, mix and match! And, be faithful to each framework but always as long as it fits your organization’s needs.

Completing the strategic analysis phase is a crucial milestone, but it's only the beginning of a successful journey. Now comes the vital task of formulating a plan and ensuring its effective execution. This is where Cascade comes into play, offering a powerful solution to drive your strategy forward.

Cascade is your ultimate partner in strategy execution. With its user-friendly interface and robust features, it empowers you to translate the strategic insights distilled from your strategic analysis into actionable plans.

Some key features include:

• Planner : Seamlessly build out your objectives, initiatives, and key performance indicators (KPIs) while aligning them with the organization's goals. Break down the complexity from high-level initiative to executable outcomes. ‍
• Alignment Map : Visualize how different organizational plans work together and how your corporate strategy breaks down into operational and functional plans.

• ‍ Metrics & Measures : Connect your business data directly to your core initiatives in Cascade for clear data-driven alignment. ‍

• Integrations : Consolidate your business systems underneath a unified roof. Import context in real-time by leveraging Cascade’s native, third-party connector (Zapier/PA), and custom integrations. ‍
• Dashboards & Reports : Stay informed about your strategy's performance at every stage with Cascade's real-time tracking and progress monitoring, and share it with your stakeholders, suppliers, and contractors.

Experience the power of Cascade today! Sign up today for a free forever plan or book a guided 1:1 tour with one of our Cascade in-house strategy execution experts.

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Your toolkit for strategy success.

Strategic Planning Tools for 2024

What is strategic planning, what are the benefits of strategic planning, types of strategic planning tools, which strategic planning method is right for your business, charting your course.

Ever feel like your small business is navigating a never-ending maze of decisions, deadlines, and daily demands? You're not alone. Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) struggle with many issues, like being short-staffed, having limited resources, and more. In this environment, making the right decisions and keeping things running can seem like monumental tasks.

But they don't have to be. Strategic planning can help you conquer this chaos. It's not a magic wand, but it's a structured step-by-step process that enables you to define your vision, set achievable goals, and chart a course for growth.

Strategic planning is the process of laying out a clear path for your business. It's about defining what you want to achieve, how you'll get there, and what steps you need to take along the way. Think of it as a map that guides you from where you are now to where you want to be.

SMBs often grapple with many challenges, including limited resources and fierce competition. Strategic planning is the antidote to these challenges. It's not just a theoretical exercise but a practical solution that allows you to identify, prioritize, and tackle the hurdles obstructing your path to success.

Strategic planning can unlock tangible benefits for your business by removing the obstacle of uncertainty and opening up a path to smoother, more efficient growth . Here are just a few of the benefits:

Sharper focus and increased clarity : By defining your core values, long-term goals, and target audience, you give everyone in your organization a shared understanding of where you're heading.

Improved decision-making: Strategic planning facilitates important big-picture conversations among leadership about capabilities, market forces, and scenarios. This aligns everyone on where they should be heading in the future.

Increased productivity: Strategic planning provides a roadmap for action, streamlining your workflow and maximizing your team's potential.

Better motivation and improved morale: By creating a shared vision and purpose, you give your team a reason to feel invested in the business's success, leading to a more engaged and productive workforce .

Greater adaptability: Strategic planning equips you with the tools to anticipate change and adapt quickly. By identifying potential risks and opportunities early on, you can develop contingency plans and adjust your course as needed.

There are many tools for strategic planning, each offering a unique perspective and approach. These tools serve as the strategic gears that set your business in motion toward its envisioned future.

According to Gartner, “CIOs should use strategic principles to provide a framework that ensures all decisions made when creating and executing strategy are aligned with the enterprise's objectives, goals, and strategies.” [1]

Strategic principles come first, and they guide how you use strategic planning frameworks. Here are some common strategic planning tools, along with strategic plan examples.

SWOT analysis

In SWOT analysis, strategic planning teams brainstorm to come up with several strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for their business and list those items in four quadrants.

Teams identify connections between the quadrants—especially connections between strengths and opportunities—to inform their strategy. The thing about SWOT analysis is that you can use it for annual strategic planning or everyday decision-making. Adapt SWOT analysis to a rapidly evolving market by using it at the individual project level.

For example, say your office cleaning service is considering expanding. Using SWOT, you could come up with the following assessment:

Strength: Efficient, established cleaning teams

Weakness: Limited client base

Opportunity: Expand services to home cleaning

Threat: Market is nearly saturated with existing home cleaning services

In this case, the business could match its strength to the opportunity to expand and leverage its experienced teams to make headway in an already competitive market.

OKRs work by establishing a clearly defined goal (the objective ) along with a handful of key results —that is, measurable checkpoints that are designed to achieve the target goal. Here is how it works:

Define your objective: Articulate a clear and inspiring goal that captures your team's aspirations.

Identify key results: Establish three to five measurable outcomes that, when achieved, will demonstrate meaningful progress toward your objective.

Track and adapt: Regularly assess your progress for each key result, typically on a quarterly or monthly basis.

The key to OKRs is their adaptability. They empower you to respond to shifts in market conditions, seize emerging opportunities, and pivot strategies when needed. An example is adapting to the Great Resignation:

Original objective: Achieve a 95% employee retention rate

By adjusting key results, the company can tackle the challenges of the Great Resignation head-on, fostering a more engaged and resilient workforce.

PEST analysis

With PEST (political, economic, socio-cultural, and technological) analysis, strategic planning teams weigh socioeconomic factors into their business forecasting . PEST analysis can also include legal and environmental factors (PESTLE analysis). For PEST analysis to be used effectively, it helps to have representatives on the strategic planning team with a working knowledge of the component factors.

PEST analysis is somewhat complex due to the breadth and depth of the factors it accounts for. On one hand, this necessitates an experienced strategic planning team to use PEST analysis effectively. On the other hand, this makes PEST adaptable to changing conditions. Think of each of the factors that make up PEST as levers. When the market changes, you may have to pull one or more of those levers to adjust your planning.

Here is an example of PESTLE analysis on the rise of electric vehicles:

Political: Government incentives for EV adoption

Economic: Fluctuations in oil prices

Social: Growing awareness of climate change

Technological: Advancements in battery technology

Legal: Intellectual property rights for battery technology

Environmental: Impact of lithium mining on natural resources

Balanced scorecard

Balanced scorecard is a strategic planning model designed to incorporate both financial and non-financial (customer, internal, innovation) measures.

To use the balanced scorecard, strategic planning teams seek to answer the following four questions:

How do customers see us?

What must we excel at?

Can we continue to improve and create value?

How do we look to shareholders?

Teams should answer those questions in four quadrants, linking them together where possible (similar to SWOT analysis), then translate those answers into operational strategy , individual performance goals , and business planning.

Here is an example of balancing financial goals with non-financial measures using this model for a small independent bookstore:

Customer perspective: Achieve a 95% positive rating on online review platforms.

Internal process perspective: Train staff on hosting author talks and literary workshops to create engaging experiences.

Growth and learning perspective: Invest in staff development by sponsoring book club memberships and industry conferences.

Financial perspective: Increase revenue year-over-year by 5% through diversified income streams from events and merchandise.

Hoshin planning

Hoshin planning guides your organization toward long-term goals through a collaborative, step-by-step process. Its core lies in a top-down vision, where leadership sets ambitious company-wide objectives. These goals then cascade down through the organization, transforming them into smaller, achievable objectives customized for each department and team.

Through open dialogue and feedback, every level of the organization participates, fostering understanding, buy-in, and a shared sense of ownership. Visual management tools, like strategic boards, become the canvas upon which progress is tracked, keeping everyone on the same page and celebrating victories along the way.

Here's an example of Hoshin planning in a manufacturing company that wants to increase production by 20%:

This vision cascades down to departments and goals like reducing setup time by 10% and minimizing waste by 5%, which become part of it.

Each department then creates action plans to achieve its objectives.

Regular meetings facilitate communication, address roadblocks, and ensure alignment.

Progress is visualized on Hoshin boards, motivating teams and celebrating success.

Throughout the process, the company learns from setbacks and adapts its strategies for continuous improvement.

Selecting the ideal strategic planning techniques requires considering your unique needs and goals. While each tool offers valuable insights, its strengths and complexities cater to different business types. Here's a quick guide to finding the best match:

Common mistakes to avoid during strategic planning

Once you choose a strategic planning method, make sure to steer clear of these pitfalls:

Going solo: Strategic planning thrives on collaboration , with perspectives from different levels of the organization. According to Gartner, CIOs should work with key stakeholders to develop strategic principles to provide a shared view of business goals. [1]

Vagueness: Set clear, measurable goals with concrete timelines and actionable steps.

Data blindness: Back up your decisions with data and insights to avoid guesswork and ensure evidence-based planning.

Ignoring reality: Be realistic about your resources, capabilities, and market conditions. Don't set yourself up for failure with unrealistic goals.

Static vision: The world is constantly changing. Be flexible and adaptable, revisiting and adjusting your plan as needed.

Navigating the ever-changing business landscape doesn't have to be a guessing game. By exploring the diverse world of strategic planning processes, you can identify the perfect map for your specific journey. From the adaptable flexibility of OKRs to the comprehensive foresight of PESTLE analysis, there's a tool perfectly suited to help you achieve your vision.

Now it's your turn to:

Evaluate your business context and goals to identify the tool that best fits your size, stage, and industry context.

Involve key stakeholders , gather diverse perspectives, and leverage the collective intelligence of your team.

Regularly revisit and adapt your strategic approach and embrace the mindset of continuous improvement.

In the meantime, here are some resources that will help you plan your business's future:

Strategic Planning Software

How to Balance Short-Term Execution and Long-Term Strategy

How To Track Project Progress Effectively in 4 Easy Steps

Use Strategic Principles to Provide Direction for Strategic Planning and Execution , Gartner

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38 Powerful Business Analysis Tools: Ultimate Guide

Effective business analysis is crucial to navigate the complexities of today’s dynamic corporate landscape.

To empower professionals in project management, customer experience analysis, statistical analysis, and more, we have compiled a comprehensive guide on business analysis tools.

Whether you’re an experienced analyst or a business leader seeking the right tools to enhance decision-making , our curated list of 38 powerful business analysis tools offers insights into their unique features, use cases, and considerations.

Dive in to discover the tools that align best with your analytical needs and propel your business toward greater efficiency and success.

38 best business analysis tools

Diagramming and modeling tools.

• Microsoft Visio stands as a cornerstone in the realm of diagramming, providing a robust platform for creating intricate flowcharts, diagrams, and visual representations. Offering a rich template library, it goes beyond mere visuals by integrating seamlessly with Microsoft 365, enabling data linking and fostering collaborative design processes.
• Main Features: Rich template library, collaboration features, data linking, and integration with Microsoft 365.
• Best For: Businesses and professionals requiring detailed and professional diagrams.
• Pros: Integration with other Microsoft Office applications, intuitive interface.
• Cons: Costly, limited collaboration in non-Microsoft ecosystems.
• Lucidchart emerges as a cloud-based beacon for collaborative diagram creation. Its strength lies in its user-friendly interface and real-time collaboration features, allowing teams to seamlessly work together. With an extensive template library and integrations with popular apps, Lucidchart is a go-to solution for teams seeking simplicity and functionality.
• Main Features: Extensive template library, collaboration features, integrations with popular apps.
• Best For: Teams looking for an easy-to-use, collaborative diagramming solution.
• Pros: User-friendly, real-time collaboration, integrations with various platforms.
• Cons: Some advanced features require a steeper learning curve.
• Draw.io positions itself as an open-source champion in the diagramming arena, offering both offline and online versions. Its simplicity and flexibility make it a favorite among individuals and teams seeking a free, customizable diagramming tool. While it may lack some advanced features found in paid alternatives, its cost-effectiveness and versatility are undeniable.
• Main Features: Offline and online versions, compatibility with various storage services.
• Best For: Individuals or teams needing a free and customizable diagramming tool.
• Pros: Open-source, no cost, wide range of diagram types.
• Cons: Limited advanced features compared to paid alternatives.
• Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect stands out as a comprehensive modeling and design tool tailored for software development and business process modeling. Going beyond surface-level visual representation, it delves into the intricacies of system design, making it an invaluable asset for projects demanding a holistic approach to modeling.
• Balsamiq takes a unique approach to diagramming with a focus on wireframing and prototyping. Its sketch-style interface allows for rapid creation of mockups, making it an excellent choice for early-stage design and collaborative ideation.
• Main Features: Sketch-style interface, rapid wireframing, collaborative prototyping.
• Best For: Quick and iterative design processes, user interface prototyping.
• Pros: Speedy mockup creation, easy to learn, fosters collaborative design.
• Cons: Limited in advanced design features, may not suit detailed design phases.
• Axure RP is a robust prototyping tool that excels in creating interactive, dynamic prototypes for websites and applications. With its powerful features, including conditional logic and dynamic content, Axure RP is a preferred choice for designers aiming to simulate user experiences.
• Main Features: Dynamic content, conditional logic, interactive prototyping.
• Best For: UX/UI designers, interactive prototyping for web and apps.
• Pros: Advanced prototyping capabilities, comprehensive feature set.
• Cons: Steeper learning curve, may be overwhelming for simple projects.
• Gliffy offers an intuitive, cloud-based diagramming platform suitable for a variety of use cases. With its drag-and-drop functionality and collaborative features, Gliffy is ideal for teams looking for a straightforward and accessible diagramming solution.
• Main Features: Cloud-based, drag-and-drop interface, collaboration features.
• Best For: General diagramming needs, collaborative team projects.
• Pros: User-friendly, accessible from anywhere, collaborative capabilities.
• Cons: Limited advanced features, may not meet complex modeling needs.
• OmniGraffle is a macOS-specific diagramming tool renowned for its visual appeal and ease of use. Tailored for Apple users, it offers a range of templates and stencils, making it an excellent choice for creating visually stunning diagrams on Mac devices.
• Main Features: Mac-centric, visually appealing, extensive stencils.
• Best For: macOS users, visually striking diagrams.
• Pros: Beautiful and clean output, user-friendly interface.
• Cons: Limited cross-platform collaboration, not suitable for Windows users.
• Miro transcends traditional diagramming by offering a collaborative online whiteboard platform. While not confined to diagrams, its versatility in visual collaboration makes it a go-to tool for teams looking to brainstorm, plan, and ideate in real-time.
• Main Features: Online whiteboard, real-time collaboration, versatile visual collaboration.
• Best For: Cross-functional teams, real-time collaboration, visual brainstorming.
• Pros: Versatility, real-time collaboration, extensive integrations.
• Cons: May lack some advanced diagramming features found in specialized tools.

Data Visualization and Analytics Tools

• Tableau is a powerhouse in the realm of data visualization, empowering users to transform raw data into interactive and insightful dashboards. With a user-friendly interface and robust analytics capabilities, Tableau is a top choice for organizations seeking to derive actionable insights from their data.
• Main Features: Interactive dashboards, extensive data connectors, robust analytics.
• Best For: Data visualization, business intelligence, interactive dashboards.
• Pros: Intuitive interface, broad community support, diverse data source compatibility.
• Cons: Costly, steeper learning curve for advanced features.
• QlikView distinguishes itself with its associative data modeling, enabling users to explore data relationships dynamically. It excels in data discovery and visualization, making it a valuable tool for organizations aiming to uncover hidden insights within their datasets.
• Main Features: Associative data modeling, data discovery, interactive dashboards.
• Best For: Data discovery, uncovering data relationships, interactive dashboards.
• Pros: Associative data model, powerful visualization, in-memory processing.
• Cons: Licensing costs, may require technical expertise for optimization.
• Power BI is Microsoft’s answer to the growing demand for business intelligence and analytics. With a seamless integration with other Microsoft products, it allows users to create compelling visualizations and reports, making data-driven decision-making accessible to a broader audience.
• Main Features: Seamless integration with Microsoft products, interactive dashboards, data connectors.
• Best For: Microsoft ecosystem users, business intelligence, interactive reports.
• Pros: Integration with Microsoft 365, user-friendly interface, extensive community.
• Cons: Pricing model, advanced features may require learning curve.
• Sisense is a business intelligence platform known for its ability to handle large and complex datasets. It provides advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, making it suitable for enterprises seeking comprehensive insights to drive strategic decisions.
• Main Features: Advanced analytics, handling complex datasets, customizable dashboards.
• Best For: Enterprises, large and complex datasets, comprehensive business intelligence.
• Pros: Powerful data processing, customizable dashboards, scalability.
• Cons: Implementation complexity, may be resource-intensive.
• TIBCO Spotfire is a data visualization and business intelligence tool that stands out with its data wrangling capabilities. It empowers users to manipulate and visualize data in real-time, making it a valuable asset for organizations requiring dynamic and agile analytics.
• Main Features: Data wrangling, real-time analytics, interactive dashboards.
• Best For: Real-time analytics, data visualization, agile business intelligence.
• Pros: Advanced analytics, intuitive interface, real-time data manipulation.
• Cons: Learning curve, pricing structure may be a deterrent.
• Looker is a modern data platform that focuses on data exploration and collaboration. With its emphasis on providing a unified view of data, Looker is a preferred choice for organizations seeking a centralized platform for exploring, analyzing, and sharing insights.
• Main Features: Data exploration, collaboration, unified view of data.
• Best For: Data exploration, collaboration, centralized analytics.
• Pros: Centralized data platform, collaborative analytics, customizable.
• Cons: Pricing model, may require initial setup and configuration.
• IBM Cognos Analytics is a comprehensive business intelligence solution that caters to a wide range of analytics needs. It combines reporting, dashboarding, and data exploration, making it a versatile tool for organizations with diverse analytics requirements.
• Main Features: Reporting, dashboarding, data exploration, wide analytics capabilities.
• Best For: Comprehensive business intelligence, diverse analytics needs.
• Pros: Integrated analytics suite, scalability, enterprise-level features.
• Cons: Learning curve, resource-intensive for small-scale deployments.
• MicroStrategy is a business intelligence platform known for its robust analytics and mobile

capabilities. It offers a unified approach to analytics, allowing organizations to create interactive dashboards and reports while ensuring data consistency across the platform.

• Main Features: Unified analytics, mobile capabilities, interactive dashboards.
• Best For: Organizations seeking a unified analytics platform with strong mobile support.
• Pros: Mobile-friendly, robust analytics capabilities, scalable.
• Cons: Complex setup, may require specialized knowledge for optimization.
• Zoho Analytics distinguishes itself as a user-friendly, cloud-based analytics platform. Designed for small to medium-sized businesses, it provides a range of tools for data visualization, reporting, and collaboration, making it an accessible choice for organizations with diverse analytical needs.
• Main Features: Cloud-based, user-friendly, diverse analytical tools.
• Best For: Small to medium-sized businesses, accessible analytics.
• Pros: Intuitive interface, affordability, collaboration features.
• Cons: Limited scalability for large enterprises, may lack some advanced features.

Process and Workflow Management Tools

• IBM Blueworks Live offers a cloud-based environment for process discovery and modeling. It facilitates collaboration among teams involved in business process management, enabling organizations to document, analyze, and improve their processes efficiently.
• Main Features: Cloud-based, process discovery, collaboration tools.
• Best For: Business process management, process discovery, collaborative teams.
• Pros: User-friendly, cloud accessibility, collaborative features.
• Cons: May lack some advanced process automation features.
• Camunda stands out as an open-source platform for workflow and decision automation. With a focus on flexibility and scalability, Camunda is a preferred choice for organizations looking to integrate workflow automation into their business processes.
• Main Features: Open-source, workflow automation, decision automation.
• Best For: Workflow and decision automation, integration with existing systems.
• Pros: Flexibility, scalability, open-source community support.
• Cons: Requires technical expertise, may have a steeper learning curve.
• JIRA by Atlassian is a widely used project and issue tracking tool that extends its capabilities to process and workflow management. With its customizable workflows and strong integration with other Atlassian products, JIRA is a powerhouse for managing projects of varying complexities.
• Main Features: Project and issue tracking, customizable workflows, integration.
• Best For: Project management, issue tracking, customizable workflows.
• Pros: Customizable, strong integration, widely adopted.
• Cons: Complex for beginners, may require configuration for specific needs.
• Confluence, another Atlassian product, complements JIRA by providing a collaborative environment for documentation and knowledge sharing. While not solely a workflow management tool, Confluence is valuable for teams looking to document and align their processes.
• Main Features: Documentation, knowledge sharing, collaboration.
• Best For: Documenting processes, knowledge sharing, collaborative teams.
• Pros: Collaborative platform, integrates with JIRA, extensive add-ons.
• Cons: May lack some advanced workflow-specific features.

Prototyping and Wireframing Tools

• Balsamiq continues to shine as a specialized tool for wireframing and prototyping. Its sketch-style interface promotes rapid mockup creation, making it an ideal choice for designers and teams aiming to visualize and iterate on user interfaces quickly.
• Axure RP caters to the needs of UX/UI designers, providing a powerful platform for creating interactive prototypes. With features like dynamic content and conditional logic, Axure RP supports the simulation of complex user experiences, making it a staple in the prototyping toolkit.
• Figma has gained prominence as a collaborative design tool with a focus on prototyping and interface design. Its cloud-based nature fosters real-time collaboration, making it an excellent choice for distributed design teams working on user interfaces and interactive prototypes.
• Main Features: Cloud-based, collaborative design, prototyping.
• Best For: Interface design, collaborative prototyping, distributed design teams.
• Pros: Real-time collaboration, cross-platform accessibility, versatile design features.
• Cons: Learning curve for beginners, may require stable internet connectivity.

Collaboration and Project Management Tools

• JIRA, a versatile tool, extends its capabilities beyond workflow management to cover project and issue tracking. It popularizes agile project management, offering customizable workflows and strong integration with other Atlassian products.
• Best For: Agile project management, issue tracking, customizable workflows.
• Confluence, an Atlassian companion to JIRA, provides a collaborative platform for documentation and knowledge sharing. While not primarily a project management tool, Confluence contributes to team alignment through its features for documentation and collaboration.
• Cons: May lack some advanced project management-specific features.
• Miro stands out as a collaborative online whiteboard platform, offering more than traditional diagramming. It caters to teams looking to brainstorm, plan, and ideate in real-time, making it a versatile tool for various collaborative endeavors.
• Trello is a user-friendly project management tool known for its visual approach to task management. With boards, lists, and cards, Trello simplifies project tracking and collaboration, making it suitable for smaller teams and simpler project structures.
• Main Features: Boards, lists, cards, visual task management.
• Best For: Small teams, visual project tracking, task management.
• Pros: Simple

and intuitive, easy to use, visual project representation.

• Cons: Limited in advanced project management features, may not scale well for complex projects.
• Monday.com positions itself as a versatile work operating system, offering a visual and collaborative platform for project and task management. With customizable workflows and a wide array of templates, Monday.com caters to diverse project management needs.
• Main Features: Customizable workflows, visual project management, collaboration.
• Best For: Teams with diverse project management needs, visual task tracking.
• Pros: Flexible and customizable, intuitive interface, extensive template library.
• Cons: Pricing may be a consideration for larger teams.
• ClickUp prides itself on being an all-in-one project management platform, combining features of task management, document collaboration, and goal tracking. Its flexibility and customization options make it suitable for a range of teams and project types.
• Main Features: All-in-one project management, task management, collaboration.
• Best For: Teams looking for an integrated project management solution.
• Pros: Customizable, feature-rich, suitable for various project types.
• Cons: Learning curve for advanced features, may have more features than needed.
• Asana is a widely adopted project management tool known for its simplicity and focus on task tracking. It provides a clean and intuitive interface, making it suitable for teams of all sizes looking for straightforward project and task management.
• Main Features: Task tracking, project management, collaboration.
• Best For: Teams of all sizes, straightforward project and task management.
• Pros: User-friendly, clean interface, collaborative features.
• Cons: Limited in advanced project management features.
• Airtable combines the flexibility of a spreadsheet with the power of a database, offering a unique approach to project and task management. With its customizable tables, Airtable suits teams that require a mix of data organization and task tracking.
• Main Features: Spreadsheet-database hybrid, customizable tables, collaboration.
• Best For: Teams requiring flexible data organization and task tracking.
• Pros: Versatile, easy to use, customizable to various workflows.
• Cons: May not suit traditional project management needs, learning curve for complex setups.

Customer Experience and Analytics Tools

• Google Analytics is a cornerstone in web analytics, providing insights into website and app performance. It offers a comprehensive suite of features, including audience analysis, behavior tracking, and conversion tracking, making it a go-to tool for digital marketers and website owners.
• Main Features: Audience analysis, behavior tracking, conversion tracking.
• Best For: Digital marketers, website and app performance analysis.
• Pros: Free version available, robust analytics capabilities, integrates with other Google tools.
• Cons: Learning curve for beginners, privacy concerns.
• Qualtrics is a comprehensive experience management platform, specializing in customer and employee feedback. It enables organizations to gather and analyze feedback, making informed decisions to enhance customer satisfaction and employee engagement.
• Main Features: Experience management, feedback collection, analytics.
• Best For: Customer feedback, employee engagement, experience management.
• Pros: Robust survey and feedback capabilities, diverse analytics tools.
• Cons: Pricing may be a consideration for smaller businesses.
• Crazy Egg is a website optimization tool focused on visualizing user behavior through heatmaps, scrollmaps , and other visual reports. It provides insights into how users interact with a website, helping businesses optimize their online presence.
• Main Features: Heatmaps, scrollmaps, user behavior visualization.
• Best For: Website optimization, user experience analysis.
• Pros: Visual and easy-to-understand reports, actionable insights.
• Cons: Limited in-depth analytics compared to larger platforms.
• Hotjar is another tool in the website optimization space, offering features like heatmaps, session recordings, and feedback polls. It’s designed to help businesses understand user behavior and gather feedback for improving website performance.
• Main Features: Heatmaps, session recordings, feedback polls.
• Best For: Website optimization, user behavior analysis, feedback collection.
• Pros: User-friendly interface, versatile features for website analysis.
• Cons: Limited in-depth analytics, may be overwhelming for some users.
• Adobe Analytics is a robust solution within the Adobe Experience Cloud, focusing on advanced analytics for marketing and customer experience. It provides in-depth insights into customer journeys, campaign performance, and overall digital experience.
• Main Features: Advanced analytics, customer journey analysis, marketing attribution.
• Best For: Advanced marketing analytics, customer journey mapping.
• Pros: Integration with Adobe Experience Cloud, advanced analytics capabilities.
• Cons: Costly, may require specialized knowledge for optimization.

Statistical Analysis and Data Science Tools

• RapidMiner is a data science platform that excels in end-to-end data science workflows. It provides a visual interface for building, deploying, and managing predictive models, making it accessible to both data scientists and business analysts.
• Main Features: End-to-end data science workflows, visual interface, predictive modeling.
• Best For: Data scientists, business analysts, predictive modeling.
• Pros: Visual workflow design, diverse analytics tools, model deployment.
• Cons: Learning curve, may be resource-intensive for large datasets.
• Alteryx positions itself as a self-service data analytics platform, allowing users to prep, blend, and analyze data without the need for extensive coding. Its visual workflow design simplifies complex data processes for a range of analytical tasks.
• Main Features: Self-service data analytics, visual workflow design, data blending.
• Best For: Business analysts, self-service data preparation and analytics.
• Pros: User-friendly, no extensive coding required, diverse data blending options.
• Cons: Pricing may be a consideration for smaller teams.
• Minitab is a statistical software package designed for quality improvement and Six Sigma processes . With its extensive statistical analysis capabilities, Minitab is a go-to tool for professionals and organizations focused on data-driven decision-making in quality control.
• Main Features: Statistical analysis, quality improvement, Six Sigma support.
• Best For: Quality improvement, Six Sigma processes, statistical analysis.
• Pros: Specialized for quality control, extensive statistical tools.
• Cons: May have a steeper learning curve for non-statisticians.

Miscellaneous/Integrated Tools

• MindManager is a versatile mind mapping and visual planning tool that aids individuals and teams in organizing ideas, projects, and information. With its interactive mind maps and planning features, it enhances creativity and productivity.
• Main Features: Mind mapping, visual planning, collaboration.
• Best For: Idea organization, project planning, collaboration.

What are business analysis tools?

Business analysis tools encompass a diverse set of instruments designed to collect, process, and interpret data relevant to an organization’s performance. 

These tools facilitate a systematic approach to understanding business processes, identifying areas for improvement , and making data-driven decisions. 

In essence, they provide a structured framework for analyzing and optimizing various facets of a business.

What are some business analysis techniques?

Assessment tools, such as SWOT analysis, PESTLE analysis, and risk management tools, provide a systematic approach to evaluating a business or project’s internal and external factors. 

They help in identifying potential risks , opportunities, and challenges, allowing for informed decision-making.

Here is a little breakdown of all these business analysis techniques:

SWOT analysis

• Opportunities
• Threats 

These help organizations assess internal capabilities and external factors affecting business.

PESTLE analysis

These examine the following factors:

• Technological
• Environmental 

PESTLE aids in understanding the external influences impacting a business.

Stakeholder analysis

Identifying and assessing the interests, expectations, and impact of various stakeholders is crucial for effective decision-making.

Process mapping

Visualizing and documenting business processes enables a clear understanding of workflows and potential areas for optimization.

Do you need a business analysis tool?

Determining whether your organization needs a business analysis tool involves evaluating the complexity of your operations, the volume of data generated, and the need for timely insights. 

If your business deals with intricate processes, vast datasets, and requires real-time analysis, investing in a business analysis tool becomes imperative.

Types of business analysis tools

There are four major categories of business analysis tools based on their functionalities:

Requirements management tools

These tools are used to capture, document, and track requirements throughout the project lifecycle. 

They help in organizing and managing requirements, as well as linking them to business objectives.

Business process modeling tools

These tools are designed to create visual representations of business processes and workflows. 

They help in analyzing and improving business processes by identifying inefficiencies and bottlenecks.

Collaboration tools

These tools facilitate communication and collaboration among teams and stakeholders. 

They include features such as document sharing, messaging, and task assignment to help ensure everyone is on the same page.

Project tracking tools

These tools are used to monitor and track the progress of projects, including tasks, timelines, and resource allocation. 

They help in ensuring that projects stay on track and within budget.

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Strategic Analysis: What It Is & How To Do It Effectively

Are you confusing strategic analysis with one of these other business functions?

Unlike strategic planning and strategy execution, strategic analysis can be a fuzzy term. Sometimes it’s confused with the tracking and analysis of operational data points—an important business activity, but not one that is usually associated with strategy. Strategic analysis is a crucial part of long-term business planning and the first step in the planning process.

At ClearPoint Strategy , we empower organizations with tools to conduct thorough strategic analyses, enabling leaders to gather crucial data, identify trends, and formulate actionable strategies. Our platform simplifies the process, providing comprehensive insights that drive strategic planning and execution.

See ClearPoint Strategy in action! Click here to watch a quick DEMO on the software

In this article, we’ll define strategic analysis in more detail, describe the methods used to conduct it, and list the key components of strategic analysis so you can carry it out successfully.

What Is Strategic Analysis?

Strategic analysis (sometimes referred to as a strategic market analysis) is the process of gathering data that helps a company’s leaders decide on priorities and goals , shaping (or shifting) a long-term strategy for the business.

‍ It gives a company the ability to understand its environment and formulate a strategic plan accordingly. Strategic analysis is paramount in any organization because it provides the context and backbone upon which the strategy and overall position of the business is formulated.

Why isn’t it enough to simply refer to quantitative data and charts to make a plan for the future? Because it is impossible for an organization to understand how it will achieve success without first having contextual information—in the form of both qualitative and quantitative data—regarding its internal resources and external environment.

The process of performing a strategic analysis is what adds context to quantitative data. Spotting trends and patterns in the data and evaluating them will inform your organization’s long-term plan.

You’ll know you’re performing a strategic analysis if you are:

• Focusing on high-level strategy. If you’re prioritizing operations, sales, marketing, or any other function, organization-wide strategic analysis won’t happen. The focus should be on information that directly impacts your long-term strategies and goals.
• Looking both backward and forward. Strategic analysis means assessing data about what happened in the past, so you can determine the implications of that performance and predict what is likely to happen in the future. The better your reports are at looking backward, the better your organization will be at moving forward.
• Involving company leaders in the process. Junior analysts may assemble the information, but the leadership team needs to make decisions and take action based on the information.

You don’t do a strategic analysis once and then disregard it when your strategy is developed and implemented. To remain adaptable in a changing business environment—whether the changes are due to a growing number of employees, new government regulations, or anything else—it’s advisable to conduct a strategic analysis periodically.

Organizations that are part of fast-changing industries should conduct this exercise (in abbreviated form if need be) more frequently than those that are not. Doing an annual strategic market analysis refresh will not only help your organization stay on track over the course of a few years but can also help inform your annual slate of initiatives.

Types Of Strategic Analysis

There is no standard strategic analysis “format”; rather, there are a number of methodologies available to help guide you through the process of collecting and analyzing relevant data for strategy planning.

Two of the most commonly used methods are SWOT and PESTLE.

• A SWOT analysis (which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) helps organizations identify where they’re doing well and where they can improve, both from an internal and external perspective. Strengths and weaknesses are considered internal factors, and opportunities and threats are considered external factors.
• A PESTLE analysis focuses entirely on external factors in the political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal realms that your organization can’t control but should prepare for. Such an analysis might call attention to things like changing tax legislation, new laws or legal procedures, fluctuating interest rates, etc. Any change that might occur and would have a material impact on your business should be considered in your strategy planning.

Many organizations do both a SWOT and PESTLE analysis to get a complete picture of the business environment. Your entire leadership team should be heavily involved in these analysis sessions, as should any other personnel who can bring relevant data points or perspectives to the table.

Some team members may be able to speak to strengths and weaknesses through experience; others may have access to data that supports (and provides context around) those viewpoints. A team that is knowledgeable about both the company and industry will produce the most effective strategic analysis.

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Key components in strategic analysis: 5 steps.

Listed below are the five steps to carrying out a strategic market analysis. But before we jump into the steps, remember: What differentiates strategic analysis from strategic decision making is that strategic analysis is only part of the decision making process. It’s a necessary (and very important) step, and will ensure you make informed and thoughtful decisions. So once you’re finished with your analysis, think of it as a tool in your decision making toolbox and refer to it often.

The five steps of a strategic market analysis are:

• Determine the level of strategic analysis you’re performing. Is your analysis intended for the corporate, divisional, or functional area (such as marketing or sales) level? It’s helpful to understand your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats at all levels of the business, so you can devise the best strategy for future progress.
• Gather a team to help. Participants should include members of the board or leadership, along with representatives from finance, human resources, operations, sales, and any other critical functions. Remember—you need people with different perspectives on the business, at least some of whom can help identify and evaluate internal and external data.
• Use one or more analytic methods such as SWOT or PESTLE to conduct your analysis. Direct team members to bring relevant quantitative and qualitative information, which may also include feedback from outside groups such as customers or industry experts, for example. Whether or not your organization uses the Balanced Scorecard (a strategy management framework), its four perspectives can be very helpful for guiding the discussion once everyone is assembled. (You can see what we mean in this SWOT analysis example. )
• Summarize your findings and present them to the team. Because the analysis will serve as the foundation of your strategy, you’ll need to prepare a document that summarizes your findings. Prepare a report that provides some context around your analysis and highlights the conclusions that were drawn, preferably in a way that’s visually pleasing. While presentation might not seem like a big deal, it is—your audience will find the information easier to read and absorb if it’s presented in an attractive way. Ultimately, you’re more likely to get buy-in for whatever strategy you devise when you show that it originated from a thoughtful, detailed analysis.
• Devise a formal strategy based on the analysis. Use your strategic analysis to organize your priorities and create goals, as well as measures and projects that will help you achieve them. How can you use your strengths to take advantage of opportunities? How can you minimize threats and weaknesses going forward? Have any new priorities emerged as a result of this analysis? Create a strategy map that visually shows your organization’s overall objectives and how they relate to one another.

Done correctly, this analysis is a valuable tool for improving business performance; it can also prompt organizations to be more innovative with their strategy.

Strategic Analysis Examples

Some organizations struggle to differentiate strategic analysis from other types of analysis; that means they’re also usually confused about what software tools should be used for the job.

As co-founder of the strategy software company ClearPoint , I often find myself having conversations with prospective customers to clarify their activities (are they doing strategic planning or not?) and discuss whether ClearPoint can help. Below are summaries of three such conversations—do any of them reflect what you’re currently doing?

Story #1: Strategic Analysis Vs. Operational Data

A local government prospect asked me if ClearPoint’s software could track individual court cases and budget line items.

‍ I explained that ClearPoint is designed to track information that enables organizations to do strategic analysis. We can track summary information—such as the total number of cases each month or budget status for projects—but not individual court cases or department expenses. Here’s why:

• Analyzing summary information is strategically useful because it provides direction for an organization’s long-term strategy. For example, if one type of court case is appearing frequently, the local government may want to change its five-year plan to increase court staffing levels or reorganize the layout of a court building. The strategic analysis might also be something the municipality communicates to lawmakers in an effort to change the way current laws are executed through the court system.

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• Tracking individual court cases or standalone budget items is operational data and not as helpful for strategic analysis. While important, operational data as individual items is too detailed to extrapolate into trends or summaries that might shift an organization’s strategy. For example, ClearPoint doesn’t track the outcome of Case #1234 and how long it took to process.

The ideal way to use our system would be to analyze the average length of time to close a specific type of case, but not to track cases one by one. Another example: You can’t make strategic decisions to fund (or defund) certain projects based on a team’s expenses for new computers or division’s investment in technology upgrades.

The goal of strategic analysis is to chart performance in order to see patterns and trends, which can help predict future outcomes. Tracking one-off items won’t accomplish that goal. (Don’t get me wrong; you need to track all of the transactions, but just not in ClearPoint.)

ClearPoint can link strategic data from an operations system. This gives you the complete data story—both high-level and detailed information—within one platform.

Story #2: Strategic Analysis Vs. Data Analytics

I met with a manager at a large media corporation who inquired if ClearPoint could provide insights on its media campaigns, similar to what data visualization software like Tableau offers.

‍ ClearPoint can report on the status, progress, and results of different campaigns or initiatives, but again is not designed to provide individual data points. For example, our platform cannot provide impressions from thousands of individuals or tweak information by demographic groups. That is data analytics, and very different from strategic market analysis.

‍ Similar to the previous section, you should look at the results of media impressions to learn how the market is reacting to your products—but those impressions or data analytics will not drive your strategy.

You should have strategic goals and measure progress in achieving those goals. Changes over time to the average reaction of those media impressions will help you make strategic decisions. ClearPoint ’s strength is in summarizing and interpreting data analytics to simplify and improve management reporting, so organizations can focus on making better strategic decisions.

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Story #3: strategic analysis vs. customer relationship management.

A nonprofit organization asked me if ClearPoint could replace its customer relationship management (CRM) software.

‍ CRM software cannot do strategy management. Managing customers and managing strategy requires very different functions and capabilities within a software platform...and it won’t surprise anyone if the strategy planning office and sales team have different opinions on which software has the biggest benefit for an organization.

Tracking all of your customer interactions and the results of those interactions isn’t a job for ClearPoint or any other strategic analysis program. To focus on strategy from a customer standpoint , you need the ability to summarize all prospect and customer information to discern trends. Then your sales leadership team can make decisions like which audiences to target, which products or services to push, etc. Again, this is managing high-level information and not one-off data points.

Both types of software are important, and they are important for solving different types of problems.

My Thoughts on Strategic Analysis

Given the pace of change in the business world, I strongly believe you need strategy at the center of your management process to ensure you're achieving your goals.

‍ That’s not to say you should ignore operational or customer data—data that aids internal analysis in strategic management meetings is critical to your success, but it won’t determine how your business should be run.

Strategy management and analysis should be the big gear that drives all the smaller gears doing operations, data analytics, and more. You likely need different tools to manage all your data, but platforms like ClearPoint can connect all the pieces to tell the entire story and help you drive your organization with strategy, not data points.

If you’re interested in a tour of our software, let us know—we’re happy to show you around!

Optimize Your Strategic Analysis with ClearPoint Strategy Software

Take your strategic analysis to the next level with ClearPoint Strategy . Our platform is designed to help you gather, analyze, and act on critical data, ensuring that your business decisions are informed and effective.

With tools for SWOT and PESTLE analyses, comprehensive reporting, and real-time collaboration, ClearPoint makes it easy to stay ahead in a rapidly changing environment.

Book a demo today and see how ClearPoint Strategy can streamline your strategic analysis and drive your organization's success!

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RJ Messineo

RJ drives new business for ClearPoint, guiding prospective clients through the sales process.

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25 Best Strategic Planning Tools for 2024

With so many strategic planning tools out there, it can seem confusing. We list 25 key tools, and break them down to help you make sense of them.

How it all fits together

Where to find the tools, [1] swot analysis, [2] pestel analysis.

• [3] Porter's 5 Forces

[4] McKinsey 7S

• [5] Porter's Value Chain

[7] Business Model Canvas

[8] boston consulting grid (bcg)/matrix, [9] pareto analysis, [10] strategy canvas, [11] scenario analysis, [12] mission statement, [13] vision statement, [14] the balance scorecard/strategy map, [15] shared values, [16] the strategy house, [17] the 3 horizons model, [18] the ansoff matrix, [20] kanban or ideas funnel, [21] gantt chart, [22] raid log, [23] status report, [24] strategy scorecard, [25] kpi correlation matrix, linking them all together.

But strategic planning can be confusing. There are so many tools, models, frameworks and theories around it can be difficult to know when to start.

In this post, we outline the most essential tools for strategic planning and how they fit together.

Strategic planning is a combination of four different activities, which can further be subdivided into two sub-categories:

• Analysis : Before developing a strategy it is important to develop a shared understanding of the industry in which a business operates and its relative strengths and weaknesses. The industry in which it operates includes its customers, distributors, partners and suppliers, competitors, regulators, governments/politicians, etc. Its strengths and weaknesses are relative to its customers' needs and its competitors' capabilities.
• Decision-making and direction-setting : Armed with that understanding the next step is to choose what the organisation will focus on and priorities. This is often called choosing where to play and how to win. Where to play can be defined in terms of which markets to compete in, which customers to target, and where to play within the industry value chain. How to win can be defined in terms of what the organisation needs to have or be able to do uniquely well (or at least better than the competition) to succeed in those markets.
• Planning : Planning entails working out exactly how you will execute the decisions you made above. Crucially, it entails mapping out who will do what and when , as well as how much it will cost .
• Tracking results : Often overlooked, it is vital to track progress both of your plans (are you doing what you said you would do within the costs and timeframes you'd planned?) and outcomes (is your strategy having the intended effect)? If the answer to either of those questions is 'no' you may need to go back to the drawing board and adjust your strategy.

As we outline the key tools you need for strategic planning, we will place them within the context of these four activities.

You can find all of these tools in StratNavApp.com.

What's more, they're all collaborative, integrated and powered by AI to help you drive strategic insight, and develop, execute and adapt your plans more effectively.

With free and paid plans, you can be up and running in minutes. Why not start now ?

Strategic Planning Tools for Analysis

SWOT analysis is one of the oldest and most widely used strategic planning tools. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Its elegant simplicity is both its greatest strength and weakness, as a result it often best used in conjunction with some of the other models mentioned below. It is particularly useful as a starting point, in order to work out where to focus your analytical efforts, as well as a summary of the analysis before moving on to decision-making and direction-setting. (See What is a SWOT analysis? )

PESTEL analysis is a macro-scanning tool - that is, it helps you to scan the environment for relevant trends. These trends can then inform the Threats and Opportunities on your SWOT analysis. PESTEL stands for Political, Economic, Social (or socio-economic), Technological, Environmental, and Legal (and regulatory). These are the six domains to scan for relevant trends. (See How to do PESTEL Analysis )

[3] Porter's 5 Forces

Porter's 5 forces is a framework for understanding the factors which might make an industry more or less attractive. The 5 Forces are the bargaining power of suppliers, the bargaining power of customers, the threat of substitutes, the threat of new entrants to the industry, and the intensity of rivalry between players in the industry. Industries in which those forces are strong are likely to be less attractive, because profit margins are likely to be narrower and growth harder to achieve. Like the PESTEL analysis, Porter's 5 Forces is also useful for highlighting Threats and Opportunities on your SWOT analysis. (See How to do a Porter 5-Forces analysis )

The McKinsey 7S framework looks at the degree of alignment between the 7 organisational factors within an organisation (which all happen to begin with an S). These are further divided into hard factors like Strategy, Systems and Structure, and soft factors like Style, Staff, Skills and Shared values. It is important to understand not only how the organisation addresses each of the 7 categories, but, possibly more importantly, the extent to which their is alignment between them. As these factors are more internal, McKinsey 7S is useful for identifying Strengths and Weaknesses on your SWOT analysis. (See Using the McKinsey 7S Framework to assess strategic alignment, strengths and weaknesses )

[5] Porter's Value Chain

Porter's Value Chain is a simple way of describing how value is added. When applied to an organisation, it simply describes the key organisation capabilities, dividing them between the primary functions which turn acquire inputs, turn them into outputs and deliver them to customers, and supporting functions like finance, HR and infrastructure management. When applied to an industry, it can also be used to describe the broader supply chain, and the role different organisations play within that supply chain. (See Value Chain Analysis )

The Business Model Canvas is a more recent way of describing how a business works which has become very popular. It's a great tool for summarising how a business works across all functions. As such it can be a helpful starting point when getting people together from across different silos to take a more holistic view of an organisation and its strategy. There are a number of alternative canvases that have since sprung up: the most popular of these is probably the Lean Canvas, which targets early-stage startups.  (See The Business Model Canvas )

If your business consists of more than one product or service, the Boston Consulting Grid help you understand the nature of each and the different strategic options which might be suitable for each. (See The BCG Matrix )

The Pareto principle states that 80% of effects arise from 20% of causes. You can apply this in many situations. Especially to understand which of your products or services drive your profits and which may be loss leaders. (See Pareto Analysis )

Blue Ocean Strategy's Strategy Canvas shows how an organisation compares against its competitors or alternatives according to the factors which its customers use when choosing to buy or not to buy from it. It can be used in for Analysis (showing how an organisation does compare) or Direction-setting (showing how an organisation aspires to compare). The objective, in both cases, is for the organisation to differentiate itself from the competition, rather than to compete head-on. (See The Strategy Canvas )

We can't predict what the future will bring. But we can anticipate different things the future could bring, and plan around that understanding. Scenario planning is a structured approach for doing this which draws on other analysis, especially from the PESTEL analysis. As it deals with the future, it also creates a bridge between analysis and Direction setting. (See Working with scenarios )

Strategic Planning Tools for Decision-making and Direction-setting

A mission statement describes why an organisation exists. What is its purpose? What would the world miss if it ceased to exist? (See Mission and Vision Statements )

A vision statement describes what the organisation and the world in which it operates would look like if it were completely successful in its mission and strategy. It should paint a clear and vivid picture of an ideal future. With the mission statement, it should inspire those who work there, and encourage others to want to do business with the organisation. (See Mission and Vision Statements )

The balanced scorecard is a technique for mapping out an organisation's strategy goals, objectives and KPIs in 4 different perspectives: financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and innovation. The strategy map implies a causal relationship between these perspectives: the learning an innovation perspective creates the capability required to improve internal business processes; internal business processes are what delivers value to customers; and delivering value to customers drives financial results. The 'balance' in a balanced scorecard ensures, amongst other things, against too much emphasis on one aspect of a business at the expense of others leading to unintended consequences. (See The Balanced Scorecard )

Values describe what is important to an organisation regardless of its strategy. They represent the lines you can't paint outside of. They can be negatives - things you wouldn't do no matter how profitable they are - or positives - things you believe to have intrinsic, self-evident value. (See Corporate shared values )

The strategy house is a visual representation of a strategy in which the shared values are shown as the foundations, the vision or mission is shown as the roof, and the strategy is shown as (usually) 3 to 4 pillars which rest on the foundations and hold the roof up. The pillars represent themes and typically include a combination of goals and strategic initiatives . The inclusion of strategic initiatives means the strategy house acts as a bridge from direction setting to planning. (See The Strategy House )

Strategic Planning Tools for Planning

The 3 Horizons model classifies activities as relating to maintenance and improvement of the current, expansion and growth into new areas, and transformation into something new and different. It helps organisations to avoid becoming too focused on immediate threats and opportunities at the expense of the future, whilst also avoiding becoming too focused on a future it might not survive to see.

The Ansof Matrix focuses specifically on growth, distinguishing between growth within existing products and markets, growth into new markets, growth by adding new products or services, and growth by doing both (the riskiest of all!) helping you to understand the different requirements and balance the risks of each. (See Planning for growth with Ansoff's Matrix )

RASCI is a framework for assigning responsibility to individuals as being Responsible for getting it done, Accountable for the outcomes, Supportive, Consulted, or merely kept Informed. It provides a way of ensuring full participation without allowing "too many cooks to spoil the broth". (See The RASCI framework )

Kanban or an Ideas Funnel is a visual representation of how individual ideas get moved from inception through to different to completion and all stages in between. It provides insight into the different processes and governance required for ideas at each stage on that journey

The Gantt Chart is borrowed directly from the project management discipline. It shows when you will do what you plan to do, with time shown across the top (x-axis) and each activity shows as a bar from its start to end date, making it easy to represent sequence, concurrency and dependency between activities. (See Using the Gantt chart view )

Another model borrowed from project management, the RAID log lists out, and categorises the Risks, Actions, Issues and Decisions inherent in your strategy execution plan. (See The RAID Log )

A status report tracks whether people are doing what they are supposed to do. It lists all the key strategic initiatives with projected completion dates, Red/Amber/Green traffic lights indicating status, and supporting notes, allowing an organisation to decide what is on track and where some form of intervention or change is required. (See The Initiative Status Report )

Strategic Planning Tools for Tracking Results

A strategy scorecard tracks whether your strategy is delivering the intended outcomes or whether an adjustment is required. It typically shows the performance of each strategic KPI as a line chart with a common horizontal time axis. Variances on the scorecard are typically fed back into the Analysis phase so that the cycle can be repeated. (See Creating a Strategy Scorecard on StratNavApp.com )

A KPI correlation matrix calculates the correlations between pairs of KPIs. This is used to test for and confirm hypothesised cause and effect relationships inferred from the strategy map (see Balanced Scorecard above). The correlation calculations may need to allow for delays between causes and effects. (See Correlations between your Performance Indicator Results )

You probably wouldn't use all of these tools in every strategy. But you will at least need to use several.

And to develop and execute a coherent strategy you will need to integrate and link them together so that information flows through them in a logical way and your strategy remains internally consistent.

You can do this manually, of course. But it quickly becomes quite onerous and errors creep in. That's where a tool like StratNavApp.com comes into its own. It will ensure that logical flow of information and internal consistency for you. Leaving you to focus on the higher value-add activity of generating strategic insights and translating those into focused action that delivers tangible results.

• The disadvantages of using simple templates for business strategy

If any part of this text is not clear to you, please contact our support team for assistance .

© StratNavApp.com 2024

Updated: 2024-06-20

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6 business analysis techniques to use in your strategic plans

August 10, 2021 by MindManager Blog

By: Emily Finlay

For businesses, efficiency and effectiveness are key. Whether you’re executing a major project or determining the best ways to train new employees, it’s important to use best practices to achieve exceptional results.

Business analysis uncovers the strategies and processes that can help your business improve. You can find the flaws in your operations while determining what you need to change to fix them. Auditing and refining your business also offers the insights you and your leadership need to make informed decisions that will benefit your work moving forward.

Like any method, however, the power of business analysis depends on the methods used to execute it. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the top business analysis techniques. You’ll learn what each option offers and how you can use them to analyze your own processes.

What are business analysis techniques?

Business analysis techniques are the specific processes used to audit and improve business operations. These step-by-step procedures help analysts stay organized and make strategic decisions during the analysis.

What are the different types of business analysis techniques?

The most common types of business analysis include BPM, SWOT, MOST, CATWOE, PESTLE, and Six Hats Thinking. These planning methods can be used in a variety of industries and projects. From streamlining your operations to aligning your company’s purpose, these tactics can maintain your organization’s long-term success.

Business Process Modeling (BPM)

This technique, also known as business process mapping , creates a visual representation of the procedures a company uses. By visualizing the processes, teams and analysts can identify any problems. They can also see where efficiency is lost.

As you develop strategies to address these shortcomings, you can apply them to the model to see how they will affect the targeted process. This will also highlight any potential problems that these changes might create in other areas.

Business analysis steps: BPM

According to the International Institute of Business Analysis , here are the steps you should follow:

• Strategic planning – Start by researching and understanding the processes and problems you’re going to solve. Discover everything involved before creating your model.
• Business Model Analysis – Develop a model (such as mind mapping , flow charting, or diagramming) of the business processes with the information gained in step one. Analyze this visual and use it to guide your strategies.
• Define and design the process – Create the solutions you need and apply them to the model.
• Technical Analysis for complex business solutions – Use your visualization to analyze and improve the solutions.

Business analysis example: BPM

If a company is changing the way they produce a specific product, this technique can help them understand how adjusting that element will impact others. Rather than theorizing, they can use a visual flow to pinpoint obstacles and areas of improvement.

Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT)

These four elements define this technique, identifying internal (Strengths and Weaknesses) and external (Threats and Opportunities) factors. The most popular type of business analysis, SWOT drives informed decision making in nearly every area of business.

Business analysis steps: SWOT

Create a map with four quadrants, as outlined below, and use it guide your solutions and decisions:

• Strengths – What processes, resources, and other factors give us an advantage over competitors?
• Weaknesses – What holds us back from doing better and growing?
• Opportunities – What is happening outside the business that we can use to our advantage?
• Threats – What external factors can limit or hurt our success?

Business analysis example: SWOT

You can apply this technique to performance reviews, using the information you gain to help employees make improvements and celebrate strengths.

Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics (MOST)

If you want to make sure your company is maintaining its main goals through every decision and transition, MOST is the best tactic to use. By analyzing your business based on the following elements, you can turn big-picture objectives into achievable actions.

• Mission – Your overarching purpose that defines everything you do.
• Objectives – The goals necessary to accomplish your mission.
• Strategies – What you need to do to reach your objectives.
• Tactics – How everyone in the organization can execute your strategies.

Business analysis steps: MOST

Starting from the top down, define these four elements for your business. Then, use them to create processes that prioritize your main goals throughout the organization.

Business analysis examples: MOST

When rebranding a company, the MOST technique helps you discover and refine the heart of your organization. You can realign your processes, products, and marketing efforts to reflect your goals more accurately. If your company has strayed from these primary values or shifted to new ones, MOST will help you clearly define your views and objectives.

Customers, Actors, Transformation, Worldview, Owner, Environmental constraints (CATWOE)

Your individual stakeholders’ viewpoints affect your goals and processes. Every change also affects all of your stakeholders. With CATWOE, you can understand how any action impacts your organization, customers, leadership, and more.

Business analysis steps: CATWOE

This technique should be used at the start of the project or strategizing process. Begin by defining these parties and asking these questions:

• Customers – Who benefits from your work and products? How does this issue or the proposed solution affect them?
• Actors – Who is directly involved in this process? How will they affect it?
• Transformation – What are the ultimate changes that will occur by implementing this solution or new procedures?
• Worldview – How will this change affect the organization’s mission and big picture?
• Owner – Who is responsible for the affected system and how are they related to it?
• Environmental constraints – On every level, what are the limitations that affect the solution?

Once you have these answers, use them to guide your strategies and final solutions.

Business analysis examples: CATWOE

If a development company wanted to build a new shopping center, they could use this technique to understand the impact it would have on the company, their future customers, and the people living in the surrounding community.

Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental (PESTLE)

Decisions and changes aren’t made in a vacuum. PESTLE identifies outside factors that will affect the decisions made within an organization, as well as how the company’s changes will impact other factors. This technique allows businesses to plan for any potential threats that might develop and strategize for seizing new opportunities.

Business analysis steps: PESTLE

Walk through the following list to determine the forces that can impact your organization.

• Political – How do government policies, initiatives, and financial support affect your business and your proposed solution?
• Economical – What is the economic climate and how does it affect you?
• Social – How do trends and attitudes concerning population, media, culture, lifestyle, and education affect the business?
• Technology – What is the rate of technological development, particularly for information and communication, and how does it impact your changes?
• Legal – Do local and national regulations and employment standards affect your work? How?
• Environmental – Are weather, pollution, waste, and recycling factors a concern for your organization? What is their impact?

Use this information to prepare for threats and opportunities that might affect your business’ ongoing performance.

Business analysis examples: PESTLE

When using the SWOT technique to evaluate your company’s direction and future, you can use PESTLE to develop and analyze each element of the process. This will help you create a more detailed understanding of your business, particularly concerning threats and opportunities.

Six Thinking Hats

Often, teams lack enough diverse viewpoints to find and understand the issues that are keeping them from full success. With the Six Thinking Hats technique , you can use different ways of thinking to uncover new perspectives. Using these new insights during brainstorming sessions can hone your team’s ideas for better results.

Business analysis steps: Six Thinking Hats

In your meetings, consider the problem and possible solutions with the type of thinking dictated by each “hat” and step.

• Start with the White Hat, which focuses on hard data and logic. What information do you know or need?
• Move to the Yellow Hat, which stands for brightness and positivity. Look for the possible values and benefits through optimistic thinking
• Now play devil’s advocate with the Black Hat of judgment. Find potential problems, obstacles, and threats.
• The Red Hat focuses on intuition. Share your feelings, fears, hunches, and emotions associated with the solution or process.
• Use the Green Hat of creativity to consider possibilities, thoughts, and ideas. Try to think outside the box.
• With the Blue Hat, you will bring your brainstorming back to earth. Consider the big picture of the project or changes. Ensure your ideas fit your operations and procedures.
• Use this process to hone your solutions and approach to problems.

Business analysis example: Six Thinking Hats

The next time you think your project needs fresh eyes, gather your team for a Six Thinking Hats brainstorming session. You will be able to view your work in a new light and uncover ways to improve.

There isn’t a “right” technique for business analysis. Instead, use these tactics as they best fit your objectives. And don’t be afraid to combine these techniques for a single problem. As you analyze your business through different lenses, you can find the solutions that will offer the greatest benefits.

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• 5 Best Business Plan Software and Tools in 2023 for Your Small Business

Data as of 3 /13/23 . Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

We are committed to sharing unbiased reviews. Some of the links on our site are from our partners who compensate us. Read our editorial guidelines and advertising disclosure .

A business plan can do a lot for your business. It can help you secure investors or other funding. It can give your company direction. It can keep your finances healthy. But, if we’re being honest, it can also be a pain to write.

Luckily, you don’t have to start from scratch or go it alone. Business plan software and services can help you craft a professional business plan, like our top choice LivePlan , which provides templates, guidance, and more.

You’ve got quite a few choices for business plan help, so we’re here to help you narrow things down. Let’s talk about the best business plan tools out there.

• LivePlan : Best overall
• BizPlanBuilder : Most user-friendly
• Wise Business Plans : Best professional service
• Business Sorter : Best for internal plans
• GoSmallBiz.com : Most extra features
• Honorable mentions

Business plan software 101

The takeaway, business plan software faq, compare the best business plan software.

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LivePlan: Best overall business plan software

Data as of 3 /13/23 . Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change. *With annual billing

LivePlan has been our favorite business plan software for a while now, despite the stiff competition.

There’s a lot to like about LivePlan. It has pretty much all the features you could want from your business plan software. LivePlan gives you step-by-step instructions for writing your plan, helps you create financial reports, lets you compare your business’s actual financials to your plan’s goals, and much more. And if you ever need inspiration, it includes hundreds of sample business plans that can guide your writing.

LivePlan software pricing

But the best part? You get all that (and more) at a very competitive price. (You can choose from annual, six-month, or monthly billing.) While LivePlan isn’t quite the cheapest business plan builder out there, it’s not too far off either. And if comes with a 60-day money back guarantee. So there’s no risk in trying LivePlan out for yourself.

With a great balance of features and cost, LivePlan offers the best business plan solution for most businesses.

BizPlanBuilder: Most user-friendly

Need something easy to use? BizPlanBuilder fits the bill.

BizPlanBuilder doesn’t have a flashy, modern user interface―but it does have a very clear, intuitive one. You’ll be able to see your plan’s overall structure at a glance, so you can quickly navigate from your title page to your market trend section to that paragraph on your core values. And as you write, you’ll use a text editor that looks a whole lot like the word processing programs you’re already familiar with.

BizPlanBuilder software pricing

Data effective 3/13/23. At publishing time, amounts, rates, and requirements are current but are subject to change. Offers may not be available in all areas.

BizPlanBuilder also offers lots of helpful guidance for actually writing your plan. It gives you pre-written text, in which you just have to fill in relevant details. It offers explanations for what information you need to include in each section of your plan and way. It even gives you helpful tips from experts, so you’ll have all the information you need to plan like a pro.

So if you want planning software with almost no learning curve, you’ll like BizPlanBuilder.

Wise Business Plans: Best professional service

• Custom quote

Unlike all the other companies on this list, Wise Business Plans doesn’t offer software. Instead, it offers professional business plan writing services―meaning someone does all the hard work for you.

Now, you might think that sounds expensive―and you’re probably right (you have to request a custom quote for your plan). But there’s a lot to be said for expertise, and Wise Business Plans has plenty of that. Your business plan will get written by an experienced writer (with an MBA, no less). They’ll get information from you, do their own research, and then write your plan. You get one free revision, and you can always pay for more.  

Wise Business Plans service pricing

Your end result will be a polished, entirely original business plan. (You can even get printed copies.) And best of all, you won’t have to spend your precious time working on the plan yourself. Wise Business Plans takes care of all the hard parts, and makes your business look good while doing it. Sounds like a service worth paying for, right?

Put simply, if you want the most professional business plan possible, we recommend using Wise Business Plans’s writing service.

Business Sorter: Best for internal plans

Many businesses need plans to show to people outside the company (to get financing, for example). But what if you just need a plan for internal use? In that case, we suggest Business Sorter.

Business Sorter uses a unique card-based method to help you craft the perfect business plan. (You can watch a demo video to see how it works.) You’ll plan some of the usual things, like finances and marketing. But Business Sorter also lets you make plans for specific teams and team members. It also emphasizes more internal matters, like operations, that might get overlooked in a business plan for outsiders.

Business Sorter software pricing

After you’ve made your business plan, Business Sorter also helps you stay accountable to it. You can create tasks, give them deadlines, and assign them to team members―giving you basic project management tools to make sure your business plans become business actions. (Oh, and did we mention that Business Sorter has the lowest starting prices of any software on this list?)

It all adds up to a business plan software that works great for internal planning.

GoSmallBiz: Most extra features

Want to get way more than just business planning software? Then you probably want GoSmallBiz.

See, GoSmallBiz offers business plan software as part of its service―but it’s just one part of a much bigger whole. You also get everything from discounts on legal services to a website builder to a CRM (customer relationship manager) to business document templates. And more. In other words, you get just about everything you need to get your startup off the ground.

GoSmallBiz software pricing

Don’t worry though―you still get all the business planning help you need. GoSmallBiz gives you business plan templates, step-by-step instructions, and the ability to create financial projections. And if you get stuck, GoSmallBiz will put you in touch with experts who can offer advice.

If you want business planning and much, much more, give GoSmallBiz a try.

• PlanGuru : Best financial forecasting
• EnLoop : Cheapest tool for startups

We recommend the software above for most business planning needs. Some businesses, though, might be interested in these more specialized planning software.

Honorable mention software pricing

PlanGuru: Best financial forecasting features

PlanGuru is pretty pricey compared to our other picks, but you might find its forecasting features worth paying for. It has more forecasting methods than other software (over 20) plus it lets you forecast up to 10 years.

EnLoop: Cheapest tool for startups

EnLoop doesn’t have our favorite features or interface, but it does have really, really low pricing plus a seven-day free trial. It's the most affordable software for startup business planning and still provides all the essential features like financial analysis, team collaboration, charting, and more.

Data as of 3 /13/23 . Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change. * With annual billing

Several of our previous favorite planning software, including BusinessPlanPro and StratPad, seem to have gone out of business.

A business plan is a written, living document that tells the story of your business and what you plan to do with it. It serves as the source of truth for you—the business owner—as well as potential partners, employees, and investors, but it also serves as a roadmap of what you want your business to be.

Why you need a business plan

While some small-business owners don’t see the point of creating a formal business plan, it can have some concrete benefits for your business. For example, one 2016 study found that business owners with written plans are more successful than those that don’t. 1

Still too vague? Then let’s get specific.

If you ever seek business funding (from, say, banks, angel investors , or venture capitalists ), you’ll have to prove that your business deserves the money you want. A formal business plan―complete with financial data and projections―gives you a professional document you can use to make your case. (In fact, most potential investors will expect you to have a business plan ready.)

Even if you’re not seeking funding right now, a business plan can help your business. A formal plan can guide your business’s direction and decision making. It can keep your business accountable (by, for example, seeing if your business meets the financial projections you included). And a formal plan offers a great way to make sure your team stays on the same page.

What to include in your business plan

Not all business plans are created equal. To make a really useful business plan, you’ll want to include a number of elements:

• Basic information about your business
• Your products/services
• Market and industry analysis
• What makes your business competitive
• Strategies and upcoming plans
• Your team (and your team’s background)
• Current financial status
• Financial and market projections
• Executive summary

Of course, you can include more or fewer elements―whatever makes sense for your business. Just make sure your business plan is comprehensive (but not overwhelming).

How business plan software can help

With so many elements to include, business plan creation can take a while. Business plan software tries to speed things up.

Most business plan software will include prompts for each section. In some cases, you can just fill in your business’s specific information, and the software will write the text for you. In other cases, the software will give you specific guidance and examples, helping you write the text yourself.

Plus, business plan software can help you stay organized. You’ll usually get intuitive menus that let you quickly flip through sections. So rather than endlessly scrolling through a long document in a word processor, you can quickly find your way around your plan. Some software even lets you drag and drop sections to reorganize your plan.

Sounds way easier than just staring at a blank page and trying to start from scratch, right?

Choosing business plan software

To find the right business plan builder for your business, you’ll want to compare features. For example, would you rather write your own text, getting prompts and advice from your software? Or would you rather go with a fill-in-the-blank method?

Likewise, think about the elements you need. If your plan will have a heavy focus on finances, you’ll want to choose business plan software with robust financial projection features. If you care more about market and competitor analysis, look for software that can help with that research.

You may also want to find business plan software that integrates with your business accounting software . Some plan builders will import data from Xero, QuickBooks, etc. to quickly generate your financial data and projections.

And of course, you’ll want to compare prices. After all, you always want to end up with software that fits your business budget.

The right business plan software can make your life easier. With LivePlan ’s wide breadth of features and online learning tools, you can’t go wrong. Plus, BizPlanBuilder 's one-time pricing makes it easy to invest while Business Sorter has a low starting cost. And if you're business is looking to grow, GoSmallBiz and Wise Business Plans will scale with you.

But of course, different companies have different needs. So shop around until you find the software that’s best for you and your business.

Now that you've got a business plan, take a look at our checklist for starting a small business.  It can help you make sure you have everything else you need to get your startup off to a good start!

Related content

• 7 Steps to Build a Successful Project Management Sales Plan
• Best Project Management Software and Tools in 2023
• 4 Cost Management Techniques for Small Businesses

Creating a business plan can take anywhere from a couple hours to several weeks. Your timeline will depend on things like the elements you choose to include, whether you use software or hire a writing service, and how much research goes into your plan.

That said, much of the business plan software out there brags that it can help you create a fairly detailed plan in a few hours. So if you’re going the software route, that can help you set your expectations.

If you want to get the most out of your business plan, you should update it on a regular basis―at least annually. That way, you can continually refer to it to inform your company’s strategies and direction.  

At the very least, you should update your business plan before you start looking for a new round of funding (whether that’s with investors or lenders).

Thanks to business plan software, you can easily write your own business plan rather than pay someone to do it for you. And in most cases, software will cost you less than a professional business plan service.

There are some times you might want to go with a service though. If time is tight, you might find that it’s worth the cost of a service. Or if you’ve got big investor meetings on the horizon, you might want the expertise and polish that a professional service can offer.

Ultimately, you’ll have to decide for yourself whether business plan software or a business plan service will work better for your company.

Methodology

We ranked business plan software and tools based on features, pricing and plans, and connections to project management and other services. The value of each plan and service, along with what it offers, was a big consideration in our rankings, and we looked to see if what was offered was useful to small businesses or just extra. The final thing we looked at was the ease of use of the software to see if it's too complex for small businesses.

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.

Sources 1. Harvard Business Review, “ Research: Writing a Business Plan Makes Your Startup More Likely to Succeed .” Accessed March 13, 2023.

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Planning Business Analysis: Tools, Approaches and Ideas

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Yulia Kosarenko

Business, Architected

How do you plan requirements analysis? Many business analysts worry about it.

How can you estimate the time needed for analysis? What do you need to analyze? What meetings or activities to propose?

These are non-trivial questions. Planning analysis starts with understanding the…

Written by Yulia Kosarenko

Democratizer of business analysis & architecture. Diagram lover. Solopreneur on a journey. Write to help; consult to get things done. why-change.com 🇨🇦 🇺🇦

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What is strategic planning? A 5-step guide

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. In this article, we'll guide you through the strategic planning process, including why it's important, the benefits and best practices, and five steps to get you from beginning to end.

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. The strategic planning process informs your organization’s decisions, growth, and goals.

Strategic planning helps you clearly define your company’s long-term objectives—and maps how your short-term goals and work will help you achieve them. This, in turn, gives you a clear sense of where your organization is going and allows you to ensure your teams are working on projects that make the most impact. Think of it this way—if your goals and objectives are your destination on a map, your strategic plan is your navigation system.

In this article, we walk you through the 5-step strategic planning process and show you how to get started developing your own strategic plan.

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Get our free ebook and learn how to bridge the gap between mission, strategic goals, and work at your organization.

What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a business process that helps you define and share the direction your company will take in the next three to five years. During the strategic planning process, stakeholders review and define the organization’s mission and goals, conduct competitive assessments, and identify company goals and objectives. The product of the planning cycle is a strategic plan, which is shared throughout the company.

What is a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is the end result of the strategic planning process. At its most basic, it’s a tool used to define your organization’s goals and what actions you’ll take to achieve them.

Typically, your strategic plan should include: 

Your company’s mission statement

Your organizational goals, including your long-term goals and short-term, yearly objectives

Any plan of action, tactics, or approaches you plan to take to meet those goals

What are the benefits of strategic planning?

Strategic planning can help with goal setting and decision-making by allowing you to map out how your company will move toward your organization’s vision and mission statements in the next three to five years. Let’s circle back to our map metaphor. If you think of your company trajectory as a line on a map, a strategic plan can help you better quantify how you’ll get from point A (where you are now) to point B (where you want to be in a few years).

When you create and share a clear strategic plan with your team, you can:

Build a strong organizational culture by clearly defining and aligning on your organization’s mission, vision, and goals.

Align everyone around a shared purpose and ensure all departments and teams are working toward a common objective.

Proactively set objectives to help you get where you want to go and achieve desired outcomes.

Promote a long-term vision for your company rather than focusing primarily on short-term gains.

Ensure resources are allocated around the most high-impact priorities.

Define long-term goals and set shorter-term goals to support them.

Assess your current situation and identify any opportunities—or threats—allowing your organization to mitigate potential risks.

Create a proactive business culture that enables your organization to respond more swiftly to emerging market changes and opportunities.

What are the 5 steps in strategic planning?

The strategic planning process involves a structured methodology that guides the organization from vision to implementation. The strategic planning process starts with assembling a small, dedicated team of key strategic planners—typically five to 10 members—who will form the strategic planning, or management, committee. This team is responsible for gathering crucial information, guiding the development of the plan, and overseeing strategy execution.

Once you’ve established your management committee, you can get to work on the planning process. 

Step 1: Assess your current business strategy and business environment

Before you can define where you’re going, you first need to define where you are. Understanding the external environment, including market trends and competitive landscape, is crucial in the initial assessment phase of strategic planning.

To do this, your management committee should collect a variety of information from additional stakeholders, like employees and customers. In particular, plan to gather:

Relevant industry and market data to inform any market opportunities, as well as any potential upcoming threats in the near future.

Customer insights to understand what your customers want from your company—like product improvements or additional services.

Employee feedback that needs to be addressed—whether about the product, business practices, or the day-to-day company culture.

Consider different types of strategic planning tools and analytical techniques to gather this information, such as:

A balanced scorecard to help you evaluate four major elements of a business: learning and growth, business processes, customer satisfaction, and financial performance.

A SWOT analysis to help you assess both current and future potential for the business (you’ll return to this analysis periodically during the strategic planning process). 

To fill out each letter in the SWOT acronym, your management committee will answer a series of questions:

What does your organization currently do well?

What separates you from your competitors?

What are your most valuable internal resources?

What tangible assets do you have?

What is your biggest strength? 

Weaknesses:

What does your organization do poorly?

What do you currently lack (whether that’s a product, resource, or process)?

What do your competitors do better than you?

What, if any, limitations are holding your organization back?

What processes or products need improvement? 

Opportunities:

What opportunities does your organization have?

How can you leverage your unique company strengths?

Are there any trends that you can take advantage of?

How can you capitalize on marketing or press opportunities?

Is there an emerging need for your product or service? 

What emerging competitors should you keep an eye on?

Are there any weaknesses that expose your organization to risk?

Have you or could you experience negative press that could reduce market share?

Is there a chance of changing customer attitudes towards your company? 

Step 2: Identify your company’s goals and objectives

To begin strategy development, take into account your current position, which is where you are now. Then, draw inspiration from your vision, mission, and current position to identify and define your goals—these are your final destination. 

To develop your strategy, you’re essentially pulling out your compass and asking, “Where are we going next?” “What’s the ideal future state of this company?” This can help you figure out which path you need to take to get there.

During this phase of the planning process, take inspiration from important company documents, such as:

Your mission statement, to understand how you can continue moving towards your organization’s core purpose.

Your vision statement, to clarify how your strategic plan fits into your long-term vision.

Your company values, to guide you towards what matters most towards your company.

Your competitive advantages, to understand what unique benefit you offer to the market.

Your long-term goals, to track where you want to be in five or 10 years.

Your financial forecast and projection, to understand where you expect your financials to be in the next three years, what your expected cash flow is, and what new opportunities you will likely be able to invest in.

Step 3: Develop your strategic plan and determine performance metrics

Now that you understand where you are and where you want to go, it’s time to put pen to paper. Take your current business position and strategy into account, as well as your organization’s goals and objectives, and build out a strategic plan for the next three to five years. Keep in mind that even though you’re creating a long-term plan, parts of your plan should be created or revisited as the quarters and years go on.

As you build your strategic plan, you should define:

Company priorities for the next three to five years, based on your SWOT analysis and strategy.

Yearly objectives for the first year. You don’t need to define your objectives for every year of the strategic plan. As the years go on, create new yearly objectives that connect back to your overall strategic goals . 

Related key results and KPIs. Some of these should be set by the management committee, and some should be set by specific teams that are closer to the work. Make sure your key results and KPIs are measurable and actionable. These KPIs will help you track progress and ensure you’re moving in the right direction.

Budget for the next year or few years. This should be based on your financial forecast as well as your direction. Do you need to spend aggressively to develop your product? Build your team? Make a dent with marketing? Clarify your most important initiatives and how you’ll budget for those.

A high-level project roadmap . A project roadmap is a tool in project management that helps you visualize the timeline of a complex initiative, but you can also create a very high-level project roadmap for your strategic plan. Outline what you expect to be working on in certain quarters or years to make the plan more actionable and understandable.

Step 4: Implement and share your plan

Now it’s time to put your plan into action. Strategy implementation involves clear communication across your entire organization to make sure everyone knows their responsibilities and how to measure the plan’s success. 

Make sure your team (especially senior leadership) has access to the strategic plan, so they can understand how their work contributes to company priorities and the overall strategy map. We recommend sharing your plan in the same tool you use to manage and track work, so you can more easily connect high-level objectives to daily work. If you don’t already, consider using a work management platform .  

A few tips to make sure your plan will be executed without a hitch: 

Communicate clearly to your entire organization throughout the implementation process, to ensure all team members understand the strategic plan and how to implement it effectively. 

Define what “success” looks like by mapping your strategic plan to key performance indicators.

Ensure that the actions outlined in the strategic plan are integrated into the daily operations of the organization, so that every team member's daily activities are aligned with the broader strategic objectives.

Utilize tools and software—like a work management platform—that can aid in implementing and tracking the progress of your plan.

Regularly monitor and share the progress of the strategic plan with the entire organization, to keep everyone informed and reinforce the importance of the plan.

Establish regular check-ins to monitor the progress of your strategic plan and make adjustments as needed. 

Step 5: Revise and restructure as needed

Once you’ve created and implemented your new strategic framework, the final step of the planning process is to monitor and manage your plan.

Remember, your strategic plan isn’t set in stone. You’ll need to revisit and update the plan if your company changes directions or makes new investments. As new market opportunities and threats come up, you’ll likely want to tweak your strategic plan. Make sure to review your plan regularly—meaning quarterly and annually—to ensure it’s still aligned with your organization’s vision and goals.

Keep in mind that your plan won’t last forever, even if you do update it frequently. A successful strategic plan evolves with your company’s long-term goals. When you’ve achieved most of your strategic goals, or if your strategy has evolved significantly since you first made your plan, it might be time to create a new one.

Build a smarter strategic plan with a work management platform

To turn your company strategy into a plan—and ultimately, impact—make sure you’re proactively connecting company objectives to daily work. When you can clarify this connection, you’re giving your team members the context they need to get their best work done. 

A work management platform plays a pivotal role in this process. It acts as a central hub for your strategic plan, ensuring that every task and project is directly tied to your broader company goals. This alignment is crucial for visibility and coordination, allowing team members to see how their individual efforts contribute to the company’s success. 

By leveraging such a platform, you not only streamline workflow and enhance team productivity but also align every action with your strategic objectives—allowing teams to drive greater impact and helping your company move toward goals more effectively. 

Strategic planning FAQs

Still have questions about strategic planning? We have answers.

Why do I need a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is one of many tools you can use to plan and hit your goals. It helps map out strategic objectives and growth metrics that will help your company be successful.

When should I create a strategic plan?

You should aim to create a strategic plan every three to five years, depending on your organization’s growth speed.

Since the point of a strategic plan is to map out your long-term goals and how you’ll get there, you should create a strategic plan when you’ve met most or all of them. You should also create a strategic plan any time you’re going to make a large pivot in your organization’s mission or enter new markets. 

What is a strategic planning template?

A strategic planning template is a tool organizations can use to map out their strategic plan and track progress. Typically, a strategic planning template houses all the components needed to build out a strategic plan, including your company’s vision and mission statements, information from any competitive analyses or SWOT assessments, and relevant KPIs.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. business plan?

A business plan can help you document your strategy as you’re getting started so every team member is on the same page about your core business priorities and goals. This tool can help you document and share your strategy with key investors or stakeholders as you get your business up and running.

You should create a business plan when you’re: 

Just starting your business

Significantly restructuring your business

If your business is already established, you should create a strategic plan instead of a business plan. Even if you’re working at a relatively young company, your strategic plan can build on your business plan to help you move in the right direction. During the strategic planning process, you’ll draw from a lot of the fundamental business elements you built early on to establish your strategy for the next three to five years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. mission and vision statements?

Your strategic plan, mission statement, and vision statements are all closely connected. In fact, during the strategic planning process, you will take inspiration from your mission and vision statements in order to build out your strategic plan.

Simply put: 

A mission statement summarizes your company’s purpose.

A vision statement broadly explains how you’ll reach your company’s purpose.

A strategic plan pulls in inspiration from your mission and vision statements and outlines what actions you’re going to take to move in the right direction. 

For example, if your company produces pet safety equipment, here’s how your mission statement, vision statement, and strategic plan might shake out:

Mission statement: “To ensure the safety of the world’s animals.” 

Vision statement: “To create pet safety and tracking products that are effortless to use.” 

Your strategic plan would outline the steps you’re going to take in the next few years to bring your company closer to your mission and vision. For example, you develop a new pet tracking smart collar or improve the microchipping experience for pet owners. 

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. company objectives?

Company objectives are broad goals. You should set these on a yearly or quarterly basis (if your organization moves quickly). These objectives give your team a clear sense of what you intend to accomplish for a set period of time. 

Your strategic plan is more forward-thinking than your company goals, and it should cover more than one year of work. Think of it this way: your company objectives will move the needle towards your overall strategy—but your strategic plan should be bigger than company objectives because it spans multiple years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a business case?

A business case is a document to help you pitch a significant investment or initiative for your company. When you create a business case, you’re outlining why this investment is a good idea, and how this large-scale project will positively impact the business. 

You might end up building business cases for things on your strategic plan’s roadmap—but your strategic plan should be bigger than that. This tool should encompass multiple years of your roadmap, across your entire company—not just one initiative.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a project plan?

A strategic plan is a company-wide, multi-year plan of what you want to accomplish in the next three to five years and how you plan to accomplish that. A project plan, on the other hand, outlines how you’re going to accomplish a specific project. This project could be one of many initiatives that contribute to a specific company objective which, in turn, is one of many objectives that contribute to your strategic plan. 

What’s the difference between strategic management vs. strategic planning?

A strategic plan is a tool to define where your organization wants to go and what actions you need to take to achieve those goals. Strategic planning is the process of creating a plan in order to hit your strategic objectives.

Strategic management includes the strategic planning process, but also goes beyond it. In addition to planning how you will achieve your big-picture goals, strategic management also helps you organize your resources and figure out the best action plans for success. 

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The five best business analysis tools 2024

Listen to audio version:, how could business analysis tools help your business.

Business analysis is commonly defined as identifying business needs and finding solutions to those  problems.

With this in mind, business analytic tools are strategic tools, techniques or pieces of software that can aid business analysis in order to find solutions more effectively and efficiently and to ensure that businesses get the best results.

In bigger corporations, a ‘Business Analyst’ will be the key person to perform data analysis using these tools, however, in small to medium-sized businesses, where this resource may be unavailable, the business owner and/or their leadership team often have this responsibility.

The following article detailing the best tools for business analysis is written specifically with business owners and leaders in mind.

We have selected the top five tools we feel are the most manageable for business owners to use successfully without the need for business analysis certifications.

As a result, you could see increased productivity, profitability, improvement in your business decisions, and business growth.

These business tools and techniques are:

• SWOT Analysis
• More, Better, Different, Less
• PESTLE Analysis
• Personal and Company Visions

Five best tools for business analysis

1. swot analysis.

A SWOT analysis allows business leaders to understand their business’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It allows you to avoid ‘flying blind’ with your business process and helps you to focus on the right areas at the right time.

You may have done a SWOT analysis before, but there is a secret to ensuring a SWOT analysis is as effective as possible.

Many people conduct a SWOT analysis by bullet pointing or listing their business's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Yet this approach often leaves business owners with a very high-level view of their business without any actionable insights to take away.

How can a SWOT analysis be an effective tool that leads to effective business growth strategies?

As part of our business builder’s blueprint   software tools, we at TAB use a much more detailed SWOT Analysis approach. It fits in with our overall planning process; the personal vision statement   shows an owner where they want to be, and the SWOT gives them a snapshot of where the business is currently – then the strategic plan we create bridges the gap.

Our approach is based on how happy a business owner feels with each area of their business. We get them to rate this from 1-10 so they can create an overall insightful picture of what really are their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

All these things are measured on an interactive balance wheel, as shown below.

As a result, they will see what their own priorities should be going forward.

2. More, Better, Different, Less

Another tool to consider is ‘More, Better, Different, Less.’

According to ayoa.com, “The More, Better, Different, Less method is an easy-to-use framework that encourages you to question your processes and what you could be doing to improve these.”

This tool is a fantastic way in which business owners can regularly review and improve upon details in their business to ensure continuous growth.

It includes four main questions, which should always be completed with your business goals in mind.

The questions are:

• More: what is working for you?

• Better: what can you improve upon?

• Different: what do you need to change?

• Less: what is draining you or taking up too much time?

This analysis tool is very versatile, and we recommend you ask yourself and your team these questions in all areas of your business.

For example, you could answer these questions while focusing on your staff retention and recruitment goals . It might be that under the ‘better’ question, you realise you need a better understanding of your staff’s needs, which could lead to an employee survey strategy.

3. PESTLE Analysis

Another common and highly beneficial business analysis tool is a PESTLE analysis.

The CIPD provide a fantastic overview of a PESTLE analysis , including a step-by-step guide.

While the More, Better, Different, Less approach focuses primarily on internal factors, a PESTLE analysis will shine a light on the external factors that could influence your business. These fall into the following categories: • Political • Economic • Social • Technology • Legal • Environmental By analysing external factors in these categories, you will be able to identify any long-term trends that could influence your business.

A PESTLE can be used in a variety of planning contexts, including strategic business planning, marketing planning and organisational changes. With that in mind, it's a very helpful management tool too.

4 Surveys and Questionnaires

A key area of business you must analyse regularly is both your customer and employee satisfaction. If you understand how content your customers are, you can not only have confidence in how customer loyalty will contribute to your success but also act on where you need to improve. This is where a customer satisfaction survey comes in. Similarly, to develop an effective company culture and maintain staff retention, you need to find an effective way to understand your employees’ satisfaction levels. You can analyse the results in both scenarios to gain greater insights into the subject matter. For a more detailed approach to this business analysis tool, Functionalba gives a good overview of surveys and questionnaires in business analysis. We can also recommend tools such as SurveyMonkey and Microsoft Forms for easy, affordable ways to gather feedback.

5. Personal and Company Visions

Probably the most important way to analyse your business is to start with you as the business owner.

Therefore, we recommend developing your personal vision statement and working on a thorough and well-communicated company vision.

Let’s take each of these in turn.

How does a personal vision analyse your business?

At TAB, we work hard to help people develop their personal vision, as we believe this should drive your business vision.

Ultimately, this is your motivator and will define where and when you want to get to.

It helps to get your personal vision written down, perhaps in a Microsoft Word document, so it is saved on your computer.

By looking at your vision regularly, you can analyse whether your business is on track to deliver what you want from life.

Here are a few examples of a personal vision:

• I want to sell my business in 5 years time and live on the profits
• I want to pay myself a better income to buy a Tesla
• I want to balance my existing business with starting a new one
• I want to work less than 60 hours a week and play more golf
• I want to get out of the day-to-day running of the business so that I can do more for me
• I want to free up one day a week to spend with my young kids

The importance of an effective company vision

A company vision describes an organisation’s mission and aims for what the company will be like in the future. The vision includes key areas such as the purpose of the business, the company’s leadership position in the industry, the company’s market share compared to that of competitors, the culture of the business and much more.

Articulating your vision is important for many reasons:

• A vision provides a guiding principle to help prioritise goals and plans
• It brings meaning to peoples’ work, mobilises them to action and helps them decide what to do and what not to do
• It helps to make sure the team is aligned and working towards the same goals
• Alongside your personal vision, a company vision can be crucial to the running of a successful business

Additionally, If you’re looking for guidance on how to better align your personal and company visions, don’t hesitate to contact your local TAB coach.

By combining these business analysis methodologies, you will better understand where your business is, where you want it to be, and how to get there.

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Top Business Analysis Tools and Software for Success

As Business Analysts (BAs), we need to be experts at translating data into actionable strategies. To excel in this role, we need the right tools in our toolbelts —software that not only simplifies our tasks but also empowers us to make critical decisions and propose valuable solutions with confidence.

In this article, we dive into the arsenal of tools and software that can help you increase the efficiency and accuracy of your data and, therefore, your insights. We’ll explore how these tools cater to various aspects of the BA role and help you navigate the landscape of business analysis, empowering you to drive innovation, streamline processes, and foster success. Whether you’re deciphering requirements, mastering customer relationships, optimizing resources, or visualizing data, there’s a tool designed to complement your expertise and propel your career forward. 

Read on to discover the essential software that every Business Analyst should have in their toolkit.

Managing Requirements

Requirements management is at the core of any business analysis initiative. To ensure that we’re properly gathering, documenting, and tracking project requirements, having the right software can help with organizing and keeping on top of the needs and goals of the stakeholders and the business. The right software can streamline this crucial step.

Here’s the software you should use for requirement management:

1. Confluence (Atlassian): A collaboration platform to document and organize project requirements, fostering team communication.

Some of the benefits of using Confluence include:

• Collaborative Documentation: Confluence is a collaboration platform that promotes transparent and efficient documentation. Business Analysts can create, share, and edit requirement documents in real-time, fostering communication and knowledge sharing within the team.
• Integration with JIRA and other software: Confluence seamlessly integrates with JIRA (more on this later) and other team collaboration software, allowing you to link project requirements to specific tasks and track their progress. This integration streamlines the entire project management process, ensuring that tasks and milestones are met on time.
• Templates and Blueprints: Confluence offers a variety of templates and blueprints designed for requirement documentation. These templates simplify the process, ensuring that you capture all the necessary information in a standardized format.

2. IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS: A robust tool for capturing, tracking, and managing complex requirements.

Some of the benefits of using DOORS include:

• Complex Requirement Management: DOORS is designed to handle complex requirements effectively. It provides a structured environment for defining, managing, and tracing requirements, making it ideal for large-scale and intricate projects.
• Traceability and Impact Analysis: With DOORS, you can create traceability links between requirements and other project elements, allowing you to perform impact analysis and ensure that changes are properly assessed.
• Customization and Configurability: DOORS can be tailored to suit specific industry standards and regulatory requirements. Business Analysts can customize attributes, views, and modules to align with the unique needs of their projects.

A few more worth calling out include:

3. Jama Connect: A solution for real-time requirements management, collaboration, and traceability.

4. Helix RM: An integrated requirements management solution that offers end-to-end visibility into project requirements.

5. Visure Requirements: A versatile tool for requirements engineering and management with solid traceability.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM software helps businesses manage and analyze interactions with their customers and prospects. Business Analysts can use CRM tools to understand customer behavior and preferences to ensure that the solution we’re building is providing the most value. 

Here’s the software you should use for customer relationship management:

1. Salesforce: A widely-used CRM platform that enables sales, service, and marketing teams to better understand their customers.

Some of the benefits of using Salesforce include:

• 360-Degree Customer View: Salesforce provides a comprehensive view of your customers, allowing you to access their historical interactions, preferences, and purchase history. Business Analysts can leverage this data for customer buyer journey insights,  to understand customer frustrations, and improve customer engagement.
• Automation and Workflows: Salesforce offers automation capabilities that streamline routine tasks. As a BA, you can design workflows that enhance sales and service processes, making them more efficient and customer-centric.
• Data Analytics and Insights: Salesforce’s analytics tools allow Business Analysts to gain valuable insights into customer behavior. By analyzing data on customer interactions and market trends, you can make data-driven decisions and pivot your strategies accordingly.

2. Microsoft Dynamics 365: A suite of apps that help businesses manage customer relationships and drive growth.

Some of the benefits of using Dynamics 365 include:

• Unified Platform: Microsoft Dynamics 365 is an integrated suite of applications, including sales, marketing, and customer service. Business Analysts benefit from a unified platform that brings together all customer-related data and processes into one place.
• AI-Driven Insights: Dynamics 365 leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to provide predictive analytics and insights. This can helpBusiness Analysts in forecasting trends, identifying opportunities, and proactively addressing customer needs.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Dynamics 365 is highly scalable, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes. As a Business Analyst, you can adapt the system to meet the specific requirements of your organization, whether you’re a startup or an enterprise.

3. HubSpot: An inbound marketing and sales software that aids in building and managing customer relationships.

4. Zoho CRM: A cloud-based CRM solution that offers sales automation and marketing tools.

5. SAP CRM: Part of the SAP Business Suite, it focuses on managing relationships with customers and driving profitability.

ERP software integrates various business processes and functions, making it crucial for Business Analysts to understand how different systems work together. When considering risk management, how to optimize processes, and the different teams that would be impacted, this software helps BAs visualize those connections. 

Here’s the software you should use for enterprise resource planning:

1. SAP ERP: A comprehensive suite for managing various business operations, including finance, HR, and supply chain.

Some of the benefits of using SAP ERP include: 

• End-to-End Integration: SAP ERP offers a comprehensive suite that integrates various business functions, from financials and procurement to human resources and supply chain management. Business Analysts can gain a holistic view of the organization’s operations, facilitating better, more well-rounded decision-making.
• Real-Time Analytics: SAP ERP includes robust analytics and reporting tools, enabling Business Analysts to access real-time data and generate actionable insights. This data-driven approach helps in identifying bottlenecks, optimizing processes, and seizing opportunities.

2. Oracle ERP Cloud: A cloud-based ERP system for financial management and human capital management.

Some of the benefits of using Oracle ERP Cloud include: 

• Cloud Advantage: Oracle ERP Cloud is a cloud-based solution that ensures scalability and accessibility from anywhere. BAs can access critical data and collaborate with stakeholders in real-time, making it a versatile choice for today’s dynamic business environment.
• AI and Machine Learning: Oracle ERP Cloud leverages AI and machine learning to automate routine tasks, analyze trends, and enhance decision-making. This helps BAs spend more time focusing on strategic activities and problem-solving.

3. Microsoft Dynamics GP: An ERP solution designed for small and medium-sized businesses.

4. Infor CloudSuite: A cloud-based solution for various industries, including manufacturing and healthcare.

5. NetSuite: A cloud-based ERP system for businesses of all sizes.

Business Analysts need tools to analyze and visualize data so we can help organizations make data-driven decisions.

Here’s the software you should use for business intelligence and data visualization:

1. Tableau: A powerful data visualization tool that turns data into actionable insights.

Some of the benefits of using Tableau include:

• User-Friendly Data Visualization: Tableau is renowned for its user-friendly interface, making it accessible for BAs without extensive technical backgrounds. You can easily create interactive and visually appealing dashboards that convey complex data in a clear and understandable manner.
• Data Blending and Integration: Tableau excels at data integration, allowing BAs to combine data from various sources, whether it’s databases, spreadsheets, or cloud-based applications. This capability supports in-depth analysis and reporting.

2. Power BI (Microsoft): A business analytics service for creating interactive reports and dashboards.

Some of the benefits of using Power BI include:

• Seamless Integration with Microsoft Ecosystem: Power BI seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft tools and applications, such as Excel, SharePoint, and Azure. Business Analysts familiar with Microsoft products will find this integration particularly helpful.
• AI-Driven Insights: Power BI incorporates AI capabilities for data analysis. It can automatically detect trends and anomalies in data, empowering Business Analysts to uncover hidden patterns and make informed decisions.

3. QlikView/Qlik Sense: Tools for data discovery and self-service visualization.

4. Looker: A modern data platform that allows users to explore, analyze, and share data.

5. SAP BusinessObjects: A suite for business intelligence, reporting, and data exploration .

Process Modeling and Design

Modeling and designing business processes is a big part of business analysis. BAs need to ensure that workflows are efficient and effective, clearly mapped out, and easy to understand for all of the parties that will be reading them. 

Here’s the software you should use for process modeling and design:

1. Draw.io: A web-based tool for creating diagrams, flowcharts, and process models.

Some of the benefits of using Draw.io include: 

• Intuitive Diagramming: Draw.io is known for its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, making it an excellent choice for creating process flowcharts and diagrams. Business Analysts can quickly design and share visual representations of business processes with teams and stakeholders.
• Cloud Collaboration: Draw.io is cloud-based, which means that multiple team members can collaborate on process modeling in real-time. This feature helps encourage teamwork and ensures that everyone is on the same page.
• Helpful Templates: Draw.io provides many starter templates for hundreds of different types of charts and diagrams. These make getting started with a new model much less daunting.

2. Lucidchart: A visual workspace for diagramming, data visualization, and collaboration.

Some of the benefits of using Lucidchart include: 

• Versatile Diagramming: Lucidchart is a versatile tool that allows Business Analysts to create various types of diagrams, from flowcharts and org charts to wireframes and mind maps. It provides flexibility in visualizing complex processes and systems.
• Integration Capabilities: Lucidchart integrates with popular platforms like Google Workspace, Microsoft Office, and Confluence. This enables Business Analysts to seamlessly incorporate their diagrams into existing documentation and collaboration tools.

3. Bizagi: A platform for process automation and digital transformation.

4. Aris (Software AG): A comprehensive platform for process modeling, analysis, and simulation.

5. Signavio: A process management and modeling platform that focuses on business process optimization.

Efficiency-driving project management tools are essential tools for any Business Analyst. This software helps us track project progress, ensure tasks are visible and completed on time, keep team members aligned, and communicate changes to projects and tasks.  

1. JIRA (Atlassian): A popular agile project management tool for software development projects.

Some of the benefits of using JIRA include:

• Agile Project Management: JIRA is a go-to tool for agile project management. It helps us break down projects into manageable tasks, set priorities, and track progress using methodologies like Scrum and Kanban.
• Custom Workflows: JIRA offers the flexibility to define custom workflows tailored to your project’s needs. BAs can design workflows that align with their specific business processes and capture all necessary information.

2. Microsoft Project: A project management software for planning, scheduling, and managing projects.

Some of the benefits of using Project include: 

• Comprehensive Project Planning: Microsoft Project is a powerful project planning and scheduling tool. BAs can create detailed project plans, define task dependencies, allocate resources, and set timelines to ensure projects stay on track.
• Integration with Microsoft Ecosystem: As part of the Microsoft ecosystem, Project seamlessly integrates with tools like Excel and SharePoint, allowing Business Analysts to leverage their existing knowledge and resources.

3. Monday.com: A work operating system that helps teams plan, track, and collaborate on projects.

4. Asana: A project and task management tool for teams to organize work and achieve goals.

5. Trello: A simple, visual tool for organizing tasks and projects.

Business Analysts can greatly benefit from a range of diverse software and tools designed to enhance their capabilities, communication, and efficiency. These tools not only streamline the workflow but also provide invaluable insights and support for making informed decisions and driving business success. Whether you’re working on requirements management, CRM, ERP, data visualization, process modeling, or project management, there’s a software solution out there to make your job more efficient and effective.

– Written by Jeremy Aschenbrenner, The BA Guide

One Response

Very comprehensive blog for the list of useful tools a BA must be aware of. Thank you, Jeremy. Just small feedback on the ERP S/W list content…when talking about Oracle ERP Cloud, then I think better to mention SAP S/4 HANA instead of SAP ERP as it is the latest one having options to implement on Cloud, on Premise or both.

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Introduction & Guidance To Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

More often than not, the outcome of the business analysis project is directly dependent on proper planning.

The business analysis planning and monitoring activity lays out the groundwork necessary for the successful completion of the whole project.

Monitoring also plays a key role in evaluating the business analysis work during the project. Detailed planning and close monitoring are essential for delivering the desired outcomes.

Table of Contents

Introduction – business planning and monitoring.

They determine how changes are requested and analysed and determine the right approach that will satisfy the need of the organisation. 

Also, they evaluate how business analysis performance has contributed to the implementation of the solution . As for the stakeholders , the BA’s job is to analyse their needs and characteristics to ensure proper planning and monitoring. 

Furthermore, at this stage, they need to conduct performance analysis so the planned activities will deliver a satisfying value to the business. 

All of this would not be possible without ensuring a complete understanding of the organisational context and developing the right analysis approach.

The BABOK guide includes five tasks that BAs should perform as a part of the business analysis planning and monitoring knowledge area. 

These tasks focus on organising and coordinating analysts and stakeholders, planning the approach to specific parts of a project, and defining the roles. They should produce outputs that can serve as a foundation for tasks in other knowledge areas.  We’ll take a closer look at all five of these tasks.

Plan Business Analysis Approach

The plan business analysis approach task defines and creates methods that will be used while performing business analysis activities.

The outputs produced here are a groundwork for the tasks form all of the other knowledge areas. It determines the timeline of the projects, what and when will be performed, and which deliverables are expected.

Also, planning the business analysis approach identifies suitable techniques and tools which will be used over the course of the project.

Some organisations already have established and formalised procedures and approaches and the analyst will have to work within these standards.  Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that some of these approaches won’t have to be adjusted as the project progresses.

In organisations without set procedures, the BA will work with stakeholders to devise the most suitable approach.

The main inputs of planning a business analysis approach are the needs of a specific organisation – problems or opportunities that the organisation is facing.

The business analyst must have a full understanding of the organisational needs as he starts the planning and be aware that those needs may change during the project. 

The expected output of this task is to define the business analysis activities and approach necessary for achieving the desired goals, determine work timeline and sequencing, decide on techniques to be used, and determine expected deliverables.

Plan Stakeholder Engagement

Planning the stakeholder engagemen t includes establishing and maintaining a fruitful collaboration with stakeholders, understanding their roles and relevance, and identifying their needs. To communicate in the best possible way, the business analyst must perform a thorough analysis of all of the crucial stakeholders and their characteristics.

The more stakeholders are involved, the more complex the task becomes, the inclusion of every new stakeholder may require the use of a different technique or the adjustment to the existing approach.

Similar to the previous task the main input of planning the stakeholder engagement is the organisational need. If the analyst has an understanding of the needs, proper identification of key stakeholders will be much easier. Another significant input is the overall business analysis approach as it ensures better stakeholder analysis and communication.

Planning stakeholder engagement should provide a stakeholder engagement approach as an output, containing information on the number of stakeholders, their characteristics, roles, and assignments.

The main elements of the task of planning stakeholder engagement are:

• Performing stakeholders analysis – identifying roles, attitudes, decision-making authority, level of power or influence;
• Defining stakeholder collaboration;
• Stakeholder communication needs.

Guidelines and tools that a business analyst will lean on while planning stakeholder engagement are business analysis performance assessment, change strategy, and current state description.

The key stakeholders for this task are customers, domains subject matter expert, end-user, project manager, regulator, sponsor, and supplier.

Plan Business Analysis Governance

To plan business analysis governance is to define business analysis components that will serve as a support of governing function in an organisation. It’s defining how decisions are made on all aspects of the business, including designs, requirements, reviews, changes, and prioritisation.

For the organisation to function properly, the process of governance should be clear and unambiguous. All of the decision-makers and their competencies must be clearly identified. Also, the information needed to make the decision should be precisely defined.

The primary inputs in planning business analysis governance are business analysis approach which ensures consistency in planning and stakeholder engagement approach which provides information on stakeholders, their characteristics, needs, and roles.

When performed in the right way the planning of business analysis governance should provide an output of governance approach which contains information on decision making stakeholders and their authority and responsibility.

The business analysis governance planning includes the following key elements:

• Decision making;
• Change control process;
• Plan prioritisation approach;
• Plan for approvals.

Guidelines and tools that will come useful for planning business analysis governance are business analysis performance assessment, business policies, the current state description, and legal/regulatory information.

Stakeholders of significance for business analysis governance planning are domain subject matter expert, project manager, regulator, and sponsor.

Plan Business Analysis Information Management

The role of business analysis information management planning is to define the way information gathered during the business analysis process will be captured, stored, accessed, and integrated with other available information. This includes all information elicited, created, and compiled over the course of the business analysis process.

The amount of information obtained this way can be enormous and proper handling is essential for its future use. All of the information should be optimised and easily accessible for whatever period it is needed.

Business analysis information management planning uses all of the outputs from previous tasks as its input. This includes the business analysis approach, stakeholder engagement approach, and governance approach. The main expected output is the information management approach which defines the state of information upon the completion of the change.

The key elements of planning the business analysis information management task are:

• Organisation of business analysis information;
• Level of abstraction;
• Planning a traceability approach;
• Planning for requirement reuse;
• Storage and access;
• Requirements attributes.

Guidelines and tools used during this task are business analysis performance assessment, business policies, information management tools, and legal/regulatory information.

The main stakeholders with the role to play at this stage are domain subject matter expert, regulator, and sponsor.

Identify Business Analysis Performance Improvements

Identifying business analysis performance improvement s include monitoring and management of business analysis performance in order to ensure the realisation of improvements and securing continuous opportunities.

It’s the assessment of the work that the business analyst has done and serves as a guideline for implementing improvements where needed. This task consists of establishing performance measures, conduction analysis based on those measures, reporting, and identifying potential necessary actions.

The primary inputs are business analysis approach and performance objectives which are the external goals set by an organisation. The output of this task is the business analysis performance assessment. It details puts actual performance against the planned one, identifies potential issues, and proposes solutions.

Identifying business analysis improvements includes a few key elements:

• Performance analysis;
• Assessment measures;
• Analysing the results;
• Recommending actions for improvement,

The main tool used here is the organisation performance standard including performance metrics or organisational expectations.

For this business analysis planning and monitoring task, the main stakeholders are domain subject matter expert, project manager, and sponsor.

Business Analysis Approach Template

Having a set of business analysis planning and monitoring templates will help you provide the groundwork for the successful completion of your whole project.

Conclusion – Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring

In all business analysis projects whether waterfall or agile the business analyst will need to understand and review their business analysis planning and monitoring approach to suite the context of their project (and also when they arrived in the project).

This article has provided an introduction to the business analysis planning and monitoring activities necessary for the successful completion of the whole project.

Learn more about the other IIBA business analysis knowledge areas:

Jerry Nicholas

Jerry continues to maintain the site to help aspiring and junior business analysts and taps into the network of experienced professionals to accelerate the professional development of all business analysts. He is a Principal Business Analyst who has over twenty years experience gained in a range of client sizes and sectors including investment banking, retail banking, retail, telecoms and public sector. Jerry has mentored and coached business analyst throughout his career. He is a member of British Computer Society (MBCS), International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), Business Agility Institute, Project Management Institute (PMI), Disciplined Agile Consortium and Business Architecture Guild. He has contributed and is acknowledged in the book: Choose Your WoW - A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimising Your Way of Working (WoW).

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Definition of business analysis, what are business analysis techniques, best business analysis techniques, do you want to become a business analyst, top effective business analysis techniques.

Business analysts are such an essential element for an organization’s survival and success today. By using different structured business analysis techniques, these analysts help companies identify needs, root out flaws, and sift through a flood of data and options to find the right actionable solution.

We’re here today to explore some of the top business analysis techniques and how they are successfully leveraged for an organization’s success. There are many of these proven business analysis problem-solving techniques to choose from. Still, the ones highlighted here are the more commonly used methods, and it’s reasonable to infer that their popularity stems from their effectiveness. Here is the list of the top business analysis techniques:

Business Process Modeling (BPM)

Brainstorming, moscow (must or should, could or would), most (mission, objectives, strategies, and tactics) analysis, pestle analysis, swot analysis, six thinking hats, non-functional requirement analysis, design thinking.

Business analysis is an umbrella term describing the combination of knowledge, techniques, and tasks employed for identifying business needs, then proposing changes and creating solutions that result in value for the stakeholders. Although a significant number of today’s business analysis solutions incorporate software and digital data-based elements, many professionals in the field may also end up advising on organizational changes, improving processes, developing new policies, and participating in strategic planning.

So, business analysts spur change within an organization by assessing and analyzing needs and vulnerabilities and then creating and implementing the best solutions. Much of the information used to draw these conclusions comes from data collected by various means, often falling under the term “big data.”

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Business analysis techniques are processes used to create and implement plans necessary for identifying a company’s needs and delivering the best results. There is no such thing as a “one size fits all” technique because every business or organization is different.

Here are the top business analysis techniques. Keep in mind that business analysts who want to be project managers should be familiar with most, if not all, of them.

1. Business Process Modeling (BPM)

BPM is often used during a project’s analysis phase to understand and analyze the gaps between the current business process and any future process that the business is shooting for. This technique consists of four tasks:

1. Strategic planning

2. Business model analysis

3. Defining and designing the process

4. Technical analysis for complex business solutions

Many industries, especially the IT industry, favor this technique because it’s a simple, straightforward way to present the steps of the execution process and show how it will operate in different roles.

2. Brainstorming

There’s nothing like good, old-fashioned brainstorming to generate new ideas, identify a problem’s root causes, and come up with solutions to complex business problems. Brainstorming is a group activity technique that is often used in other methods such as PESTLE and SWOT .

CATWOE identifies the leading players and beneficiaries, collecting the perceptions of different stakeholders onto one unified platform. Business analysts use this technique to thoroughly evaluate how any proposed action will affect the various parties. The acronym stands for:

• Customers: Who benefits from the business?
• Actors: Who are the players in the process?
• Transformation Process: What is the transformation at the core of the system?
• World View: What is the big picture, and what are its impacts?
• Owner: Who owns the impacted system, and what’s their relation?
• Environmental Constraints: What are the constraints, and how do they impact the solution?

4. MoSCoW (Must or Should, Could or Would)

MoSCoW prioritizes requirements by offering a framework that evaluates each demand relative to the rest. The process forces you to ask questions about the actual necessity of any given element. Is the item a must-have or a should-have? Is the demand something that could make the product better, or is it something that would be a good idea in the future?

5. MOST (Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics) Analysis

MOST is a robust business analysis framework—considered one of the best techniques for understanding an organization’s ability and purpose. This technique includes conducting a detailed, complete internal analysis of the organization’s goals and how to approach them. The acronym stands for:

• Mission: What is the organization’s purpose?
• Objectives: What are the key goals that help achieve the mission?
• Strategies: What are the options available for achieving the objectives?
• Tactics: What are the methods that the organization will follow to carry out the strategies?

6. PESTLE Analysis

Business analysts use the PESTLE model (sometimes called PEST) to identify environmental factors that can influence their company and how best to address them when making business decisions. Those influences are:

• Political: Financial support and subsidies, government initiatives, and policies.
• Economic: Labor and energy costs, inflation, and interest rates.
• Sociological: Education, culture, media, life, and population.
• Technological: New information and communication systems technologies.
• Legal: Local and national government regulations and employment standards.
• Environmental: Waste, recycling, pollution, and weather.

By analyzing and studying these factors, analysts gain a better understanding of how they will influence the organization’s narrative. This understanding, in turn, makes it easier for analysts to develop strategies on how to address them.

7. SWOT Analysis

One of the most popular techniques in the industry, SWOT identifies the strengths and weaknesses in a corporate structure, presenting them as opportunities and threats. The knowledge helps analysts make better decisions regarding resource allocation and suggestions for organizational improvement. The four elements of SWOT are:

• Strengths: The qualities of the project or business that give it an advantage over the competition.
• Weaknesses: Characteristics of the business that pose a disadvantage to the project or organization, when compared to the competition or even other projects.
• Opportunities: Elements present in the environment that the project or business could exploit.
• Threats: Elements in the environment that could hinder the project or business.

SWOT is a simple, versatile technique that is equally effective in either a quick or in-depth analysis of any sized organization. It is also useful for assessing other subjects, such as groups, functions, or individuals.

8. Six Thinking Hats

This business analysis process guides a group’s line of thinking by encouraging them to consider different ideas and perspectives. The ‘six hats’ are:

• White: Focuses on your data and logic.
• Red: Uses intuition, emotions, and gut feelings.
• Black: Consider potential negative results, and what can go wrong.
• Yellow: Focus on the positives; keep an optimistic point of view.
• Green: Uses creativity.
• Blue: Takes the big picture into account, process control.

The six thinking hats technique is often used in conjunction with brainstorming, serving as a means of directing the team’s mental processes and causing them to consider disparate viewpoints.

9. The 5 Whys

This technique is commonly found as often in Six Sigma as it is in business analysis circles. While journalism uses the “Five W’s” (Who, What, When, Where, and Why) in reporting, the 5 Whys technique just operates “Why” in a series of leading questions, this approach helps business analysts pinpoint a problem’s origin by first asking why the issue exists, then following it up by asking another “why?” question relating to the first answer, and so on. Here’s an example:

• Why? Because the wrong models were shipped.
• Why? Because the product information in the database was incorrect.
• Why? Because there are insufficient resources allocated to modernizing the database software.
• Why? Because our managers didn’t think the matter had priority.
• Why? Because no one was aware of how often this problem occurred.
• Countermeasure: Improve incident reporting, be sure managers read reports, allocate budget funds for modernizing database software.

10. Non-Functional Requirement Analysis

Analysts apply this technique to projects where a technology solution is replaced, changed, or built up from scratch. The analysis defines and captures the characteristics needed for a new or a modified system and most often deal with requirements such as data storage or performance. Non-functional requirement analysis usually covers:

• Performance
• Reliability

Non-Functional Requirement Analysis is commonly implemented during a project’s Analysis phase and put into action during the Design phase.

11. Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a business analysis technique that is primarily used for problem-solving and innovation. It's a human-centered approach that emphasizes empathy, collaboration, and creative thinking to develop solutions that meet user needs and create positive user experiences. Design Thinking is often employed to address complex, ambiguous, or user-centric problems by focusing on understanding the end-users' perspectives, motivations, and pain points.

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The Post Graduate Business Analysis program gives you expertise in the latest BA tools and techniques like the ones mentioned previously. You will master planning and monitoring, data analysis and statistics, visualizations, Agile Scrum methodologies, and SQL databases. The course supplements your training with real-world case studies and helps you become an AI-powered business analyst.

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What is Requirement Analysis: Overview, Applications, Techniques and Top Tools Used

A Holistic Look at Tesla SWOT Analysis

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A Checklist for Business Analysis Planning

Written by Edmund Metera on February 18, 2021 . Posted in Articles .

Use the Universal Business Analysis Planning Checklist as You Plan Your Business Analysis Approach.

Every project is a unique, temporary endeavor.

The business process management, regulatory compliance and digital transformation projects that business analysts may play a role in all come with different goals, scopes, teams, timelines, budgets dependencies and risks.  Though many projects follow similar methodologies they are all tailored for project scope constraints and to take advantage of available resources, opportunities and lessons learned from prior work. 

Each business analyst also comes with a unique set of skills and experiences. Almost all business analysts have great communications skills and at least some experience-based business domain knowledge. That’s why they became business analysts in the first place. Every business analyst has uniquely acquired knowledge of business analysis techniques and business domains through personal study, practice and experience. Many have also been trained in elicitation, requirements management, modeling, measurement, analysis and documentation techniques. An ever-growing number have received professional certifications, such as the IIBA Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) or the PMI Professional in Business Analysis (PMI-PBA).

What is Business Analysis Planning?

The most skilled business analysts are not only competent in many business analysis techniques but also consciously tailor their business analysis approach for each project that they engage in.  They have learned to consider key project dynamics along with their own competencies and to tailor their planned business activities and deliverables to suit each project’s unique dynamics. Regardless of your own level of business analysis experience, maturity, and whether you are formally trained, certified or not, you can still consciously assess each project’s dynamics and tailor your forthcoming business analysis work to get the most productivity and value out of your business analysis efforts in each project.

The most significant project dynamics include:

• The methodology, or sequence of stages or major milestones, and the business analysis products or outcomes that are expected by the end of each stage/milestone (and before starting the next).
• The budget and schedule, not only to meet them, but to take advantage of contingency or schedule slack opportunities, to increase the value, quality or to learn.
• The key project stakeholders and relationships that are new and changed and forming, to take a proactive role in fostering and building relationships with and among that team.
• The types and combinations of elicitation techniques that will be best suited for producing or validating business analysis deliverables. 
• The business domain knowledge and experiences of the diverse key project stakeholders, including your own unique set of business analysis competencies.

The Universal Business Analysis Planning Checklist

You can be more effective in planning your business analysis approach if you follow a consistent, clear agenda that considers the common project dynamics.

The Universal Business Analysis Approach Planning Checklist covers the most common project dynamics. You can use this as an agenda to elicit and discover a comprehensive view of a project’s key dynamics, its opportunities and use what you discover to adapt/tailor your business analysis approach.

As an exercise, think of a project that you have recently worked on, you are currently working on, or will soon be working on.  Answer questions in the following checklist for yourself.

Project Life Cycle

• What are the planned stages of this project?
• What stage are we currently in?
• What is the business analysis deliverable (or set of deliverables) that I am responsible for producing in this stage?
• What is the intended use of my business analysis deliverable(s) and who will use it?

Schedule and Effort Budget

• How much effort can I spend and by what target date am I expected to produce my business analysis deliverable(s)?
• Is that about what I also estimate it will take?
• Is either my effort or date estimate higher than the effort budget or target date? If so, how might I adapt my effort, scope, activities or configuration of my deliverable(s)?

Project Stakeholders and Relationships

• Does this project have an executive sponsor, project owner or product owner, project manager, specialists and business subject matter experts?
• What are the names and titles the persons in these project roles?
• Who’s new to each other on this team?
• Are there local and who’s remote team members?
• Who is responsible for producing, accepting or needs to be consulted or informed of each of the project’s key deliverables, particularly the business analysis deliverable(s)?

Elicitation Techniques

• Documentation Reviews – What documentation or prior work products are available to review?
• Interviews and Workshops – Who can I interview or include in a workshop, and what questions would I need to ask?
• Observations – Where and what kinds of observations may be needed and how could I arrange for them?
• System reviews – What system(s) are available to review and for what information?
• Surveys – Who could I engage in a survey and using what types of questions?
• Considering this project’s stakeholders and relationships, the elicitation techniques available to me, and my own core competencies, which elicitation techniques are best suited gather and validate my business analysis information?

Organizational Assets

• Collaboration tools, facilities, survey tools?
• Diagramming or modeling software?
• What prior business analysis work (e.g., documents, models) that I can draw from?
• Does my organization offer training in the subject business domain?

Competencies and Knowledge

• Who on the project team has what expert business domain knowledge?
• What is my own business domain knowledge?
• What are my strongest core business analysis competencies?
• Where can you take advantage the team’s diversity of knowledge and competencies?
• Who are the best stakeholders in this project to engage in elicitation of content or validation of business analysis deliverables and what is or are the best elicitation techniques to use?

On reflection, are you able to answer these questions for yourself? When you go into your project workplace, who will you include in this conversation?

Conclusion:

Business analysis planning is a recognized business analysis activity. The IIBA Body of Knowledge (BoK) includes the Plan Business Analysis Approach activity within its Business Analysis Planning and Management process. The BoK also lays out the scope of what should be covered by a Business Analysis Approach as “The set of processes, templates, and activities that will be used to perform business analysis in a specific context.”

The time and formality that you apply to business analysis planning is up to you. At the financial institution where I work as a project and program manager, our business analysts typically tailor and document a business analysis plan for each new project to which they are assigned. 

I think of business analysis planning as a form of insurance. Spend a little time upfront to assure that the bulk of the rest of your business analysis efforts will be as well spent and effective as possible. Expect the benefits of tailoring a business analysis plan for every project to be that:

• It will help you to align your own core business analysis competencies to each project, and
• You and the project will gain the most value from your business analysis efforts.

That’s a value-adding proposition. You are welcome to contribute comments about project dynamics that impact business analysis plans or about the checklist presented through the Contact Us page at www.ProcessModelingAdvisor.com.

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Tips for Choosing the Right Business Plan Consultant

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Find yourself staring at the blank screen while writing your business plan? Well, every entrepreneur feels that once in their business journey. This is where a business plan consultant comes into the picture.

Think of a business plan consultant as your strategic partner who helps you craft the plan and create strategies that help you with funding.

But the tricky part is: How do you choose the right business plan consultant? Because there are a lot of options that will confuse you.

Worry not, here are the tips for choosing the right business plan consultant through which you can examine and select the right one for your business.

But before that let us understand why it’s important to hire a consultant.

Why do I need a business plan consultant?

A business plan consultant works closely with you and understands your business thoroughly. They help you achieve your goals like expanded market share, cost reduction, enhanced customer experience, and more.

Consultants have experience in various industries and expertise in fields like marketing, strategic planning, and more. So, having a consultant by your side will lead you to a successful business.

So, as we know why we need a business plan consultant, let’s move ahead to the tips.

8 Tips for choosing the right business plan consultant

Are you too facing the issues in choosing the right business plan consultant ? Well, there are many options online and offline for a consultant, so let’s see how to choose “the one” for your business:

1. Experience and expertise

First, look into which industries the business plan consultant has experience in. Also, consider their expertise, and see if it is relevant for your business.

Go for industry-specific experience, as this ensures familiarity with the unique problems and opportunities related to the industry.

Also, see if they have any successful track record in similar projects in the same industry. Lastly, review their portfolio for detailed strategic plans customized for a business like yours.

2. Check qualifications

Before finalizing the business plan consultant, ensure they have the qualifications that you’re looking for. Go for a solid educational background, such as degrees in business, finance, or related fields, which is necessary for your industry.

Also, check if the consultants have any additional training and memberships in any professional organizations.

3. Review ratings and feedback

Explore recommendations and reviews of the consultant, before you finalize them. If you have word-of-mouth referrals from other businesses then it is a plus, as they come authentically.

Also, scan online reviews and get to know about the consultant’s methodology. All of these combined act as evidence of the consultant’s past work, process, and credibility.

4. Consider compatibility

Look for a consultant who not only has the necessary skills and expertise but communicates effectively. A compatible consultant will be able to offer personalized advice that resonates with your vision, ultimately leading to a more successful output.

5. Verify their process

Understanding the approach of the consultant is essential to ensure a successful outcome. It’s important to verify that their process includes comprehensive research, data analysis, and a clear strategic plan.

Requesting a detailed outline of the process along with the expected timeline can help you understand their method and set clear expectations.

6. Discuss fees and contracts

Discussing fees and contracts before hiring a consultant maintains transparency. You need to clearly understand their fee structure and what it covers.

Apart from that, make sure the contract clearly states what you’ll get, when you’ll get the plan, and how much you’ll have. This clarity helps prevent misunderstandings and potential disputes later on.

7. Review sample plans

Request sample business plans from the consultant to evaluate their work. This will help you know their writing style, attention to detail, and overall professionalism.

By going through their past work, you can consider whether their process syncs with your expectations and requirements.

8. Know their knowledge

Here you should get to know about the consultant’s knowledge by asking certain specific questions from the industry like:

• How do you update yourself with all the industry changes and trends?
• Can you please explain a complex concept of the business and how you plan to apply the same in my business?
• What metrics or KPIs are the most important for you and which you will use for my business?

Also, look into if they can provide you with in-depth replies to your questions.

That’s it guys! I hope following the above tips will help you choose the right business plan consultant for your business.

But, if you don’t want to go to and for for your business plan, you can write it on your own with the help of a business planning software like Upmetrics .

This tool helps you with business planning, creating financial forecasts, strategic planning, and a lot more.

So, why not write your business plan on your own? Start planning today.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Can a business plan consultant help with funding.

Yes, a business plan consultant helps you with writing engaging business plans which ultimately supports you in attracting investors and banks for funds.

How long does it take to complete a business plan?

It might take around weeks, months, or even more for a business plan consultant or a writer to create a business plan for your business. However, with the AI-powered business planning tool like Upmetrics, you can write your plan in days.

Should I pay someone to write my business plan?

Paying someone or not depends on your budget and requirements. But you can write your business plan professionally for just as low as $7 with Upmetrics.

What kind of information do I need to provide to the consultant?

You need to provide the history of your business, product or services, target market, competitors, marketing strategies, financial projections, operational details, legal requirements, and more—for them to understand your business.

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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

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Stakeholder mapping for small businesses: a simple guide

6-minute read

Conor Shilling

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The term stakeholder can refer to a person, a group of people, or an organisation. A stakeholder is a person or group that has an interest in a business or project.

When running a small business, you’ll have lots of stakeholders. Managing them effectively could be the difference between a project succeeding or failing.

One of the best ways to manage stakeholders is to use a technique called stakeholder mapping. Read on to find out how stakeholder mapping works and the benefits it could have for your business.

Types of stakeholder and their role in business

It’s important to identify stakeholders, because these are often the key people or groups that can lead your business or project to success (or failure).

By focusing on stakeholders, a business can gain a deeper understanding of how its operations affect people, groups, and communities more widely.

So what does stakeholder mean more practically? Stakeholders can be both internal and external. An internal stakeholder has a direct relationship with a business or project. They can have an impact on its progress and its outcomes will affect them directly.

For example, if you’re creating a new brand identity for your business an internal stakeholder could be your co-founder. You’ll want to get their input and keep them updated with how the project is going.

External stakeholders, meanwhile, are defined by an indirect relationship. They might not be able to change the course of a business or project easily, but its outcomes will still affect them in some way.

For example, if you have to increase your prices due to higher supplier costs, your customers will be an external stakeholder. This is because they’ll be directly affected by your decision to increase prices.

Some internal stakeholder examples include:

• business owners
• executives and management
• project team
• other employees involved with delivering a project

Some external stakeholder examples include:

• wider communities

What is stakeholder management?

The term stakeholder covers a huge variety of people and groups. Everybody will bring a unique perspective on the business or project, which means having good stakeholder management skills is important.

If you don’t at least know who your stakeholders are before starting work, there could be problems later on. For example, if someone in a senior position wants to sign off on a project but they weren’t involved from the beginning, they might suggest some fundamental changes when they do get brought in. This costs time and money.

A method you can use is stakeholder mapping (also known as a stakeholder matrix), which is a tool for stakeholder analysis.

What is a stakeholder analysis?

Firstly you should identify key stakeholders. List all the internal and external stakeholders that you (and your team) can think of. If you’re listing groups and organisations, make sure you note the key people that you’ll be communicating with.

If you’re not sure what to do when it comes to listing your stakeholders, you can use a stakeholder analysis template to get you started.

Then you can map out your stakeholders with a stakeholder matrix that helps you prioritise the actions you need to take with them.

How to create a stakeholder map

You can create your own stakeholder mapping template with a grid of four squares on two axes, plotting power on one and interest on the other, categorising these as either low or high.

This matrix will help you analyse how to engage the various stakeholders involved:

• high power, high interest stakeholders you should manage closely – concentrate your efforts on these stakeholders, communicating with them clearly and making sure that they stay engaged
• high power, low interest stakeholders you should keep satisfied – communicate with these stakeholders well and keep them updated, but not so much that they become bored with the work or project
• low power, high interest stakeholders you should keep informed – these stakeholders are enthusiastic, so make sure they stay updated, as they can provide helpful details and direction (but don’t let them use too much of your time and resources)
• low power, low interest stakeholders you should monitor – these stakeholders need to be kept on side as their position may change in the future, but you’ll only usually need to update them every now and then

Once you’ve drawn up a stakeholder matrix template, get your list of stakeholders and put them into position across the grid.

What is a RACI?

A similar tool for mapping stakeholders that can also be used to track delivery of tasks is a ‘RACI’. The RACI acronym stands for responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed.

The responsible and accountable sections apply to people making decisions on the project and making sure progress is being made.

Meanwhile, the consulted and informed sections are closer to stakeholder management as you can set out who you need sign-off from and who just needs regular updates.

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Stakeholder management plan

When you’ve prioritised your stakeholders, you can come up with a stakeholder management plan (also known as a stakeholder engagement plan). It’s likely that you’ll need to adapt your communication style depending on the stakeholder.

For instance, you’ll need to consult with someone who has high power and high interest regularly and make sure you take their views into full consideration. You’ll need to nurture them and counter any resistance they have, as they’ll often determine the success or failure of a project.

On the other hand, you might be in regular contact with someone who has low power and high interest. In this instance, you’ll need to take a firm line, as their views ultimately won’t change the project’s course.

Ask the following questions while looking at your stakeholder matrix to help inform your strategy:

Tools to manage your business or project

Now that you know a bit more about stakeholder management, why not take a look at more guides and downloads to help you become more efficient?

• free cash flow forecast guide and template
• how to do a SWOT analysis
• how to write a business proposal (guide and template)

What are your top techniques for stakeholder management? Let us know in the comments below.

More useful guides for small businesses

• How to write a business plan: free template
• Tips for developing a product: a simple guide
• How to price a product: strategies for pricing your product
• What is business insurance?

Ready to set up your cover?

As one of the UK’s biggest business insurance providers, we specialise in public liability insurance and protect more trades than anybody else. Why not take a look now and build a quick, tailored quote?

Conor Shilling is a professional writer with over 10 years’ experience across the property, small business, and insurance sectors. A trained journalist, Conor’s previous experience includes writing for several leading online property trade publications. Conor has worked at Simply Business as a Copywriter for three years, specialising in the buy-to-let market, landlords, and small business finance.

This content is for general, informational purposes only and is not intended to provide legal, tax, accounting, or financial advice. Please obtain expert advice from industry-specific professionals who may better understand your business’s needs.  Read our full disclaimer

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Is your organization optimizing its potential on social?

• · Brandwatch Academy
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Formerly the Falcon suite

Formerly Paladin

Published June 24 th 2024

The Best AI Social Media Tools to Revolutionize Your Content

How can your brand make the most of AI social media tools?

Social media marketing is always evolving. And the more you dive into the world of content management, the more you realize the growing power of AI.

AI technology can be extremely useful in helping businesses and creatives to maintain their digital presence. Whilst it can be helpful for writing and publishing content, it can also analyze and optimize material that you're looking to post.

There are some key AI social media tools available for social media teams that can help you increase your engagement and successfully reach your target audience.

This article will look at the best AI social media tools available right now. Let's get to it.

AI and social media

The benefits of ai social media tools, the best ai tools for content creation, social media strategy with ai, ai-assisted social media management, maximizing audience engagement, optimization tools for social media, challenges and considerations, adapting to changing ai technologies.

Managing various social media platforms is increasingly challenging. Not only can it be time-consuming, but you need to ensure you're staying up-to-date with current trends. As a result, it’s important that content is consistent, has the right messaging, and is aligned with your brand image.

So how do AI social media tools help with this?

While AI integrations within the social media space aren't a new thing, new forms of generative AI can really shape a brand's online presence. Firstly, it makes the creation of content far more efficient. It can also assist in finding your target audience, as well as advising the best times to post. The combination of these factors can help boost your brand to new heights.

By implementing AI tools, your marketing plans can excel.

What’s more, once the AI understands your audience, it will then go on to predict the behavior of your users and start to recognize their preferences. This can take your data analytics to completely new heights when you're looking to maximize your brand’s profile.

Better yet, it doesn’t matter the size of your organization or what industry you're in – AI technology can cater for anything.

Before we look at the AI tools that are available for social media management, it's worth exploring the benefits these tools can provide.

By leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning, this allows for intelligent automation when looking for audiences to target. Plus, the more data that that AI tools analyze, the more you can identify patterns to create detailed profiles and segments of your target audience.

These benefits aid:

• Content creation: With AI technology, instead of spending days producing content, you can do it in minutes. Plus, you can sometimes do this within the same platform where you do all of your current social media project management activity.
• Audience targeting: There's a more advanced AI technology that will create precise audience targeting, so that you can reach the type of customers that are most likely to engage with your brand.
• Automation: One of the most time-consuming aspects to content management is scheduling posts. By automating these commitments, you're free to focus on other aspects of your social strategy.

These advantages lead to more efficient processes, which save you time and allow you to put effort into other areas of your business.

The AI technologies influencing social media

When thinking about diving into the use of an AI social media tool, it's crucial to understand the technology behind it. There are a number of influential tools on social media that help you improve on content, performance, and enhance your online presence.

Here's the background tech that you might not be aware of:

• Machine Learning: This is a subset of AI that builds systems which help to improve on performance. In terms of social media posts and content creation, it enables you to stay ahead of the game with predicted trends, recommendations of how to improve content, and image classification.
• Natural Language Processing (NLP): NLP technology essentially allows AI to understand, interpret, and respond to human text and speech. It's frequently found in empowering chatbots, analyzing social sentiments, and extracting keywords.
• Natural Language Generation (NLG): NLG is the application of AI models to transform content so that it makes sense to humans. A subset of NLP, it uses text summarization to help you understand large volumes of information far quicker than digesting books or videos.

By mastering these AI technologies, you can successfully boost your online presence, improve engagement, and always be one step ahead of the competition.

AI tools can be used to create many different kinds of content for your social media platforms – such as high-quality visuals, automated content, and copy assistance.

As an agency, you might be working on a large-scale project that involves several different social media channels, for multiple clients, so you might turn to an AI tool that automatically generates bespoke visual content. This will not only save you time, but also allows for you to put energy into other areas.

Below are four types of AI content – and the tools that can help you create them.

1. AI-generated images and videos

Using AI tools when creating social media posts is rapidly becoming a key tool for social media teams, especially when producing bespoke visuals for different platforms.

The use of AI-generated imagery and videos can save you plenty of time, and you can continue to create high-quality visual material. Plus, it’s super cost effective.

These AI tools, such as Pixlr and Canva , allow advanced machine learning algorithms to create visuals that are not only unique, but that can also grab the attention of your audience in social campaigns.

The advantage of using these tools is that you can speed up your current processes for creating content, which gives you much more time to create impactful social media campaigns.

2. Automated content production

Automated content has the power to help organizations become more competitive amongst its rivals.

Modern day content production has seen an huge increase of automation in a business’ marketing processes.

The AI tools available in this space, such as Brandwatch's Iris integration with ChatGPT , makes content creation far more time-efficient, whilst keeping it highly marketable. The tool has features that create AI-generated and data-driven content, and through its automation it finds solutions to repetitive and time-consuming tasks.

3. Brandwatch Writing Assistant

Using Brandwatch's Iris Writing Assistant with a set of OpenAI-powered features means you can directly manage your social content and engagement together.

Iris Writing Assistant helps you with everything related to creating text: from social posts and ads to replies to customers’ messages. 

Iris can also make your drafts better by improving text, while also create social media posts from scratch based on your brand's personality.

You can do everything from automatically creating replies to customer inquiries based on a conversation’s context, to streamlining your social media workflows.

The time and effort that can be saved using a platform like Iris enables you to put a higher focus on a level of strategic planning that further grows your presence on social media.

4. AI for blogs and social posts

It's crucial when curating blog and social media posts that you're authentic in your messaging when establishing your online following and engaging with your audience.

Readers can spot disingenuous posts from a mile away, and they are less likely to interact with your marketing efforts if they sense inauthenticity.

The problem is, not everyone is an expert in writing blogs, Instagram posts captions, and other copy. But lukcly, there are AI tools that can provide features to help with this. All without overwhelming your content and making it look inauthentic.

These tools, like Grammarly and Hemingway Editor, are tailored to the demographic that you’re targeting. By doing this, you can improve the readability of what you're positing –whilst also generating new topic ideas.

It's possible to analyze a scheduled blog post or social media post and assess its overall structure, tone, and grammar. This ensures every bit of content meets the required professional level and you can make quick edits before publishing.

What’s more, there are tools like Crayon and MarketMuse that utilize AI in a way that will put you ahead of your competitors. They do this by analyzing your content and generating data patterns that help develop your own content strategy.

By utilizing AI-driven tools in your content creation process, you can streamline your social media messaging which, as a result, will improve results by boosting engagement.

Behind any good content is a solid social strategy. And the use of an AI tool can vastly improve your quality and efficiency within this process.

But firstly, you need to understand your audience. There are AI tools available that can critically analyze your audience, their behavior, and what their needs are, helping you to paint a better picture of who you're trying to target.

Once these tools understand your audience, they can further advise you on when to post your content based on how your users are currently engaging with your brand.

Let's look in detail about how to use AI when strategizing a social media marketing campaign.

Target audience analysis

Nailing audience engagement starts with proper analysis. AI tools can help by analyzing the behavior of your audience, while studying their preferences and responses – giving you a clearer picture of what content resonates with them the most.

AI tools help you understand:

• Popular subjects, trends, and user-generated content
• Your audience demographic (age, gender, location etc.)
• Patterns in their engagement and the times they are engaging

For your social media content strategy, these insights create invaluable insights into your audience. And, crucially, they enable you to build far more meaningful brand-to-consumer connections as you understand their needs and interests better.

AI-enhanced social media planning

Effective social media planning requires you to create and schedule content that aligns with what you're trying to achieve and that matches your strategic goals.

Whether you're part of an agency or brand, or you're an influencer, you'll always be under pressure to deliver consistent content. And that can be overwhelming.

But AI powered tools can help deliver on this holistic approach.

You can use AI-enhanced tools, such as Brandwatch, to streamline the planning process on social media. And these can assist you in generating content ideas, curating content, and when scheduling posts.

What are the benefits?

Of course, any AI tool needs to offer something to the user – especially if it costs. Some immediate benefits for your social media marketing efforts include:

• Content ideation: AI tools can analyze current trends, predict new ones, decipher useful keywords, provide an analysis of competitor content, and generate new ideas for your own strategy.
• Curation: There are AI-powered curation tools that will find bespoke content from different sources that ensure your platforms are up to date with relevant material, whilst also saving you time.
• Scheduling: Some algorithms have intelligent scheduling methods, and they will identify the best posting times and frequencies based on how your audience is currently engaging.

If you properly integrate AI tools into your strategic planning, you can gain invaluable insights, streamline your processes, and improve your engagement across channels.

Embracing the influence and power of AI can provide your brand with an optimized marketing strategy to helps you meet your goals. It's not about letting the artificial intelligence dictate your day-to-day tasks – AI features are there to be used to perfect your content marketing plans.

Social media management tools can help you improve consistency and productivity, while also keeping a historic track of your content. And once you start doing this, you can start to understand your audience better.

When you add AI into the mix, it becomes even easier, giving you a level of insight that humans can't achieve. Its technology can start to predict performance on posts before you even publish, which will put you one step ahead with very little work.

Below are some of the examples of how AI can assist you in elevating your brand with more professional and productive social media management.

1. Efficient post scheduling

The best AI social media management solutions make scheduling posts a walk in the park.

Tools look at past performance data, its patterns, and can then identify optimal posting times when user engagement is at its peak. You can get this for free when scheduling Facebook and Instagram posts on the Meta Business Suite.

Even better, top tools allows for you to create and schedule posts on different social media channels, which creates far more efficiency as a social media manager.

Social media management platform Followr has the following features:

• Automated posting: Handles your social media calendar with personalized, scheduled posts which are tailored for you.
• Predictive analytics: Cutting-edge data analysis to help you make informed decisions and stay ahead of the competition.
• Efficiency: Leveraging the latest AI technology to enhance your workflows.

2. Real-time monitoring and engagement

You can gain a greater level of insight into your social media channels by using the monitoring capability of an AI tool.

These tools can help you by scanning and analyzing all conversations and mentions of your brand, which enable you to stay on top of your user behavior.

What are the key features?

• Sentiment analysis: Looks at how your audience engages with your brand so you can respond appropriately.
• Alerts: Gives you real-time notifications for key events such as viral content or bad feedback.

These tools keep you in the know with your audience and allow you to sufficiently address their concerns where required.

3. AI-driven project management

It can be a daunting task managing social media channels when you're confronted with a high volume of tasks that require coordination. This is a particular issue if you have different social media posts spanning more than one social media platform.

Artificial intelligence can help you manage projects better, by:

• Streamlining content creation: Brainstorming unique ideas through AI-generated suggestions.
• Coordinating team efforts: Insightful AI-powered platforms like Brandwatch help you assign tasks, create deadlines, and deliver project updates across teams.
• Measuring performance: Gain valuable insights from data-driven reports that measure how effective your digital campaign has been.

Social media management becomes far more optimized by implementing AI-driven project management tools that produce successful results.

AI social media tools don't just create content, but they also ensure you're maximizing audience engagement. This level of oversight is invaluable for steering your overall social strategy from start to finish.

A lot of the focus around engagement centers on striking real, lasting connections with your audience. Here's how AI can help.

Creating meaningful connections

In order to enhance your audience engagement, it is fundamental to ensure you create a meaningful connection between your brand and users.

By understanding your audience’s preferences and behaviors, you can develop more tailored social media strategies to enhance your brand-to-consumer relationship.

Social media content creation ideas

The first thing AI can help with is the content ideation stage. Be on the ball with fresh and on-trend content that resonates with your audience.

Test different content formats in all forms of visuals – including images, text, and videos. This will help you find the right mix to match your audience's needs.

You can test this with:

• Finding user-generated content that involves your audience.
• Repurposing existing content to retain interest.
• Spotting timely topics or events, where you can weave your brand in where possible.

Use a content calendar

AI also helps with your content calendar, helping you to plan ahead better, include and track key dates, schedule events, and post consistently.

You can also track metrics such as engagement rates, link clicks, and shares to understand which kinds of content resonates with your audience.

There are AI tools that can be used to help collect and analyze this data to give you a higher understanding of your user behavior. Some key things to focus on include:

• Engagement rate: This is the percentage of your audience that interacted with your content.
• Click-through rate: The percentage of your audience clicking your content.
• Shares: How many times users have shared your content on the platform.

Meaningful connections

Once you've researched your content ideas and set up a calendar, it's time to look at curating meaningful social media content that can maximize your engagement.

AI can help you build these connections by acting as the middle man between you and your audience or customers. For example, this could come in the form of a chatbot that correctly filters complaints and queries into the right place.

Alternatively, you may need AI to help with content generation during a peak period where your brand mentions are skyrocketing.

Meaningful connections are usually the result of successful marketing campaigns and impressive customer-service operations. But they can also come out of the ether. Using an AI tool like Brandwatch allows you to listen in to social media conversations across the industry, assess audience sentiment towards your brand, and act upon the results.

How you can build these connections

If you want to build direct, meaningful connections to your customers, you could:

• Host giveaways or competitions on social media or across the wider press landscape.
• Collaborate with influencers or content creators.
• Prompt users to share their experiences with your brand.

Social media optimization tools help businesses improve their presence online and boost engagement across their channels. And AI has become a core part of this optimization effort, as organizations grapple with the scale of content required on social media platforms.

For things like analyzing data and analytics, it can be a tedious and time-consuming task. Below are some of the key points to enhancing your efficiency on social media and the AI tools available to do this.

Handling multiple channels

It can be overwhelming when managing content across multiple social media platforms. Especially if, for example, you're an agency working with multiple clients that have different needs. Being able to spin multiple plates at once isn't easy – but you can definitely use AI social media tools to help.

These tools can assist you in social media scheduling, so you can keep track of brand mentions and handle all your platforms in one place.

Examples of these tools:

• Brandwatch: Create and schedule posts in an instant with the help of AI and get real-time feedback across multiple channels.
• Hootsuite: Schedule posts for optimized times of day and transform content to fit on various social media platforms.
• Buffer: Stay on top of all social media posts and figure out which are connecting better with your audience with advanced algorithms.

By using these tools, you can see huge benefits which optimize your online presence across all your social channels, whilst also maintaining consistent messaging. 

Analytics and insight tools

Analysing data can take hours if you don't have AI to help optimize the process.

Using an AI tool, you can quickly assess crucial data about your users and how they engage with your content. Once gathered, you can use these insights to enhance your social media strategies on the various number of channels you use.

Analysts tools you can use:

• Google Analytics: Produces data around website traffic and will track your social media campaigns.
• Socialbakers: Provides insights into how your audience behave and also analyzes demographics. Drives growth through gaining a deeper understanding of the user.
• Brandwatch: Get real-time and historical reports on social media activity from across the industry. Zone in on your followers, your target audience, competitors, and everything in between.

Utilizing these tools will help you understand relevant trends and look at the most effective content that is tailored to your audience.

Customization with pre-made templates

Social media content creation never stops, so using AI tools to help establish templates is ideal for those who don't have the resources to keep up with the pace. Customization with pre-made templates enables you to maintain a consistent feel across your various social platforms.

Consistency is important because audiences love familiarity. A tool like Pixlr, for example, lets you create consistent templates that match your brand identity. You will become more recognizable as a brand and your audience are far more likely to continue engaging.

AI-driven tools can help this by:

• Creating templates for your channels.
• Offering pre-made layers with easy customization.
• Tailoring templates specific to your industry.

Crello is another great tool that will help you to find that bespoke and consistent design. Using such tools can save you time, resources, and make sure that your brand’s visuals are in line with the message you are trying to get across. As a result, this can enhance your reach and engagement across multiple platforms.

It's fundamental to be aware of any ethical implications that advanced technology can bring to digital marketing. The first thing to consider is a potential invasion of audience privacy. The more sophisticated that AI tools become, the most important it is to make sure that personal information is treated properly and only with consent.

Moreover, AI algorithms may inadvertently reinforce biases because of biased training data or incorrect algorithmic logic within a social media platform.

To alleviate this risk, you must critically calculate the data and algorithms that the AI tools use and make adjustments where needed.

With AI technologies becoming rapidly more sophisticated, this can present certain challenges when staying up-to-date with your digital marketing strategies.

There isn't any need to be afraid of AI and its increasing advances. For an effective, long-term relationship with AI social media tools, it's important to be flexible and adaptable.

How to implement this:

• Continuous learning: Remain informed about the latest updates and trends in AI technology.
• Agility: Don’t be daunted by the technological advancements that come to fruition. Embrace them and adapt your strategy as a result.
• Collaboration: Use a diverse team of experts, collaborate with them and ensure a deeper understanding of AI tools.

Fully mastering AI social media tools doesn’t come without challenges. However, they offer incredible benefits and are central to most social media marketing strategies these days.

As long as you are aware of the ethical implications and you actively adapt to the growing technology, you can thrive in the power of these tools and take your social media strategy to a whole new level.

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If You Bought 1 Share of Coca-Cola at Its IPO, Here's How Many Shares You'd Own Now

• Investors have been drawn to companies conducting forward-stock splits.
• Including stock dividends, Coca-Cola's shareholders have enjoyed 11 stock-split events since the company went public 105 years ago.
• Despite underperforming in the current bull market, Coca-Cola stock is still bubbling with opportunity.
• Motley Fool Issues Rare “All In” Buy Alert

Wall Street's most-chosen consumer brand has navigated its way through 10 stock splits and one stock dividend since its initial public offering (IPO) in 1919.

Companies enacting stock splits are currently all the rage on Wall Street.

A stock split allows a publicly traded company to alter its share price and outstanding share count without impacting its market cap or operating performance. Although all eyes have been on high-profile stock-split stocks like Nvidia and Broadcom , which both recently announced 10-for-1 forward splits , investors shouldn't overlook the time-tested businesses that are truly stock-split champions.

Beverage colossus Coca-Cola ( KO -0.22% ) is a perfect example.

Image source: Getty Images.

Unraveling Coca-Cola's stock-split history

On Sept. 5, 1919, Coca-Cola debuted as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange at an initial public offering (IPO) price of $40 per share. Over 105 years, this iconic business has navigated 10 forward-stock splits and one stock dividend:

• April 1927: 1-for-1 stock dividend
• November 1935: 4-for-1 stock split
• January 1960: 3-for-1
• January 1965: 2-for-1
• May 1968: 2-for-1
• May 1977: 2-for-1
• June 1986: 3-for-1
• May 1990: 2-for-1
• May 1992: 2-for-1
• May 1996: 2-for-1
• July 2012: 2-for-1

This means a single share purchased in 1919 would have grown to a cumulative 9,216 shares, worth $578,488.32, as of June 21, not including dividends.

Is Coca-Cola still a magnificent business?

Admittedly, Coca-Cola's stock has performed poorly in the current bull market. But when push comes to shove, Coca-Cola is flush with competitive advantages that make it a phenomenal business.

Coca-Cola has over two-dozen global brands generating at least $1 billion in annual sales, and it operates in all but three countries worldwide (North Korea, Cuba, and Russia). Kantar's "Brand Footprint" report also finds that Coca-Cola has been the most-chosen brand by consumers for an astounding 12 consecutive years.

Moreover, Coca-Cola's marketing prowess is top tier . It relies on well-known brand ambassadors and digital campaigns to connect with younger audiences, while leaning on more than a century of history to engage with its mature consumers.

For long-term-minded investors, Coca-Cola stock is still bubbling with opportunity ( and a hearty dividend ).

Sean Williams has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .

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• Financial Advisor

Financial Planning Basics

Updated: Jun 26, 2024, 4:51pm

No matter the size or scope of your financial goals, a financial plan can help make them a reality.

Financial planning is the process of looking at the current state of your finances and making a step-by-step plan to get it where you want it to be. That may mean devising a plan to become debt-free or figuring out how to save enough money for a down payment on a new home.

This process can include many aspects of personal finance, including investing, debt repayment, building savings, planning for retirement and even purchasing insurance.

Anyone can engage in financial planning—it’s not just for the wealthy. You can get started on making financial goals on your own, and if you choose, you can work with a financial professional to help devise the smartest plan to make those goals a reality.

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5 Steps to Create a Financial Plan

A financial plan is devised of smaller goals or tasks that will help support you along your financial journey. Create a financial plan with these five steps:

1. Identify Your Financial Goals

By identifying your financial goals, you’ll have a clear idea of what you need to accomplish to make them happen. Your goals should be realistic and actionable and include a timeline of when you want to accomplish them.

Making a goal to pay off credit card debt by a certain date, for example, would be an appropriate financial goal that will set you up for success.

2. Set a Budget

Having a clear picture of your finances will make it easier to achieve any financial goals. A budget can help you understand where your money is going each month. It can also help you identify where you may be overspending, giving you opportunities to cut back and allocate that money elsewhere.

One of the easiest budgets to start with is the 50/30/20 budget . This budget plan allocates your monthly income into three buckets: mandatory expenses (50%), savings and debt repayment (20%) and discretionary spending (30%). This is just one of many types of budgeting plans out there.

A budget should be a guide to help you understand your monthly finances and devise smaller goals that will bring you closer to your long-term financial goals. You likely won’t always follow your budget down to every single penny; keeping this in mind will help you stay on track, rather than get discouraged and give up on budgeting altogether.

There are apps out there that make budgeting much easier by helping you visualize your spending and savings choices each month. Some budgeting apps even give you the option to enter your financial goals directly into their platform to help you stay on track. A fully featured budgeting app allows you to track spending, manage recurring bill payments, set savings goals and manage your monthly cash flow.

3. Build an Emergency Fund

Building an emergency fund will help make sure that a financial emergency doesn’t become a catastrophic financial event.

Experts usually recommend having six months’ worth of living expenses saved to cushion you, should the unfortunate unexpected happen, such as losing a job. But six months’ worth of money can be unattainable for those who may be struggling financially, or those living in tight financial means each month.

You can start building an emergency fund by setting a few dollars aside each paycheck. You can start with a small fund goal of $100 to $200 to establish your fund. From there, you can create other smaller goals that will add up to a larger financial cushion. Some budgeting and savings apps also give you the option of rounding up to the nearest dollar in transactions and funnel that spare change toward your savings.

4. Reduce Your Debt

Having to make debt payments each month means you’ll have less money to allocate toward your purchase goals. Plus, carrying credit card debt can be expensive; every month, you’re accruing interest on your balance, which can make it take longer to pay off.

There are a variety of debt payoff methods out there. Two of the most popular include the debt snowball and debt avalanche methods . With the snowball method, you’ll pay off your smallest balance debts first, then make your way to the ones with the higher balances. The debt avalanche, on the other hand, starts with higher interest rate debts first.

5. Invest for the Future

Although risky, investing can help grow your money, even if you’re not wealthy. You can get started with investing by enrolling in your company’s 401(k) plan or opening a low-or-no fee account through an online broker .

Keep in mind that investing always involves some risk; you could end up losing the money you invest. There are also robo-advisors that automatically recommend investments based on your goals and risk tolerance.

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Bottom Line

A financial plan is composed of a series of smaller goals that will help you achieve a larger financial goal, such as purchasing a home or retiring comfortably. A solid financial plan includes identifying your goals, creating a budget, building an emergency fund, paying off high interest debt and investing.

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Jordan Tarver has spent seven years covering mortgage, personal loan and business loan content for leading financial publications such as Forbes Advisor. He blends knowledge from his bachelor's degree in business finance, his experience as a top performer in the mortgage industry and his entrepreneurial success to simplify complex financial topics. Jordan aims to make mortgages and loans understandable.

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Senior Finance Analyst - Financial Planning & Analysis

Job Description

At Boeing, we innovate and collaborate to make the world a better place. From the seabed to outer space, you can contribute to work that matters with a company where diversity, equity and inclusion are shared values. We’re committed to fostering an environment for every teammate that’s welcoming, respectful and inclusive, with great opportunity for professional growth. Find your future with us.

The opportunity

We are seeking a talented Senior Finance Analyst to provide assistance, guidance and support to senior management throughout the business from within our central financial planning and analysis function.

Responsibilities:

• Participate in monthly and annual forecasting, reporting and analysis requirements. Prepare report and presentations for senior management.
• Make recommendations to management on financial performance projections using financial and business knowledge and experience.
• Initiate and review variance analysis and provide understanding of operational and financial performance to multiple stakeholders across the business.
• Drive process improvements and recommendations.
• Analyse, interpret, prepare and reconcile financial information. Prepare standard and ad hoc internal and external financial reports for management and present to internal stakeholders where required.

Experience/Qualifications

• Relevant Business degree is desirable.
• Cost Analyst experience and a sound understanding of corporate overhead management. Understanding of cost allocation principles preferred but not essential.
• Competent user with advanced Excel skills and other Microsoft Office applications. Ideally have experience in ERP such as Oracle.
• Strong conceptual and analytical skills, innovative problem solving.
• Ability to quickly adapt to new environments.

At Boeing, we innovate and collaborate to make the world a better place. From the seabed to outer space, you can contribute to work that matters with a company where diversity, equity and inclusion are core values. We're committed to fostering an environment for every teammate that's welcoming, respectful and inclusive, with great opportunity for professional growth. Find your future with us.

We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. Female applicants, people of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island descent and ex-defence personnel are encouraged to apply.

Boeing Defence Australia is shaping the future of aerospace and delivering some of the nation's most important programs for the Australian Defence Force.

Joining us is a chance to make your mark, working with a diverse team that is united in pushing the boundaries of imagination and excellence.

We currently employ more than 2,500 people across 14 sites in Australia and three international locations and have a range of opportunities available as we plan for future growth.

• Flexible working options
• Study assistance
• Salary packaging
• Employee Incentive Program
• Global opportunities

How to apply

View the full Position Description and apply now.

Find out more about Boeing Defence Australia here.

Equal Opportunity Employer:

We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not accept unlawful discrimination in our recruitment or employment practices on any grounds including but not limited to; race, color, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, physical or mental disability, genetic factors, military and veteran status, or other characteristics covered by applicable law.

We have teams in more than 65 countries, and each person plays a role in helping us become one of the world’s most innovative, diverse and inclusive companies. We are proud members of the Valuable 500 and welcome applications from candidates with disabilities. Applicants are encouraged to share with our recruitment team any accommodations required during the recruitment process. Accommodations may include but are not limited to: conducting interviews in accessible locations that accommodate mobility needs, encouraging candidates to bring and use any existing assistive technology such as screen readers and offering flexible interview formats such as virtual or phone interviews.

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Your Benefits

No matter where you are in life, our benefits help prepare you for the present and the future.

• Competitive base pay and incentive programs.
• Industry-leading tuition assistance program pays your institution directly.
• Resources and opportunities to grow your career.
• Up to $10,000 match when you support your favorite nonprofit organizations.

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