Performance Management Solutions

Strategic Business Planning Examples

Strategic Business Planning in the Financial Services Sector

A leading Financial Services company recognised that business managers spent a disproportionate amount of their time on the planning and budgeting process.

Relationship between volume and costs

Traditional cost centre reports did not help managers understand the cause-and-effect relationship between volume and costs and as time went by the organisation had to initiate additional unplanned programs to respond to changes in the market place. As a result, the plans developed as part of the planning and budgeting process became irrelevant.

Activity based planning system

The solution was to implement an activity based planning system that enabled managers to complete interactive business planning scenarios in a fraction of the time taken previously. Financial targets were flexed for actual volume changes using standard activity information and a system of rolling forecasts was introduced.

Concentration on Key Performance Indicators (KPI's)

Over the next three years the organisation grew its revenue faster than its competitors while reducing its out-put cost significantly. Mangers spent considerably less time on the budgeting and planning process and more time on ensuring they delivered value to the organisation through concentrating on their Key Performance Indicators.