Managers are banging their heads to plan business and marketing strategies. In the 90s, they used charts and graphs on paper and now in Excel sheets! When it comes to strategic planning for business, we have to admit that the role played by technology is immense, especially for the emerging companies.
If you are running a startup, you have to start integrating technology as much as possible at every level. From creating estimated business plan templates to nonprofit business plan template, the implementation of technology is the must-have thing to grow faster.
Now there are multiple softwares that can help you with better team communication, strategy charts, templates, and invoices. It simply saves your time and money that you can invest in production and marketing.
On the other hand, there is a growing concern about the technical issues that entrepreneurs are going through. However, we have to admit the truth – technology, and strategy are inseparable. You need to understand the dependence and encourage the business structure to adopt the advanced technologies.
What Is Business Strategic Planning?
Business strategic planning is all about creating a map of your business, that depicts the current status of your business and the goal of the company in the next couple of years. Creating strategic planning is so important for emerging companies that the new entrepreneurs started working on the strategy all by themselves. However, the correct way to do this is by adopting technologies and onboarding more expert brains to work on the strategy.
It’s all about testing the business goal and making a road map to reach the goal. The better strategic technology you adopt, the faster you can calculate the changing factors, and reach the goal faster. Being an emerging entrepreneur, you need to share your vision with your employees, and not burden them with the goal, but encourage them to attach to the goal and place inputs. Only the adoption of technology can help you to streamline all the strategies and inputs at the same time.
Why Technology In Strategic Planning Is Important?
Introducing technology in business and strategic planning is efficient to save both money and time. You can enhance the work experience as well as boost productivity by addressing the employees to embrace technologies.
Besides, the introduction of clouds and AI in business has changed the basic structure of creating strategic plans and storing processes. In the 80s, strategic plans were made on a war table with lots of charts, graphs, pens, and pencils; and the data (rather papers!) were bundled in spiral files. Just imagine hiring a person only to access the stack of files and manage all the data you need!
It’s a blessing of technology that you can manage a startup with as minimum as 5 to 10 people and serve hundreds of customers! If we put it in black and white, strategic planning without technology is lame in the current business structures. It’s time that you should embrace it too!
Benefits Of Technology In Strategic Planning
The invasion of technology in business strategic planning was not easy, as people thought technology will replace the employees soon. Well, the threat was imminent and not completely wrong! But, when it comes to the precision and efficiency of the work, it is always better to adopt technologies. Here are a few benefits of technology in strategic planning that should be taken into account:
Better Communication
The advancement of any work depends on the speed and clarity of the communications among the employees. If you are building a better team, they need a better communication system. Especially, when it comes to branding, you need to communicate with the customers in a better way and spread the message.
Employees who receive clear instructions and communicate real-time information tend to relate to the business strategy more and help the company to meet goals faster. Whether it is Gmail, or slack, you need to give your employees a platform to communicate faster. It is pretty much convinced that the days of moving files from one desk to another are gone!
Faster Goals
With the right technology, you can create a better strategic plan while calculating your manpower, production, raw materials, and many other criteria precisely. As we all know, numbers never lie! If you can get the numbers right using the right technology, it will help you to create perfect strategic planning to reach your goal.
Besides, with the right technology you can keep track of all the changing factors and calculate the goal accordingly anytime. Real-time goal-tracking technology has shown more accuracy than all the spreadsheets and charts that we were used to, once. The time is changing, so does your business goal. To cope with the dynamic goal, you need to apply dynamic technology or you will be extinct soon.
Customizable Dashboards
Have you ever witnessed 3 men fighting on a piece of paper to draw a graph? Sounds stupid, but when you do not embrace technology in strategic planning, this could happen! Well, we are talking about dashboards here for the ease of all employees. Whether it is your company CRM, employee management book, or business website, you need dashboards for individuals.
As we have witnessed the digital marketing team and the developers have already opted for technologies to manage their dashboards, which actually helped entrepreneurs to streamline their tasks. For instance, only in the digital marketing team, you need to manage the content creators, social media managers, and search engine optimization executives. Adopting technology like Trello can help you to put them all on one screen while giving them individual dashboards to streamline the work!
Conclusion
If you follow Shark Tank US, you know how emerging entrepreneurs are more convincing with technologies. The truth is that the implementation of AI in business and marketing has put us in a hybrid situation. There are hundreds of tasks in a company that you just cannot manage without the help of technology. Among all tasks, strategic planning is the thing that needs more time and brain. If you are short of both, let’s adopt technology and ace it.
