If  you are like  most business owners, you are probably operating on a business plan that is organised and archived in one of three places:

• in your own mind
• in a filing cabinet gathering dust, or
• spread across several Excel, PowerPoint and Word files (often in different people’s computers), and quite likely   incomplete or not recently updated.

Getting a coherent, written business plan together is often too expensive … too hard to do, or too difficult to commit sufficient time to. And the result is very often not worth the paper it’s printed on. The challenge for corporates, NGOs and NPOs is often no different to that facing SMEs.

We were recently approached by The Mission To Seafarers to support several African branches (Mombasa, Dar Es Salaam, Walvis Bay, Richards Bay and Durban) formulate strategy to ensure long-term sustainability as they continue to service the rapidly evolving maritime industry. Essentially how to improve revenues, efficiencies and margins â€" while still remaining true to the organisation’s founding ethos.

The Mission to Seafarers (MTS) is an NPO operating in over 200 ports worldwide caring for seafarers of all ranks, nationalities and beliefs â€" providing help and support to the 1.5 million crewmen and women who face danger every day to keep our global economy afloat.

You can read more about the organisation and the excellent work they are doing at www.missiontoseafarers.org.za

Business challenges facing Missions across the globe include the following:

• While ships are getting larger, technological innovations mean that crew sizes are shrinking
• Ship turnaround times in port are faster
• These realities mean fewer revenue-generatingopportunities
• Most mission stations are staffed by volunteers, chaplains and team members that are often not trained in the art of business

Each Mission station was tasked with formulating a strategic plan to meet the above brief and, on further consultation with various MTS stakeholders, our recommendation was to use our new planning tool recently developed by the ActionCOACH head office in the United States.

PlanningCLUB is essentially ActionCOACH’s way of ensuring you have a living and workable business plan that we facilitate but you create. It is built around an online planning environment to which every user is given a unique logon username and password and during coach-facilitated workshops, a comprehensive business plan is tailored specifically for each participating business unit.

The PlanningCLUB approach was designed to deliver five key benefits:

• A robust business plan â€" PlanningCLUB was developed to set the strategic direction of our client's business, as well as   produce a robust plan for the next five years. As the client business plans are cloud-based, they can adjust and modify the  plans as their business realities evolve.
• Predictive financial modelling â€" The PlanningSYSTEM predicts future cash at bank, profitability, equity growth and the    businesses yearly marginal cash situation. It does this via real world inputs like... What does the business sell, how much does it sell those items for, what are the cost to sell those items, and what are your operational expenses?
• Clarity of goals - PlanningCLUB is focused on building workable goals for the key people within the business. To establish core success criteria which the business needs in order to grow customer numbers, revenue and profits. This is done via  interactive sessions with attendees of the PlanningCLUB events.
• Strategy builder â€" The PlanningSYSTEM has more than 1 100 inbuilt strategies we use to formulate those strategies   important to each individual business. Our strategy builder gives each attendee a way of creating powerful customised   strategies for the improvement of their business.
• Coaching toward success â€" One very important aspect of PlanningCLUB is the one-to-one and group coaching   conducted during the workshop days. Our clients work on their strategic direction, business modelling and planning under a formula of success - interacting   with other business owners, and gaining coaching from world class business coaches.

The additional benefit of a business plan housed online means that users can log on at anytime to make changes and then simply click a button to download the latest version in branded pdf format. By housing all financial assumptions in a central capturing core, users are then able to play out unlimited “What if?” scenarios and accept into the final plan only if satisfied with the resultant outcomes.

“We spent a very profitable three days with the team from ActionCOACH. The Mission to Seafarers core business is to serve seafarers and their families visiting the region of Africa. We however were reminded that we will not sustain this service unless we remain profitable. ActionCOACH helped our team to realise again the importance of good financial planning and wise market strategy even in the area of ministry and service.”

Good business planning is essential to any existing business. To ensure you are prepared to take your business to the next level contact us today for more information or a personalised PlanningCLUB demonstration.

T: 031 266 2258
www.mastery.co.za
durban@actioncoach.com