Business Control

Running a process to prepare annual business plans with a bottom line as a promise with the shareholders is one of the most critical activities in a business. This document ensures targets are cascaded down to individual job descriptions and budgets are allocated to each target. Monitoring of performance vs plan help keep the team on track and control costs.

The objective of monitoring performance against plans is to identify gaps on a timely basis and carry out remedial actions to close the gaps as early as possible. In many cases, the gaps are not closed timely resulting in failure to deliver promises to shareholders. Managing this risk of failure to deliver plans is a key success factor in delivering growth.

Many things can go wrong in real life when teams work on a given plan. Predicting those risks in advance and mitigating them before they materialize is the key to successful delivery of the business plan. Risks need to be identified and allocated to risk owners who are supposed to proactively manage this risk in a way that targets are delivered within cost and timeline.

Targets need to be resourced out of future cash flows. It's essential to make sure that 3 to 6 months rolling cash flow forecasts are prepared that can be relied for arranging resources to bridge any gaps on a timely basis. Many businesses fail because they run out of cash.

Gaps in managing stakeholders can create unnecessary hindrance in growth. Identifying stakeholders expectations and closing gaps is an important task of business management team. Here's a list of some of the important groups of stakeholders:

• Customers: Monitoring of customer feedback and closing any gaps in critical for revenue growth.

• Regulators: Identifying applicable laws and regulations such as tax, SEC reporting requirements, license and permits etc., and running a system that ensures compliance without fail will save a lot of cost in terms of penalties, foreclosures, reputation damages etc.

• Investors: Shareholders expect regular updates against plans, delivery of promised dividends, independent assurance services like internal and external audit etc.

• Employees; employees need development of Employee Value Proposition and closing gaps in delivery.

• Suppliers; Suppliers need to be paid on time.

• Society: CSR and SDGs help build corporate brands and protect licenses to operate.