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How To Write the Operations Plan Section of the Business Plan

Susan Ward wrote about small businesses for The Balance for 18 years. She has run an IT consulting firm and designed and presented courses on how to promote small businesses.

Stage of Development Section

Production process section, the bottom line, frequently asked questions (faqs).

The operations plan is the section of your business plan that gives an overview of your workflow, supply chains, and similar aspects of your business. Any key details of how your business physically produces goods or services will be included in this section.

You need an operations plan to help others understand how you'll deliver on your promise to turn a profit. Keep reading to learn what to include in your operations plan.

Key Takeaways

• The operations plan section should include general operational details that help investors understand the physical details of your vision.
• Details in the operations plan include information about any physical plants, equipment, assets, and more.
• The operations plan can also serve as a checklist for startups; it includes a list of everything that must be done to start turning a profit.

In your business plan , the operations plan section describes the physical necessities of your business's operation, such as your physical location, facilities, and equipment. Depending on what kind of business you'll be operating, it may also include information about inventory requirements, suppliers, and a description of the manufacturing process.

Keeping focused on the bottom line will help you organize this part of the business plan.

Think of the operating plan as an outline of the capital and expense requirements your business will need to operate from day to day.

You need to do two things for the reader of your business plan in the operations section: show what you've done so far to get your business off the ground and demonstrate that you understand the manufacturing or delivery process of producing your product or service.

When you're writing this section of the operations plan, start by explaining what you've done to date to get the business operational, then follow up with an explanation of what still needs to be done. The following should be included:

Production Workflow

A high-level, step-by-step description of how your product or service will be made, identifying the problems that may occur in the production process. Follow this with a subsection titled "Risks," which outlines the potential problems that may interfere with the production process and what you're going to do to negate these risks. If any part of the production process can expose employees to hazards, describe how employees will be trained in dealing with safety issues. If hazardous materials will be used, describe how these will be safely stored, handled, and disposed.

Industry Association Memberships

Show your awareness of your industry's local, regional, or national standards and regulations by telling which industry organizations you are already a member of and which ones you plan to join. This is also an opportunity to outline what steps you've taken to comply with the laws and regulations that apply to your industry. 

Supply Chains

An explanation of who your suppliers are and their prices, terms, and conditions. Describe what alternative arrangements you have made or will make if these suppliers let you down.

Quality Control

An explanation of the quality control measures that you've set up or are going to establish. For example, if you intend to pursue some form of quality control certification such as ISO 9000, describe how you will accomplish this.

While you can think of the stage of the development part of the operations plan as an overview, the production process section lays out the details of your business's day-to-day operations. Remember, your goal for writing this business plan section is to demonstrate your understanding of your product or service's manufacturing or delivery process.

When writing this section, you can use the headings below as subheadings and then provide the details in paragraph format. Leave out any topic that does not apply to your particular business.

Do an outline of your business's day-to-day operations, including your hours of operation and the days the business will be open. If the business is seasonal, be sure to say so.

The Physical Plant

Describe the type, site, and location of premises for your business. If applicable, include drawings of the building, copies of lease agreements, and recent real estate appraisals. You need to show how much the land or buildings required for your business operations are worth and tell why they're important to your proposed business.

The same goes for equipment. Besides describing the equipment necessary and how much of it you need, you also need to include its worth and cost and explain any financing arrangements.

Make a list of your assets , such as land, buildings, inventory, furniture, equipment, and vehicles. Include legal descriptions and the worth of each asset.

Special Requirements

If your business has any special requirements, such as water or power needs, ventilation, drainage, etc., provide the details in your operating plan, as well as what you've done to secure the necessary permissions.

State where you're going to get the materials you need to produce your product or service and explain what terms you've negotiated with suppliers.

Explain how long it takes to produce a unit and when you'll be able to start producing your product or service. Include factors that may affect the time frame of production and describe how you'll deal with potential challenges such as rush orders.

Explain how you'll keep  track of inventory .

Feasibility

Describe any product testing, price testing, or prototype testing that you've done on your product or service.

Give details of product cost estimates.

Once you've worked through this business plan section, you'll not only have a detailed operations plan to show your readers, but you'll also have a convenient list of what needs to be done next to make your business a reality. Writing this document gives you a chance to crystalize your business ideas into a clear checklist that you can reference. As you check items off the list, use it to explain your vision to investors, partners, and others within your organization.

What is an operations plan?

An operations plan is one section of a company's business plan. This section conveys the physical requirements for your business's operations, including supply chains, workflow , and quality control processes.

What is the main difference between the operations plan and the financial plan?

The operations plan and financial plan tackle similar issues, in that they seek to explain how the business will turn a profit. The operations plan approaches this issue from a physical perspective, such as property, routes, and locations. The financial plan explains how revenue and expenses will ultimately lead to the business's success.

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How to Write the Operations Section of Your Business Plan

2 min. read

Updated January 3, 2024

The operations plan covers what makes your business run. It explains the day-to-day workflows for your business and how you will deliver the product or service that you offer. As part of your plan, it’s your chance to describe what you’ve set up so far and that you understand what is still left to make your business fully operational.

• How to write about business operations

Like some of the other sections in your plan, the information you include fully depends on your type of business. If you run a subscription box service you’ll need to cover how you source and fulfill each order. If it’s a service-oriented business (like a mechanic or coffee shop) you’ll need to go into more detail about your location as well as the tools and technology you use.

The important thing is that the information here fully addresses how your business runs.

What to include in your operations plan

The components of your operations plan fully depend on what’s necessary to produce your product or service. For most, you’ll be adding details about your location and facilities, the technology being used, and any equipment or tools.

Location and facilities

The information you include about your business location fully depends on the state, city, and neighborhood you’ve chosen. This will determine the specific taxes, registration, licenses, permits, zoning laws, and other regulations you’ll be subjected to.

Once you’ve legally established your business be sure to reference the relevant paperwork and legal documentation in this section. You may also want to point to mockups of the building, copies of legal agreements, and any other supporting documentation for how valuable the property is and how it helps your business function.

Sourcing and fulfillment

How will you create your product/service and what will it cost? You’ll include detailed breakdowns in your financial plan, but here you’ll talk about what it will take, who you will work with, and any alternatives.

How and when to write about technology

Is your product or service driven by a specific technology or process? Let investors, banks, or other necessary parties know why it’s a valuable part of your business.

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• Why you need an operational plan

Understanding your business operations makes your processes real. It ensures that you have organized steps in place to produce a product or service.

For investors, this helps prove that you know what you’re doing and can back up the rest of your plan with actual work that makes it happen. For you as a business owner, it’s a starting point for optimization. You have a blueprint for how things work. And as you run your business, can begin to identify opportunities for improvement.

If you don’t cover operations as part of your business plan, then you’re flying blindly. There’s no documented process for how things should work and no connection to the other strategic elements of your business.

Kody Wirth is a content writer and SEO specialist for Palo Alto Software—the creator's of Bplans and LivePlan. He has 3+ years experience covering small business topics and runs a part-time content writing service in his spare time.

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Operational Planning: How to Make an Operations Plan

The operations of your business can be defined as the sum of all the daily activities that you and your team execute to create products or services and engage with your customers, among other critical business functions. While organizing these moving parts might sound difficult, it can be easily done by writing a business operational plan. But before we learn how to make one, let’s first understand what’s the relationship between strategic and operational planning.

Operational Planning vs. Strategic Planning

Operational planning and strategic planning are complementary to each other. This is because strategic plans define the business strategy and the long-term goals for your organization, while operational plans define the steps required to achieve them.

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Operational Plan Template

Use this free Operational Plan Template for Word to manage your projects better.

What Is a Strategic Plan?

A strategic plan is a business document that describes the business goals of a company as well as the high-level actions that will be taken to achieve them over a time period of 1-3 years.

What Is an Operational Plan?

Operational plans map the daily, weekly or monthly business operations that’ll be executed by the department to complete the goals you’ve previously defined in your strategic plan. Operational plans go deeper into explaining your business operations as they explain roles and responsibilities, timelines and the scope of work.

Operational plans work best when an entire department buys in, assigning due dates for tasks, measuring goals for success, reporting on issues and collaborating effectively. They work even better when there’s a platform like ProjectManager , which facilitates communication across departments to ensure that the machine is running smoothly as each team reaches its benchmark. Get started with ProjectManager for free today.

What Is Operational Planning?

Operational planning is the process of turning strategic plans into action plans, which simply means breaking down high-level strategic goals and activities into smaller, actionable steps. The main goal of operational planning is to coordinate different departments and layers of management to ensure the whole organization works towards the same objective, which is achieving the goals set forth in the strategic plan .

How to Make an Operational Plan

There’s no single approach to follow when making an operation plan for your business. However, there’s one golden rule in operations management : your strategic and operational plans must be aligned. Based on that principle, here are seven steps to make an operational plan.

• Map business processes and workflows: What steps need to be taken at the operations level to accomplish long-term strategic goals?
• Set operational-level goals: Describe what operational-level goals contribute to the achievement of larger strategic goals.
• Determine the operational timeline: Is there any time frame for the achievement of the operational plan?
• Define your resource requirements: Estimate what resources are needed for the execution of the operational plan.
• Estimate the operational budget: Based on your resource requirements, estimate costs and define an operational budget.
• Set a hiring plan: Are there any skills gaps that need to be filled in your organization?
• Set key performance indicators: Define metrics and performance tracking procedures to measure your team’s performance.

Free Operational Plan Template

Leverage everything you’ve learned today with our template. This free operational plan template for Word will help you define your budget, timeline, KPIs and more. It’s the perfect first step in organizing and improving your operations. Download it today.

What Should be Included in an Operational Plan?

Your operational plan should describe your business operations as accurately as possible so that internal teams know how the company works and how they can help achieve the larger strategic objectives. Here’s a list of some of the key elements that you’ll need to consider when writing an operational plan.

Executive Summary

An executive summary is a brief document that summarizes the content of larger documents like business plans, strategic plans or operation plans. Their main purpose is to provide a quick overview for busy stakeholders.

Operational Budget

An operational budget is an estimation of the expected operating costs and revenues for a given time period. As with other types of budget, the operational budget defines the amount of money that’s available to acquire raw materials, equipment or anything else that’s needed for business operations.

It’s important to limit your spending to stay below your operational budget, otherwise, your company could run out of resources to execute its normal activities. You can use our free operating budget template for Excel to track your operating costs.

Operational Objectives

It’s essential to align your operational objectives with your strategic objectives. For example, if one of your strategic objectives is to increase sales by 25 percent over the next three years, one possible operational objective would be to hire new sales employees. You should always grab your strategic plan objectives and turn them into one or multiple action items .

Processes & Workflows

Explain the various business processes, workflows and tasks that need to be executed to achieve your operational objectives. Make sure to explain what resources are needed, such as raw materials, equipment or human resources.

Operational Timeline

It’s important to establish a timeline for your operational plan. In most cases, your operational plan will have the same length as your strategic plan, but in some scenarios, you might create multiple operational plans for specific purposes. Not all operational plans are equal, so the length of your operational timeline will depend on the duration of your projects , workflows and processes.

Hiring Plan

Find any skills gap there might be in your team. You might need to hire a couple of individuals or even create new departments in order to execute your business processes .

Quality Assurance and Control

Most companies implement quality assurance and control procedures for a variety of reasons such as customer safety and regulatory compliance. In addition, quality assurance issues can cost your business millions, so establishing quality management protocols is a key step in operational planning.

Key Performance Indicators

It’s important to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the productivity of your business operations. You can define as many KPIs as needed for all your business processes. For example, you can define KPIs for marketing, sales, product development and other key departments in your company. This can include product launch deadlines, number of manufactured goods, number of customer service cases closed, number of 5-star reviews received, number of customers acquired, revenue increased by a certain percentage and so on.

Risks, Assumptions and Constraints

Note any potential risks, assumptions and time or resource constraints that might affect your business operations.

What Are the Benefits of Operational Planning?

Every plan has a massive effect on all team members involved, and those can be to your company’s benefit or to their detriment. If it’s to their detriment, it’s best to find out as soon as possible so you can modify your operational plan and pivot with ease.

But that’s the whole point of operational planning: you get to see the effect of your operations on the business’s bottom line in real time, or at every benchmark, so you know exactly when to pivot. And with a plan that’s as custom to each department as an operational plan, you know exactly where things go wrong and why.

How ProjectManager Can Help with Operational Planning

Creating and implementing a high-quality operational plan is the best way to ensure that your organization starts out a project on the right foot. ProjectManager has award-winning project management tools to help you craft and execute such a plan.

Gantt charts are essential to create and monitor operational plans effectively. ProjectManager helps you access your Gantt chart online so you can add benchmarks for operational performance reviews. You can also create tasks along with dependencies to make the operation a surefire success.

Whether you’re a team of IT system administrators, marketing experts, or engineers, ProjectManager includes robust planning and reporting tools. Plan in sprints, assign due dates, collaborate with team members and track everything with just the click of a button. Plus, we have numerous ready-made project reports that can be generated instantly, including status reports, variance reports, timesheet reports and more.

Related Operations Management Content

• Operational Strategy: A Quick Guide
• Operations Management: Key Functions, Roles and Skills
• Operational Efficiency: A Quick Guide
• Using Operational Excellence to Be More Productive

Operational planning isn’t done in a silo, and it doesn’t work without the full weight of the team backing it up. Ensure that your department is successful at each benchmark. ProjectManager is an award-winning pm software dedicated to helping businesses smooth out their operational plans for a better year ahead. Sign up for our free 30-day trial today.

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Business Plan Operational Plan - Everything You Need to Know

Welcome to our comprehensive guide on the business plan operational plan. A fundamental component of any effective business plan and a key component of growth  As a business owner, executive, or manager, you understand that a well-articulated strategy is crucial for the success and growth of your venture. But have you ever stopped to ponder how this strategy is executed on a day-to-day basis? How do we transform those lofty goals into tangible, everyday actions? This is where an operational plan comes into play. An operational plan outlines the practical details of how your business will operate and deliver on its strategic goals. It describes the inner workings of your business, detailing everything from your daily operations and production processes to your team's roles and responsibilities.  In this guide we will delve into the purpose and scope of an operational plan, its essential elements, and how to develop one effectively. We'll also share valuable tips, best practices, and common pitfalls to avoid. 

Table of Contents

• Operational Plan - The Purpose
• The Essential Elements
• Description of Operations
• Steps for Creating Operational Plan
• Tips & Best Practices

Real-Life Case Study

• Common Pitfalls
• Final Thoughts

Business Plan Operational Plan - The Purpose

The role of an operational plan in a business cannot be overstated. This fundamental document is a strategic guide that outlines the direction, timelines, and resources necessary to achieve specific objectives within an organisation. An operational plan is the driving force behind the execution of your business strategy. It allows you to map out clear and attainable operational goals that align with your overall strategic objectives, breaking them down into manageable, actionable steps.  Whilst acting as a map for your business you can also use to track performance via measurable objectives.

Scope of an Operational Plan in Day-to-Day Operations

The business plan operational plan should detail key elements such as the operational processes, resource allocation, tasks, and timelines. From personnel and location to inventory, suppliers, and operating hours - the operational plan touches every aspect of your business. It's a living document, evolving and changing as your business grows and adapts to market dynamics and industry trends.

Remember, the opening of your Executive Summary sets the tone for the entire document. Make it memorable and compelling to encourage the reader to continue exploring.

Business Plan Operational Plan - The Essential Elements

Creating an operational plan requires thoughtful consideration of several vital components that collectively represent the full breadth of your company's operations. Each one plays a crucial role in defining the day-to-day activities that will lead to the fulfilment of your strategic objectives.

Description of the Business Operations

Every operational plan starts with a comprehensive description of the business operations. This includes outlining your production process, operations workflow, and supply chain management. Defining these processes in clear terms provides a concrete vision of how products or services will be created and delivered, identifying the necessary resources and potential bottlenecks along the way.

People are the lifeblood of your business, and it's essential to define their roles and responsibilities within the operational plan. This involves outlining the team's structure, detailing who is responsible for what, and defining key performance indicators (KPIs) for each role. By assigning clear responsibilities, you ensure the efficient use of human resources and promote accountability.

Your business location and the physical resources at your disposal play a crucial role in your operational plan. Detail the premises your business will operate from, the equipment required, and any associated costs. Whether you're operating from a single office, managing multiple retail outlets, or running a home-based online business, defining your operational space is crucial.

Effective inventory management is crucial for maintaining smooth operations, particularly for businesses dealing with physical products. Your operational plan should outline how you will manage your supplies, including how often you'll restock, which vendors you'll use, and how you'll handle storage and distribution. Remember, balancing supply with demand is key to avoiding unnecessary costs or stockouts.

Your operational plan needs to address your suppliers - who they are, what terms and agreements you have with them, and how you will manage these relationships. The reliability and quality of your suppliers can greatly affect your operations, making this a critical consideration in your planning process.

When constructed effectively, these elements come together to form an operational plan that is clear, comprehensive, and actionable. In the next section, we'll explore the steps to develop such a plan, and later, we'll offer some tips and best practices for bringing your operational plan to life. Stay tuned! Looking an industry specific guide to business plans, then check out our business plan guides homepage .

Steps for Developing an Operational Plan

Creating a comprehensive and effective operational plan involves careful planning, clear communication, and continuous monitoring and evaluation. Let's explore these steps in detail:

• 1. Setting Clear Operational Goals and Objectives: The first step towards developing an operational plan is defining what you want to achieve operationally within a given period. These goals should align with your strategic business objectives and be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).For instance, if your strategic goal is to increase market share, your operational objective might be to ramp up production by a certain percentage within the next quarter. Or, if you aim to improve customer satisfaction, you might focus on improving the quality and durability of the product.
• Regular Monitoring and Evaluation: With your operational goals in place, the next step is to monitor progress and evaluate performance regularly. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and metrics should be set for each operational goal. These could range from production volumes and delivery times to quality measures and cost efficiency.Consistently monitoring these metrics allows you to measure progress, identify any potential issues or bottlenecks early on, and adjust your operational plan as necessary.
• Communication: This is a crucial when implementing your operational plan. Ensure all stakeholders, including team members, suppliers, and partners, are aware of the plan and understand their roles within it.Hold regular meetings to update everyone on progress and address any challenges or changes in the plan. Remember, your operational plan should be a living document, flexible enough to adapt to changes and updates as required.

Business Plan Operational Plan - Tips and Best Practices

Creating an operational plan that works requires more than just defining goals and setting performance metrics. There are nuances and best practices that can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your operational plan. Here are a few tips to guide you:

• Involve Your Team : The people responsible for executing the operational plan should also contribute to its creation. Encourage your team to share their ideas, challenges, and insights. Their first-hand experience can lead to more practical, achievable operational plans. Besides, team involvement promotes ownership and commitment to the plan's execution.
• Keep It Flexible : Operational plans need to be adaptable to accommodate changes in the business environment, such as market dynamics, customer preferences, or new regulations. Regularly review and update your plan to ensure it remains relevant and effective. Remember, the operational plan is a guide, not a set-in-stone document.
• Be Specific : Avoid ambiguity in your operational plan. Use clear, concise language and provide detailed action plans, including what needs to be done, by whom, when, and with what resources. This clarity reduces misunderstanding and keeps everyone on the same page.
• Use Technology : Leverage the power of technology to enhance your operational efficiency. There are numerous tools and software available that can help with project management, process automation, data analysis, and more. Use these tools to streamline your operations, track performance, and improve communication.
• Consistency with the Business Plan : Ensure your operational plan aligns with your broader business strategy. This alignment ensures that your day-to-day operations contribute effectively to achieving your long-term business objectives.

By applying these tips and best practices, you can create an operational plan that's not only effective but also fosters a culture of continuous improvement and strategic alignment in your organisation.

To further illustrate the importance of a well-executed operational plan, let's look at a real-life case study - the global tech giant, Apple Inc. Apple's operational plan is a testament to the company's relentless focus on precision, quality, and groundbreaking innovation. One key operational strategy that Apple uses is its tight control over its supply chain.

• Description of Business Operations: Apple's business operations are highly integrated and efficient. They manufacture and market a variety of products, including iPhones, iPads, Macs, and services like iCloud and Apple Music. Their production process is complex, involving design, prototyping, manufacturing, and distribution, often happening across different continents.
• Personnel: Apple's workforce is highly specialised. Each team and department has clearly defined roles and responsibilities, whether it's designing new products, managing supplier relationships, or ensuring quality control. Employees at Apple are encouraged to think differently, fostering a culture of innovation.
•  Location: Apple operates in multiple locations worldwide, including its iconic headquarters, Apple Park, in Cupertino, California. The company also has a network of retail stores across the globe and contracts with manufacturing facilities, primarily in Asia.
•  Inventory: Apple's inventory management is legendary for its efficiency. Through just-in-time inventory practices, Apple reduces storage costs and minimises the risk of stock obsolescence, contributing to its streamlined operations and impressive profit margins.
• Suppliers: Apple has a vast network of suppliers from around the world. It maintains strong relationships with these suppliers and holds them to strict standards of quality and ethical business practices, ensuring the integrity and excellence of its products.

Apple's operational plan aligns seamlessly with its business strategy, focusing on innovation, quality, and customer experience. This has allowed the company to maintain its status as a market leader and pioneer in the tech industry. This case study illustrates how an effective operational plan can turn a strategic vision into a successful reality. In the next section, we'll delve into common pitfalls to avoid when creating your operational plan.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

As you embark on developing an operational plan for your business, it's crucial to be aware of some common pitfalls that can hinder your plan's effectiveness. Here, we outline these potential obstacles and provide advice on how to avoid them.

• Lack of Alignment with Strategic Goals: One of the most common mistakes is a disconnect between the operational plan and the company's strategic goals. Your operational plan should directly support and drive towards achieving these objectives. Ensure all operational goals, processes, and tasks align with your overarching business vision.
• Overly Complex or Unrealistic Plans: While an operational plan needs to be comprehensive, it also needs to be practical and achievable. Avoid creating overly complex plans that your team cannot implement or that require resources beyond your means. Strike a balance between thoroughness and simplicity for a more manageable plan.
• Neglecting to Involve the Team: Your team members are the ones who will execute the operational plan, and neglecting to involve them in its creation can lead to resistance or confusion. Make sure your team is part of the planning process, understands the plan, and is committed to its implementation.
• Ignoring Market Changes: A business doesn't operate in a vacuum. Failing to consider external factors such as market trends, customer behaviour, and economic conditions can derail your operational plan. Ensure your plan is flexible and adaptable to respond to changing circumstances.
• Insufficient Monitoring and Evaluation: An operational plan is not a set-and-forget document. Regular monitoring and evaluation are critical to assess progress, identify bottlenecks, and make necessary adjustments. Make sure you set measurable KPIs and allocate resources to track and review them.Avoiding these common pitfalls will significantly enhance the effectiveness of your business plan operational plan. With a solid operational plan in place, your business is well-positioned to achieve its strategic objectives, driving growth, and success.

Wrapping It All Up

Operational planning plays a vital role in any business, acting as a roadmap to direct daily operations and align them with the strategic goals of the company. As we have seen in this blog post, creating an operational plan involves several important components and steps, from defining clear goals to continuous monitoring and evaluation. Remember, the key to an effective operational plan is to keep it flexible, involve your team and maintain alignment with your business plan. If you implement those principles and regularly review and update you will have set a solid foundation for future business growth. We wish you all the best on your operational planning journey, and remember - every step you take towards detailed and thoughtful planning is a step towards long-term success and growth for your business. If you require any further help on other sections of your business plan, visit our Learning Zone for several in-depth guides.

Business Plan Operational Plan - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

To wrap up this guide, let's address some frequently asked questions about operational plans in business.

• What is the difference between a strategic plan and an operational plan? A strategic plan outlines a company's long-term vision, objectives, and strategies for achieving those objectives. It's a high-level roadmap for the direction the company intends to go. On the other hand, an operational plan details the day-to-day activities and resources necessary to achieve the strategic goals. It's the 'action plan' that brings the strategic plan to life.
• How often should an operational plan be reviewed? The frequency of review may vary depending on your business size, type, and industry, but generally, it is a good idea to review your operational plan at least quarterly. The regular review ensures that the plan is still relevant and effective, allowing for adjustments as business conditions change.
• How long should an operational plan be? There is no set length for an operational plan, as it will depend on the complexity of the operations. It needs to be comprehensive enough to cover all operational aspects of the business but concise enough to be understandable and manageable.
• Who is responsible for creating an operational plan? While the business owner or top management usually leads the creation of an operational plan, it should involve input from all levels of the organisation. Each department or team can provide valuable insights into their operations, challenges, and opportunities, leading to a more realistic and effective plan.
• How can I measure the success of my operational plan? The success of an operational plan is measured by how effectively it helps achieve the strategic objectives. Regular monitoring of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) related to your operational goals will provide a clear indication of your plan's success. If these KPIs are consistently met, your operational plan is likely successful. If not, adjustments may be needed.

• Grasshopper

Operations Plan

• Lesson Materials Operations Plan Worksheet
• Completion time About 40 minutes

The operations section of your business plan is where you explain – in detail – you company's objectives, goals, procedures, and timeline. An operations plan is helpful for investors, but it's also helpful for you and employees because it pushes you to think about tactics and deadlines.

In the previous course, you outlined your company's strategic plan, which answers questions about your business mission. An operational plan outlines the steps you'll take to complete your business mission.

Your operations plan should be able to answer the following:

• Who – The personnel or departments who are in charge of completing specific tasks.
• What – A description of what each department is responsible for.
• Where – The information on where daily operations will be taking place.
• When –The deadlines for when the tasks and goals are to be completed.
• How much – The cost amount each department needs to complete their tasks.

In this session, we explain each item to include in your operations plan.

Goals and Objectives

The key to an operations plan is having a clear objective and goal everyone is focused on completing. In this section of your plan, you'll clearly state what your company's operational objective is.

Your operational objective is different than your company's overall objective. In Course One , you fleshed out what your strategic objective was. Your operational objective explains how you intend to complete your strategic objective.

In order to create an efficient operational objective, think SMART:

• Specific – Be clear on what you want employees to achieve.
• Measurable – Be able to quantify the goal in order to track progress.
• Attainable & Realistic – It's great to be ambitious but make sure you aren't setting your team up for failure. Create a goal that everyone is motivated to complete with the resources available.
• Timely – Provide a deadline so everyone has a date they are working towards.

Different departments will have different operational objectives. However, each department objective should help the company reach the main objective. In addition, operational objectives change; the objectives aren't intended to be permanents or long term. The timeline should be scheduled with your company's long-term goals in mind.

Let's look at the following example for a local pizza business objective:

• Strategic objective : To deliver pizza all over Eastern Massachusetts.
• Technology department operational objective : To create a mobile app by January 2017 to offer a better user experience.
• Marketing department operational objective : To increase website visitors by 50% by January 2017 by advertising on radio, top local food websites, and print ads.
• Sales department operational objective : To increase delivery sales by 30%, by targeting 3 of Massachusetts's largest counties.

Sales department operational objective: To increase delivery sales by 30%, by targeting 3 of Massachusetts's largest counties.

Production Process

After you create your objectives, you have to think strategically on how you're going to meet them. In order to do this, each department (or team) needs to have all the necessary resources for the production process.

Resources you should think about include the following:

• Suppliers – do you have a supplier (or more) to help you produce your product?
• Technology team: app developing software
• Marketing team: software licenses for website analytical tools
• Sales team: headsets, phone systems or virtual phone system technology
• Cost – what is the budget for each department?

In addition to the production process, you'll also need to describe in detail your operating process. This will demonstrate to investors that you know exactly how you want your business to run on a day-to-day basis.

Items to address include:

• Location – where are employees working? Will you need additional facilities?
• Work hours – will employees have a set schedule or flexible work schedule?
• Personnel – who is in charge of making sure department tasks are completed?

Creating a timeline with milestones is important for your new business. It keeps everyone focused and is a good tracking method for efficiency. For instance, if milestones aren’t being met, you'll know that it's time to re-evaluate your production process or consider new hires.

Below are common milestones new businesses should plan for.

When you completed your Management Plan Worksheet in the previous course, you jotted down which key hires you needed right away and which could wait. Make sure you have a good idea on when you would like those key hires to happen; whether it’s after your company hits a certain revenue amount or once a certain project takes off.

Production Milestones

Production milestones keep business on track. These milestones act as "checkpoints" for your overall department objectives. For instance, if you want to create a new app by the end of the year, product milestones you outline might include a beta roll out, testing, and various version releases.

Other product milestones to keep in mind:

• Design phase
• Product prototype phase
• Product launch
• Version release

Market Milestones

Market milestones are important for tracking efficiency and understanding whether your operations plan is working. For instance, a possible market milestone could be reaching a certain amount of clients or customers after a new product or service is released.

A few other market milestones to consider:

• Gain a certain amount of users/clients by a certain time
• Signing partnerships
• Running a competitive analysis
• Performing a price change evaluation

Financial Milestones

Financial milestones are important for tracking business performance. It's likely that a board of directors or investors will work with you on creating financial milestones. In addition, in startups, it's common that financial milestones are calculated for 12 months.

Typical financial milestones include:

• Funding events
• Revenue and profit goals
• Transaction goals

In summary, your operations plan gives you the chance to show investors you know how you want your business to run. You know who you want to hire, where you want to work, and when you expect projects to be completed.

Download the attached worksheet and start putting your timelines and milestones together on paper.

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What is an Operational Plan? A Complete Playbook (+ Examples, Tips & More)

Introduction.

Without a plan, your business operations are as good as a children’s playground—everyone’s doing their own thing with no care in the world. 

An operational plan brings order to your organization. It defines the functional aspects of your long-term strategy, like goals, milestones, responsibilities and timelines, to build collaboration and make real progress toward your vision. 

Teams often overlook the importance of operational plan management, leading to miscommunication, unnecessary roadblocks and slow growth. 

If you don't want to end up in a chaotic playground with everything going south, read this start-to-finish guide on operational planning. We'll share a 6-step process of making your own operational plan with a few examples to inspire you.

TL;DR: What is an operational plan?

• An operational plan clarifies the details of your strategy, assigns responsibilities, and sets milestones and timelines.
• Use an operational plan to create a roadmap, assign roles, track progress, establish criteria for success, and minimize errors.
• To develop an operational plan, create a fail-proof strategic plan, establish clear goals and budgets, define the project scope, create the operational plan, get stakeholders' buy-in, and publish the plan using the right tool.

What is an operational plan?

An operational plan is a roadmap designed to implement your business strategies. It operationalizes your strategic plan by defining:

• Vision and objectives behind a strategy.
• Budget and resources required for execution.
• Weekly, monthly and quarterly milestones. 
• Relevant metrics to track progress consistently. 

‎An operational plan clarifies all the finer details about your strategy—like what, who, when and how—to help you realize the bigger vision. It’s a work plan for transferring the available inputs into the desired outputs. 

Operational planning vs. strategic planning

While operational and strategic planning might sound the same, they have significantly different meanings. Let's take a quick look at these differences to understand what an operational plan stacks up against a strategic plan.

5 reasons why you need an operational plan

Only setting goals without a solid operational plan to implement them is like making new year’s resolutions that never come true. 

Without a clear direction of what to do and how, you’d end up wasting your resources with little to no progress to show for it. An operational plan helps move the needle for your company by clarifying the steps to success and bringing more accountability. 

Still wondering how an operational plan can keep you on track? These five benefits will clue you in:

1. Creating an airtight roadmap

If a strategic plan defines the destination, an operational plan chalks out the itinerary to reach that destination. This actionable roadmap covers all bases to streamline collaboration within the team and set up the right systems to hit your milestones. 

2. Attributing roles to all stakeholders

Making an operational plan allows you to assign responsibilities to all internal and external stakeholders. It clarifies who’s responsible for what and sets expectations from the start. This is key for bringing everyone on the same page and avoiding roadblocks once the work is underway. 

3. Tracking progress & making strategic changes

Timelines and milestones are two of the most crucial components of an operational plan in business. They empower teams to analyze their performance and review progress objectively. You can use these insights to tweak your game plan for greater success and to improve operational efficiency .

4. Establishing criteria & metrics for success 

An operational plan outlines the parameters for success and metrics to monitor the same. These metrics give you a clear picture of your progress at every stage to ensure you’re moving as per the plan. They also highlight any potential red flags that can potentially derail the plan and need your attention. 

5. Minimizing discrepancies & errors

One of the most important benefits of making an operational plan is the clarity it brings to everyone. Instead of leaving your team clueless about the next steps, this work plan clarifies how and where they can start. It also reduces errors by laying down the ground rules for every task and process.

📌 ‎ Related resource: Operations Teams: How to Assemble and Lead a High-Performing Team

How to develop an operational plan strategy

There’s no standard rulebook for creating an operational plan. It’s a fully customizable document that depends entirely on your company’s goals, resources, timelines and overall approach. 

For example, a fast-paced team can work with shorter timelines and hit more goals than a large-scale organization with more levels of checks and a bigger hierarchy.  

So, instead of replicating other companies’ operational plans, let’s help you create your own plan with this 6-step process:

• Draw out a fail-proof strategic plan.
• Establish clear goals and budgets.
• Dig deeper into the project scope.
• Create your operational plan.
• Get all stakeholders’ buy-in for the plan.
• Publish the plan using the right tool.

1. Draw out a fail-proof strategic plan

A strategic plan is to an operational plan what a storyline is to a movie—it conveys the essence and creates a direction for the operational plan to become a masterpiece. 

So, naturally, the first step to operational planning is creating a strategic plan; here’s how:

• Define what success looks like for the entire organization. 
• Evaluate organizational readiness to implement this strategy. 
• Take inputs from people in the senior leadership. 
• Assign responsibilities to different stakeholders. 
• Prioritize goals against timelines. 

Once done, you can rely on this strategic plan throughout the operational planning process to prepare for what lies ahead. 

💡 ‎Use these 14 free customizable project plan templates to enhance communication, save time and achieve your strategic planning goals.

2. Establish clear goals & budgets

The next step is breaking your high-level goals into shorter, more actionable objectives. For example, you can divide the goal of achieving an X% growth in revenue into smaller targets, like increasing inbound leads, doubling down on cold outreach and rolling out a referral program. Implementing effective referral tracking within the program will allow you to monitor and optimize the success of your referral initiatives, providing valuable insights into the sources and impact of referred business.

Goal-setting makes your operational plan realistic and feasible. You're ideating the means to realize the long-term vision by hitting the right milestones. 

More importantly, once you have a list of goals, it's easier to determine the budget and resources required to achieve them. Before moving ahead, do your homework to set a solid budget that allows you to implement your strategy without splurging too much. 

3. Dig deeper into the project scope

Once you’re clear about your goals and resources, it’s time to define the finer details of your plan—specifying who’ll do what, when and how. 

Create a comprehensive project scope by outlining:

• Department-wise goals and tasks according to the goals.
• Different stakeholders involved within and outside your company. 
• Responsibilities for each stakeholder with primary KPIs for their role.
• SOPs  and  workflows  to perform a task or complete a process. 

This step brings more specificity to your operational plan. It concretely spells out each goal with details about milestones within each goal, roles and teams responsible for fulfilling these milestones and how they will work toward the end goals. 

💡 ‎ Scribe top tip: Creating a project scope document is a breeze when you use Scribe. You can use Scribe's project scope template to get cracking at the earliest. 

4. Create your operational plan

By this point, you've done all the legwork to get to work and start writing your operational plan finally.

Make it as actionable and value-packed as possible by answering these five main questions:

• Who: People involved in different tasks. Include a list of teams and specific roles involved in the business operations and clarify what’s expected of them. 
• What: Plan of action and targets to pursue. Create a milestone-based roadmap of the high-level goals to achieve and the smaller goals involved in the process. 
• Where: Platform(s) where daily operations will happen. Add all the tools and frameworks you'll use to run business operations through this plan seamlessly. 
• When: Deadlines for different tasks and activities. Map out the timelines for each job to ensure your team is on track for timely completion. 
• ‍ How much: Costs involved in hitting the designated goals. Mention your final budget and resource allocation for different tasks.

Use Scribe's free AI Writer for Operations tool to capture and document operational procedures.

‎Additionally, a good operational plan also lists the metrics to track your progress. Pick and explain relevant metrics in your plan to show employees how you'll analyze their efforts.  ‍

5. Get all stakeholders’ buy-in for the plan

No plan is perfect and there's always scope for improving your operational plan to make it perfect. So, once you've drafted the plan, don't forget to run it by a few select stakeholders to identify the gaps you can cover. 

Actively seek feedback from people in different ranks and departments to understand the missing links in your plan. Your plan will go through 2-3 rounds of iterations before it’s finally ready to roll out. 

6. Publish the plan using the right tool

The final step in the process is publishing the plan. The most important thing to remember is that your plan should be:

• Reader-friendly.
• Easily accessible.
• Quickly shareable. 

Clueless about the best way to hit all three points to roll out your operational plan? We have just the solution you need — Scribe . 

‎Scribe is a documentation tool designed to create intuitive documents, like an operational plan, in a few seconds. It significantly reduces the time spent on creating such documents and improves team efficiency in more ways than one.

‎You can create a single Scribe to explain a process or compile instructions with SOPs in a single place with Pages. You can even ask the AI to write your operational plan — just add a simple prompt and your Scribes, and the AI will build a customized document!

‎It's the easiest way to bring your team on the same page and power up your operations! 

✨ ‎See how operations teams use Scribe to tackle even the most daunting operational challenges.

3 operational plan examples (& why they work)

If you’re looking for some inspiration to get cracking with your planning process, looking at a few operations plan examples can help big time! Let’s look at three great examples, see why they work and how you can replicate the results. 

1. Carter Supply’s risk management plan

This detailed risk management plan by Carter Supply covers several aspects of managing risk at the organization. This 10-page document lists the key components of this plan, like a summary, the approval process and the end-to-end risk management process. 

As an operational plan, it gives the entire team clear insights into the risk management plan, highlights why it’s in place and explains how this plan will be used. 

This plan also covers different aspects of the plan and lays down the process of working on each element. For example, for risk quantification, the plan specifies that the risk manager will work with the risk owner to understand the exposure. 

2. Upscope’s go-to-market plan

Upscope ’s go-to-market (GTM) plan is another excellent example of operational planning. The SaaS company created this plan to execute its strategy for breaking into the co-browsing market. 

Pursuing this goal, the team created an airtight plan with a rundown of its target audience, pain points the product solves and the buyer journey. 

The Upscope marketing and sales teams could use this GTM plan to launch targeted campaigns and reach the right people. They were also well aware of the main value propositions to share with the target buyers, nudging them towards a purchase. 

📌 ‎Related resource: How Product Operations Can Help Your Team Build Better Products 📌 ‎

3. SmartNet’s project quality management plan

The quality management plan by SmartNet is a detailed document explaining the company’s entire operations framework, from the management structure to project reporting, risk assessment, deliverable production and more. 

Instead of a single department, this operational plan documents the complete business operations. Despite being so lengthy, the document is easy to read and understand—exactly how the plan should look like.

It also includes all the critical information to guide new employees about the company's operations from scratch.

Make operational planning your road to success 

When done right, operational planning can be a game-changer for streamlining your operations. It’s an in-depth roadmap to work toward your vision and hit all goals. 

Even though making an operational plan isn’t the most exciting task and it can get extremely time-consuming, the right process and tools can do the trick for you. Follow the six steps we’ve highlighted in this guide and when you’re ready to roll, use Scribe to put the plan in place. 

Scribe takes the pain out of documentation to empower teams for seamless operational planning. Try it today to see how it works!

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Expertly Writing the Operations Plan Section of Your Business Plan

Written by Dave Lavinsky

Operational plans are important for any effective business plan . They provide a roadmap for how the company will operate on a day-to-day basis. The operational strategic plan should outline the company’s goals and objectives, as well as the strategies and actions that will be taken to achieve them.

Business Operations Section of a Business Plan

The operational plan or operations section of a business plan is where you describe how your business will function on a day-to-day basis. This includes everything from the resources you’ll need to run your business, to the people who will be responsible for carrying out various tasks, to the processes and procedures you’ll use to get work done.

Purpose of the Operational Plan Section of a Business Plan

An operational plan is essential for any business because it provides a roadmap for how it will function. It ensures that everyone involved in the business is on the same page and knows what their roles and responsibilities are. Having an operational plan also makes it easier to track and accomplish goals, while driving cost reduction and improving overall results. Finally, your operations plan section helps show readers that you can turn your vision and goals into reality.

Benefits of an Operations Plan Include:

• Identifying the key processes your company must perform to achieve its goals
• Mapping out short-term and long-term milestones so you have specific goals and a roadmap for achieving them
• Understanding the human and other resources required to execute your vision

Writing an Operations Section of a Business Plan

When writing the operations section of a business plan, there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind. First, be sure to describe the resources that will be required to run your business. This includes everything from office space and equipment to human resources. Next, detail the processes and procedures that will be used to get work done. Be as specific as possible so that there is no confusion about how things should be done. Finally, identify the people who will be responsible for carrying out various tasks. This includes both employees and contractors.

Tracking Key Performance Indicators with Operational Planning

As a business owner, it’s important to track your progress against your company goals. This is where KPIs come in. KPIs are performance indicators and an important part of creating a strategic plan that can help you track your progress and identify areas of improvement. You should document your KPIs in the operation plan of your business plan

There are a few things to keep in mind when choosing KPIs for your business:

• Make sure that the KPIs you choose are relevant to your company’s goals.
• Choose KPIs that can be easily measured.
• Avoid choosing too many KPIs, as this can be overwhelming. Stick to a few key ones that will give you the most insights into your business’s progress.
• Set realistic targets for each KPI. This will help you track your progress and identify areas of improvement.
• Review your KPIs on a regular basis to ensure that they are still relevant and accurate, while also being in line with strategic plans.

Some Examples of KPIs that You Could Track with an Operational Plan

When creating an operations plan, it’s important to track key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure your progress against your company goals. Some examples of KPIs that you could track are:

• Sales growth
• Delivery times
• Customer satisfaction ratings
• Product Quality
• Production Process
• Employee retention
• Operational costs

Creating an operational plan with KPIs will help you track your progress, identify areas of improvement, improve strategic planning and make necessary changes to reach your company’s strategic objective.

Example of an Operations Section of a Business Plan

Here is what an operations plan example might look like:

The XYZ Company will require the following resources to operate:

• 1,000 square feet of office space
• $10,000 for office furniture and equipment
• 3 full-time employees
• 2 part-time employees
• 1 contractor

The XYZ Company will use the following processes and procedures to get work done:

• All new clients will be contacted within 24 hours of the initial inquiry
• Initial consultations will be scheduled within 48 hours of contact
• Proposals will be presented within 10 days of the initial consultation
• Work will begin within 2 weeks of proposal acceptance

The following people will be responsible for carrying out these tasks:

• John Smith, full-time employee, will contact new clients
• Jane Doe, full-time employee, will schedule initial consultations
• John Smith and Jane Doe will conduct initial consultations
• John Smith and Jane Doe will prepare proposals
• John Smith and Jane Doe will manage projects
• Joe Johnson, contractor, will provide support as needed

An operations plan is a critical part of any business planning work. It provides a roadmap for how the business will function on a day-to-day basis. This includes everything from the resources you’ll need to run your business, to the people who will be responsible for carrying out various tasks, to the processes and procedures you’ll use to get work done. Having operational plans in place will ensure that everyone involved in the business is on the same page and knows what their roles and responsibilities are. It will also make it easier to track and accomplish goals.

Key Takeaways

A few key things to remember when writing your operations plan:

• Describe the resources that will be required to run your business
• Detail the processes and procedures that will be used to get work done
• Identify the people who will be responsible for carrying out various tasks

Following these tips will help you create a comprehensive and effective operations plan for your business.

A strategic plan is one of the critical components of any successful company. The operations plan outlines the roadmap for your business, outlining the steps you need to take to achieve your goals. If you’re not sure where to start, we can help. Our team of experts has created a comprehensive business plan template that will guide you through the process of creating an operational plan tailored to your specific business needs. Ready to get started? Download our template today and get access to all the tools and information you need to create a thriving business.

How to Finish Your Business Plan Template in 1 Day!

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With Growthink’s Ultimate Business Plan Template you can finish your plan in just 8 hours or less!

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• Learn how to do operational planning th ...

Learn how to do operational planning the right way

Some of this planning will be developed yearly—things like your yearly objectives and key results, for example, will naturally grow as time goes on. But to make sure you’re staying on track and executing against your long-term goals, you need an operational plan. 

What is operational planning?

Operational planning is the process of turning your strategic plan into a detailed map that outlines exactly what action your team will take on a weekly, or sometimes even daily, basis. An operational plan will include action items and milestones that each team or department needs to complete in order to execute your strategic plan. 

During the operational planning process, outline each team or person’s responsibilities for the next quarter, six months, or fiscal year. The level of detail and timeline you select for your operational plan should depend on how quickly your organization typically moves—if you’re a fast-paced team with an accelerated roadmap, consider creating an operational plan for the next quarter or half year. But if your organization tends to think more long-term, create an operational plan for the entire fiscal year.

Operational planning vs. strategic planning

A strategic plan is a business-level plan of your long-term strategy for the next three to five years. An operational plan is smaller in both scope and timeline. The goal of operational planning is to outline the daily actions you need to take to hit your strategic goals. 

Unlike a strategic plan, an operational plan should also focus on implementation . What daily and weekly actions does your team need to take in order to accomplish your longer-term strategic plan? What specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) do you need to track on a regular basis in order to ensure that your team is progressing towards your objectives? These details should be captured in your operational plan.

Who should create an operational plan?

To capture exactly who is doing what by when, an operational plan needs to be very detailed. For this reason, create an operational plan at a smaller scale than your strategic plan—both in terms of timeline and scope. Instead of trying to create an operational plan for your entire company, create one at the department or team level. At a larger company, you could even create an operational plan for a specific initiative—similar to a detailed work plan .

For example, create an operational plan to explain the daily tasks your IT department needs to do in order to support the company. Your IT department’s operational plan might include how frequently IT team members will check the IT requests project inbox , budgeting details for the program, how the IT team will onboard and equip new employees, and how frequently the team will meet. 

There are three levels to who should create an operational plan:

Scope: Your operational plan will capture the who, what, and when of each activity. It should be laser-focused on a team or initiative.

Timeline: Depending on how fast your organization moves, your operational plan should span a quarter, six months, or a fiscal year. 

Stakeholders: Make sure the people involved in operational planning are close to the work, so they can accurately project and predict what work should be included in the plan.

The benefits of operational planning

A strategic plan is a great way to proactively align your team around a shared purpose. By defining long-term goals, you can outline exactly where you want to go.

An operational plan helps you hit your strategic goals. According to our research, only 26% of knowledge workers have a very clear understanding of how their individual work relates to company goals. By creating a detail-oriented operational plan, you can define exactly what short-term goals you need to achieve in order to be on track towards your long-term objectives. It can help you think through the actions you’re currently taking or need to take in order to execute against your goals. 

In particular, an operational plan:

Clarifies exactly what your team will be doing on a weekly and daily basis.

Provides a comprehensive guide of the day-to-day operations your team members need to take in order to accomplish your long-term goals.

Sets a benchmark for daily expectations, so you can avoid getting off track.

5 steps to making an operational plan

During the operational planning process, you're not creating new plans or developing new goals. Rather, to create an operational plan, assess everything your team is currently working on and everything you need to do on a daily or weekly basis to hit your strategic goals. Here’s how:

1. Start with a strategic plan

If you haven’t already, create a strategic plan first. You need a long-term vision and goals before you can break down the day-to-day details. There are four steps to creating a strategic plan:

Determine your position

Develop your strategy

Build your strategic plan

Share, monitor, and manage your strategic plan

To learn more, read our article on strategic planning .

2. Narrow down your scope

In order to create a detail-oriented operational plan, you need to narrow the scope to a team, department, or focus area. The scope of your operational plan will depend on the size of your company.

For example, imagine you’re breaking down your strategic plan into action plans for various company departments. Your marketing team spans multiple functions—for example, design , product marketing, social media, content creation, and web promotion. To capture specific, daily functions within each team, you should create an operational action plan for each smaller team. 

3. Identify key stakeholders

Before creating an operational plan, decide who will be involved in the operational planning process. The team members creating the operational plan should be relatively close to the actions the plan describes. 

To continue our example, the design team’s operational plan should be created by the head of the design team and the team leads (depending on the size of the team). Once they’ve created their operational plan, the team should share the plan with the head of marketing for final approval.

4. Create the plan

Your operational plan explains the actions your team will take to achieve your goals within a set time frame. To create an operational plan, outline:

Your team’s objectives

The deliverables that will be achieved by the operational plan

Any desired outcomes or quality standards

Staffing and resource requirements , including your operating budget

How you will monitor and report on progress

If you’re struggling to figure out all the details that should be included in your operational plan, ask yourself the following questions: 

What do we need to accomplish? This information should come from your strategic plan or yearly goals.

What daily tasks do we need to complete in order to hit our goals? These can be daily tasks you’re currently doing or new work that needs to be kicked off.

Who are the people responsible for those tasks? Make sure each task has one owner so there’s no confusion about who to go to for questions or updates.

What are our metrics for success? If you haven’t already, make sure your goals follow the SMART framework . 

To continue our example, here’s the framework the design team might use to create their operational plan:

Part of the strategic plan for the marketing team is to increase share of voice in the market—which means more eyes on marketing materials and increased engagement with potential customers. To support these goals, the design team will: 

Create additional promotional materials for the social team

Revamp the website home page to attract more potential customers

To accomplish these two goals in the next year, the design team will:

Hire two new team members to focus on social media engagement

Partner with the web development team within the marketing department to create an interactive home page

To track and report on their progress, the design team will use Asana as their central source of truth for key performance metrics, including:

What designs they are creating

The level of engagement they’re getting on social media

The progress of the website update

This is just the framework the design team would use to create their operational plan. Bring this plan to life within a work management tool like Asana to share clarity on all of the work the team needs to do to hit their goals. With work management, every task can be tracked in real-time from inception to completion.

5. Share and update your operational plan

Once you’ve created the plan, share it with key stakeholders so they understand your team’s most important goals and the daily tasks it will take to get there. Manage your plan and updates in a shared tool that captures real-time progress, like Asana .

Like any element of project planning, things will inevitably change. Actively monitor your operational plan and report on progress so key stakeholders and team members can stay updated on how you’re tracking against your goals. Report on progress monthly through written status updates . 

Get started with operational planning

An operational plan can help you ensure you’re making progress on long-term goals. But in order for this plan to be effective, make sure you’re tracking your work in a centrally-accessible tool. Siloed information and goals don’t help anyone—instead, track your action items and goals in a work management tool.

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Operational Planning

Operational planning definition.

What does operational planning mean? Operational planning is a process that involves creating a detailed roadmap to align with a strategic plan.

The operational plan itself is a document that outlines timelines, action items, and critical milestones for executing the strategic plan. This document defines the organization’s objectives and goals and clarifies how to achieve them.

An operational planning process involves examining how a business operates and laying out who’s responsible for what and when.

Remember, every company approaches this differently, and annual operational plans are constantly updated or changed. The key to making it work? Clear and collaborative communication.

The timeframe to execute a plan typically depends on an organization’s velocity. For example, creating an annual operational plan is a fluid, changing process.

A well-conceived business operational plan keeps team members collaborating smoothly, ensures everyone knows what needs to be done and what their part is, and guides critical decisions about long-term strategy.

Critical steps of operational planning

Clearly define the goal or vision for the operational plan.

Analyze and identify essential business stakeholders, team members, budgets, and resources.

1. Clearly define the goal or vision for the operational plan.

2. Analyze and identify essential business stakeholders, team members, budgets, and resources.

3. Accurately plan for risk.

4. Consistently track performance.

5. Communicate to team members and stakeholders about progress.

6. Adapt the operational plan to broader company goals as needed.

What Is Operational Planning?

Operational planning faqs.

What is operational planning for the business? Operational planning in business entails a team or department working to carry out a strategic plan. It’s a forward-looking process that outlines departmental goals, resources, and budget to ensure team-based activities align with the strategic plan.

Effective operational business plans rely on the commitment of the entire team or department. This buy-in ensures issues are promptly reported, goals are identified, timelines are adhered to, and business collaboration is optimized.

When there’s transparent communication between the finance department and the rest of the business, operational plans become even more efficient in driving the organization toward its objectives.

Examples of operational planning:

• A manufacturing company is developing a plan to boost revenue by 30%.
• Finance collaborating with sales, marketing, operations management, and other vital areas to align strategies supporting revenue growth and achieving business goals.
• A brand planning to launch a new product involves market research, R&D, manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, distribution, sales, marketing, and customer support.

Why is Operational Planning Important?

Just as a roadmap helps you navigate a physical journey, an operational plan guides your organization on its path to success.

Everyone on the team can refer to a single source of truth to understand the organization’s direction and how their roles contribute to achieving the overall goals. An operational plan is a living document that should be reviewed and updated regularly. It should be adaptable to changing circumstances and also provide stability and direction for your organization.

What are the Benefits of Operational Planning?

As we said, think of operational planning as the roadmap that keeps your business on the right track, regardless of size.

One of the most significant advantages of operational planning is getting everyone on the same page, working together like a well-oiled machine to reach your strategic company goals.

Operational planning helps leadership define responsibilities, daily tasks, and activities in detail. It also shows how team members support overall department and organizational goals and describes outcomes to measure against daily tasks.

It also boosts team productivity. Operational planning enhances efficiency, productivity, and profits by ensuring employees in each department and across the company know their daily responsibilities and objectives.

Here are some of the benefits of having a robust operational plan:

• Improved communication: An operational plan ensures everyone understands the organization’s goals and priorities.
• Increased efficiency: An operational plan streamlines your organization’s operations and improves its efficiency.
• Reduced risk: An operational plan allows organizations to identify and mitigate risks.
• Enhanced decision-making: An operational plan can help your organization make better decisions by providing a framework for evaluating different options.
• Improved accountability: An operational plan can hold your organization accountable for its performance.

Remember, operational plans are built by humans and are susceptible to human error. But when you weigh the pros against the cons, it’s clear that all organizations benefit from an operational plan in place to support growth.

Who is Responsible for Operational Planning?

Typically, an operational plan lives in the realm of middle management — in contrast to the C-suite’s strategic plan.

Operational plans have a narrower scope and focus on routine tasks that continuously evolve. Changes to the strategic plan are typically less frequent compared to operational plans.

There are several factors to consider when determining who creates operational plans: <H3>

• Scope. An operational plan is laser-focused on the initiative itself and the team, ensuring the scope is manageable. It should include the “who, what, and when” for every activity.
• Timeline . The duration of an operational plan can vary depending on the organization’s speed and velocity. It can cover a quarter, six months, or a fiscal year.
• Stakeholders. To accurately plan the work, involve operational planning stakeholders who are close to the work. Finance, in particular, plays a vital role in aligning tactical details with strategic execution.

Strategic Planning vs Operational Planning

Strategic, tactical, and operational planning are distinct yet interconnected processes organizations use to achieve their goals. Each level of planning has a specific focus and timeframe.

Let’s look at each type of plan in detail.

What is a strategic plan?

A strategic plan describes an organization’s high-level goals, long-term vision, and mission, usually over the next three to five years.

This type of plan also details any significant projects or initiatives that must happen to meet this vision and how the organization will broadly measure the goals.

A strategic plan provides a big-picture view of the organization’s direction and broad objectives. In other words, it’s a visionary plan that doesn’t address the steps needed to achieve them.

What is an operational plan?

An operational plan (also known as an operation plan, work plan, or operations plan) is a detailed outline of what a team or department will focus on in the immediate future, typically within the upcoming year.

The operational plan answers questions about weekly goals, tasks, and responsibilities, ensuring alignment with the organization’s strategic goals and mission.

What is a tactical plan?

A tactical plan maps out the steps an organization or team must take after creating their strategic and operational plans.

It involves breaking down strategic and operational plans into smaller, more manageable goals and objectives.

Tactical plans define the steps and actions needed to achieve the desired outcomes.

Critical differences between strategic planning, operational planning, and tactical planning

• Strategic plans focus on long-term goals and the overall direction of the organization.
• Operational plans focus on short-term, day-to-day activities and implementation.
• Tactical plans bridge the gap between strategic and operational planning, ensuring that the goals outlined in the strategic plan are achievable through specific actions.

The Best Plan for Your Team

Remember, strategic, tactical, and operational planning work together to ensure organizations have a clear and actionable roadmap for achieving their goals.

Strategic planning is essential for setting the long-term direction, while operational planning is crucial for executing day-to-day activities. Tactical planning can break down goals into smaller, achievable steps.

What is the Operational Planning Process?

Remember these best practices and operational planning techniques when building an operational planning cycle.

Research and Identify Goals

The goal of an operational plan is to address foundational questions.

Start by reviewing your strategic plan. Ask yourself, “How will our actions shape our organization?”

From there, consider the following factors:

1. Resources. What is your operating budget? How does it compare to previous years?

2. Staffing. Do you have enough talent to achieve your goals? How do you want to grow your workforce over one, two, and three years?

3. Tools. What operational planning methodology will you use to carry out your plan? What are the operational planning tools you will use?

4. Team alignment. Have you effectively communicated your organization’s vision for the future to your team members?

5. Performance benchmarks. How will you measure progress?

6. Prioritize feedback. Be willing to accept feedback and adjust the operational plan as necessary.

Visualize the Operational Plan

To bring your operational plan to life, you must clearly articulate it to your team.

Project management software can offer all stakeholders a high-level view of tasks and progress. Identify which operational business planning techniques and tools will best achieve the organization’s goals.

Operational planning software can be a valuable asset throughout the process.

Assign People and Budget

In operational planning, budgeting involves assigning tasks and allocating resources to team members to achieve specific financial goals.

Each budget item should align with the strategic objectives outlined in the operational plan, with corresponding timelines and deliverables.

Tracking and Informing Progress

To ensure effective monitoring and progress reporting, establish a reporting system that aligns with the goals, targets, deliverables, resource allocation, and timetables outlined in the operational plan.

This reporting process allows stakeholders to provide regular feedback on the plan’s implementation and track advancements toward achieving the desired outcomes.

Adjust the Operational Plan as Needed

The most effective operational plans can identify areas for improvement. The team can then strategically adjust the plan, involve additional members, and proceed toward the next benchmark with a refined approach.

What Should Operational Planning Include?

No two operational plans are alike. What is consistent across plans is that the primary goal is to create a functional operational plan that aligns with the organization’s mission and strategic plan.

A clearly defined operational plan ensures that every manager and employee understands their specific responsibilities and the methods and timing of their execution.

Here are key elements of an operational plan:

• A title page. This summarizes the operational plan.
• An executive summary. This provides a few sentences with a rough idea of the overall plan and its primary sections.
• Mission statement. A clear and concise statement of your organization’s purpose and values.
• Vision statement. A description of what your organization will achieve. This will come from your strategic plan.
• Goals and KPIs. Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound objectives your organization wants to achieve.
• Timeline. A schedule of when your organization plans to achieve its goals and objectives.
• Financial summary. A detailed plan of how your organization will allocate its financial resources.
• Hiring plan. Determine how many monthly/quarterly team members to hire across different departments.
• Strategies. The methods your organization will use to achieve its goals.
• Tactics. The specific actions your organization will take to implement its strategies.
• Key assumptions and risks. Provide a risk analysis to mitigate issues before they arise.
• Metrics. The measures your organization will use to track its progress and evaluate its success.
• Next steps. Suggest next steps, if any.

What are the Steps to Build an Operational Plan?

Operational planning aims to create a practical plan that supports existing strategic goals, not to generate new ones.

Like project planning, operational planning is never a one-and-done task but a continuous process.

Here are the steps you need to get started:

1. Start with a strategic plan

Before diving into operational details, establish the long-term vision and goals through a strategic plan.

The leadership team should create and monitor the strategic plan, making necessary adjustments.

2. Sharpen the scope

Narrow down the operational plan’s scope to a specific department, team, or focus area.

Start big with the strategic plan, then narrow down to the operational plan. From there, focus on the tactical areas you need to see your plan through — in other words, a supporting action plan.

3. Identify key stakeholders

Before executing the operational plan, it’s crucial to recognize the key stakeholders involved in the operational planning process.

These team members play a vital role in leading and informing others. Identifying these team members in advance ensures effective communication and successful execution of the operational plan.

4. Create the operational plan

Your operational plan outlines the timeframe for achieving specific goals and presents the team’s actions. It must include objectives, deliverables, quality standards (if any), desired outcomes, operating budget, staffing and resource requirements, and progress and monitoring information.

5. Share the operational plan

Share the operational plan with key stakeholders so they understand mission-critical goals and the daily tasks that support them.

Track progress in real-time for best results. This also allows you to update the operational plan and report on progress to team members and stakeholders as needed.

Does Planful Help With Operational Planning?

Absolutely! Planful’s Financial Performance Management platform seamlessly integrates the demand for structured planning in finance with the business’s need for dynamic planning.

With Planful, you can create collaborative financial plans that align resources with strategic goals. Planful also automates the data collection process for operational planning, saving you from a time-consuming, manual process.

The platform’s agility enables you to adapt and pivot quickly in response to changing business conditions. You can reliably model numerous scenarios and effortlessly convert annual plans into quarterly or monthly rolling forecasts, all tailored to the organization’s current requirements.

Learn more about Planful’s Operational Planning solution .

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Operational Planning: How to Make an Operational Plan

June 6, 2022 - 10 min read

Having a strategic plan is essential to any company, but it’s not enough. To ensure that the broader organizational goals are within reach, you need an operational plan for day-to-day work. 

Using templates to manage your operation plan can help simplify your complex processes and save you time. You know how a shopping list helps you remember what to buy at the store? Templates are like that for your work. And Wrike has many templates ready to go for different kinds of jobs. 

For example, you can use the retail trade template to see what step comes next when adding something new for customers to buy. Then there’s the business operations templates , which helps you and your team keep track of your business plan without getting wires crossed. And when you need to manage bills, you can use the invoice tracking template . All these templates are great tools for keeping an operational plan ticking over.

In this blog post, we’ll explain what an operational plan is, show you how to create one without feeling overwhelmed, and provide you with an example of an operational plan. We’ll also share our prebuilt templates to get you up and running quickly.

What is an operational plan?

An operational plan is a document that outlines the key objectives and goals of an organization and how to reach them.

The document includes short-term or long-term goals in a clear way so that team members know their responsibilities and have a clear understanding of what needs to be done.

Crafting an operational plan keeps teams on track while guiding them in making crucial decisions about the company's long-term strategy.

Operational planning vs strategic planning

Though related to each other, these two planning strategies differ in their focus.

Operational planning is the process of the day-to-day work to execute your strategy. It ensures you have all the resources and staff necessary to get work done efficiently.

On the other hand, strategic planning is about looking ahead into the future, identifying the upcoming pipeline, and figuring out how you can prepare for it.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, nearly 7 million Americans are self-employed, with an additional 10 million employed by small businesses. 

If you're working at a large corporation, chances are your company will have some form of strategic goals in place. However, if you're one of the millions who work remotely and independently, your success will rely on operational planning instead.

What are the key elements of an operational plan?

The success of operational planning largely depends on setting realistic expectations for all teams.

Here are the key elements of a functional operational plan:

• Clearly define the ultimate vision or objective for the plan
• Review and break down the smaller goals for the operating budget, team, and resources required to put the plan into action
• Assign budgets, team members, key stakeholders, and resources
• Monitor progress with consistent reports
• Refine the operational plan and be ready to pivot if needed

Ensure all teams understand the parameters of success. Doing this shows how their work contributes to wider company goals and ensures better decision-making for the business operation.

How to create an operational planning process

Think of an operational plan as a key component in a team puzzle. It provides employees with a manual on how to operate the company.

It should be created in tandem with other foundational documents like an organizational mission statement, vision document, or business strategy. Daily, it can help answer questions such as:

• Who should be working on what?
• How can we mitigate those risks?
• How will resources be assigned for different tasks?
• Are there any internal and external risks facing the business?

To create a successful operational plan, it's important to define goals clearly. Here are several steps that will help you develop a functional operating plan:

Start with the strategic plan

Before defining an operational goal, make sure your strategic objectives are in place and relevant.

Prioritize the most critical activities first

Once these goals have been decided on, prioritize the most critical activities required to achieve these aims.

Stop diluting team efforts and let them focus on the most important goals first. Doing this means everyone works on a smaller set of tasks, instead of spreading themselves thin in multiple areas. It also helps in optimizing available resources.

Use predictive indicators

For a robust operational plan, consider using key performance metrics or indicators that can help you determine project progress and lend visibility to team activities. 

While lagging indicators look backward, leading indicators look to the future. Think of the plan as a car — the rear-view mirror would be a lagging indicator, while the windshield would be the leading indicator.

A leading indicator could be a new product, higher customer satisfaction levels, or new markets. Examples of lagging indicators include the number of people who attended an event or the monthly operating expenses for specific departments. 

Instead of lagging indicators, use leading indicators. Lagging metrics will show that your efforts are falling short only after you execute the operations.

Leading KPIs include predictive measures that allow early identification of problems before they become critical and impact business performance negatively.

Get team buy-in

The key to defining appropriate KPIs is involving the whole team in the process. Meet to discuss the business goals and figure out what measurements are right for the team instead of working independently or outsourcing them.

Ensure consistent communication

Communication is key. By understanding your company's metrics and what they mean, you'll be able to work together more effectively with colleagues to reach common goals.

Operational plan example

Let’s say that a company plans to increase production volume by 50% at the end of a fiscal year.

When the company goal is clear, the team will make a strategic plan with three main components: marketing, sales, and operations.

This can be further broken down into an operational plan, which will assign resources, teams, budgets, and timelines for different departments such as manufacturing, sourcing, accounts, finance, and logistics to achieve the increase in production. Such a plan should include a financial summary and financial projections as well.

Operational plan template

Think about the example above. The goals and parties involved are clear as part of the operational plan. At the same time, to remain on track, the plan requires continuous analysis and reviews. An operational plan template can be extremely helpful to achieve that.

An operational template can be a simple document that is reused for different plans by the same organization. However, it is also possible and extremely helpful to make use of project management software tools to create one.

For instance, Gantt charts can serve exactly that purpose. Using a Gantt chart as an operational plan template, it is possible to create and manage plans, track changes and edit project-related activities in real time. The chart allows clear visibility for timelines, tasks, responsibilities, and team members.

Operational planning advantages and disadvantages

Most businesses utilize an operational plan to keep track of their daily tasks. 

The plan outlines the day-to-day activities for running the organization — teams, managers, and employees are then able to visualize their contribution, which is crucial for reaching company goals.

But every process has two sides. Let’s review the operational planning advantages and disadvantages in more detail.

Operational planning advantages

Clarifies organizational goals.

An operational plan helps managers and department heads define their daily tasks, responsibilities, and activities in detail.

It also illustrates how individual team members contribute to the overall company or department goals. Without a clearly defined plan, managers and employees have no way to measure their daily tasks against predefined outcomes.

Boosts team productivity

Business owners are always looking for ways to increase productivity, which in turn translates into higher profits. One of the best and easiest ways to boost efficiency is through an operational plan.

Employees are more productive when they know their daily objectives and responsibilities. Conversely, if they're unsure of what is required of them, chances are their productivity will suffer. 

An operational plan provides this vital information to employees in each department and across the company as a whole.

Enhance organizational profitability

Having a plan helps in keeping projects and teams on track.

When operations are managed properly, teams are able to consistently increase revenue and develop new products.

Innovation pays off. A BCG survey points out that 60% of companies that are committed to innovation report steadily increasing revenues year after year. With an operational plan in place, teams are able to innovate better and faster.

Improves competitive advantages

Competitive advantages are made up of multiple levels and components.

Coordinating the different parts with an operational plan will make your workflows run more smoothly. This allows you to deliver high-quality deliverables on time, creating an outstanding customer experience and keeping you ahead of the competition.

Operational planning disadvantages

Possibility of human error.

Human error is a common problem in manufacturing that can often occur when transitioning from production to sale.

Operations management teams will need to coordinate effectively with diverse cross-functional teams such as finance, accounting, engineering, and human resources. In doing so, each team will have a clear understanding of the end goals of each department.

Interdependency amongst parts

One of the main disadvantages of implementing an operations planning process is that its success depends on coordination across parts.

Plans end up failing due to one part not working, which can have an adverse impact on the subsequent process. Disruptions in one process can end up affecting the entire process, making the entire operational plan useless.

Using Wrike for operational planning

Boost your organization’s efficiency by ensuring every project starts off on the right foot. Wrike’s award-winning project management tools can help you create and execute operational plans with various prebuilt templates . 

Establish your plan, monitor progress, and be prepared to pivot if necessary. With Wrike, you can share real-time data, making all milestones crystal clear for your team and helping them stay updated and on track.

These templates keep processes running smoothly so you can focus on doing your work well. Want to try them out? They’re just a click away.  

Choose the most suitable template and start a free two-week trial of Wrike today!

Yuvika Iyer

Yuvika is a freelance writer who specializes in recruitment and resume writing.

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Work Skills You Need on Your Resume in 2021

Navigating the highly competitive job market can be brutal. In a recent Jobvite survey, nearly three in four respondents said they believe finding a job has become much harder following the pandemic.  It’s clearer now more than ever how important it is for your resume to stand out. In fact, nearly 24% of hiring managers spend 30 seconds or less reviewing a resume to determine whether a candidate is qualified for a position or not. You quite literally have seconds to catch their attention before your resume ends up in the recycling bin with the rest of the candidates that didn’t make the cut. So, how exactly do you set yourself apart and stand out from the crowd? Highlighting your work skills on your resume is the best place to start. We did some digging and pulled together some work skills examples in various categories to inspire you to revitalize your resume.  Important social work skills for the workplace What are social work skills? Social skills, otherwise known as interpersonal skills, are essential in helping us communicate with one another in the workplace. These skills allow us to build relationships, interact, and communicate with those around us in a meaningful and effective way. This includes verbal and nonverbal cues.  Social work skills are essential in every job. Whether you work on a team, are in a client-facing role, or are an individual contributor reporting to a direct manager, solid social skills will help you succeed in your position.  Let’s take a look at some of the most important social work skills for the workplace:  1. Empathy One of the best ways to interact well with others is to put yourself in their shoes and understand how they feel. Empathetic people can understand how others are feeling and can identify with those feelings in some way.  Having empathy is a vital trait, especially for those who hold leadership positions. Being empathetic isn’t something you can force, and it doesn’t happen overnight if it doesn’t come naturally to you. This skill takes a conscious effort to build and will help you forge and maintain stronger workplace relationships. 2. Active listening Have you ever been in the middle of a conversation with a colleague and felt like they weren’t paying attention to a single word you were saying? Or have you ever been chatting with a coworker and felt like they heard you and gave you their utmost attention? The latter is known as active listening.  Active listening involves giving someone your full, undivided attention and it allows you to build trust and strong relationships with your colleagues and clients. Active listening requires practice, but it is a skill that can be acquired with proper training and effort. 3. Emotional intelligence At a high level, emotional intelligence refers to recognizing and being aware of the emotions of both yourself and other people. Those with high emotional intelligence are known for being self-aware and can practice self-regulation, particularly in stressful and potentially overwhelming situations at work. Emotional intelligence is critical in the workplace because it contributes to strong, long-term relationships and can help you manage and appropriately tailor your reactions.  4. Conflict resolution According to recent research, 65% of workers experienced conflict with another coworker. Conflict is inevitable in the workplace, which means developing a solid set of conflict resolution skills can help you manage and navigate these situations efficiently.  Conflict resolution is the ability to address the root cause of disagreements and devise a solution that works for all parties involved. You can use various techniques to help resolve conflicts, so it’s essential to learn and understand how to address different disputes. 5. Written communication Social skills refer to how we communicate with one another, which means written skills are a must. Some forms of written communication include emails, instant messages, documents, reports, slide decks, and your resume. Using appropriate grammar, proper spelling, and following formatting guidelines will allow you to communicate effectively with others. 6. Nonverbal communication When it comes to communication, it’s easy to think about what we are saying, but we don’t always focus on how we are saying it. Nonverbal skills can dramatically impact the way your message is received.  Your body language, eye contact, facial expressions, and tone can completely change the message you are trying to deliver to your coworkers. It’s important to be aware of these subtle cues so that you can make sure your message isn’t misconstrued or misinterpreted.  Work-related skills for virtual environments You might not be working with your colleagues side-by-side in the same office. In addition to the skills we discussed above, remote work requires some different skills and disciplines.  Below are a few competencies that you’ll definitely want to have when collaborating in virtual work environments:  Self-motivation: There’s a big difference between in-person office environments and virtual workplace settings. At the office, your manager can simply stop by your desk or quickly check in to see how things are going. While your supervisor can technically do the same via email or instant message, you ultimately don’t have anyone looking over your shoulder 24/7 at your home office (unless you have pets, children, or spouses nearby!). That means self-motivation and knowing how to hold yourself accountable to get your work done are vital to helping you thrive in a virtual role. Adaptability: Adaptability is beneficial in any setting, but it’s a particularly beneficial skill in virtual environments. Whether you’re working with a distributed team and constantly trying to navigate time zones or your presentation gets interrupted due to an unreliable internet connection, adaptability is an important skill to help you navigate the unexpected and ever-changing conditions you may find yourself running up against. Digital and technical knowledge: In virtual environments, employees work remotely and generally rely on several tools to collaborate and tackle their to-do lists. Between project management software, instant messaging, video conferencing, document sharing, and email, there are many different technologies to navigate daily. If you’re working in a virtual environment, it’s essential to feel comfortable using these platforms if you want to keep up with the pace of your work. It’s also worth mentioning that, while you still may be able to reach the IT help desk, you may not receive assistance as quickly as you would in an office setting. That means you might have to do some troubleshooting and problem-solving on your own. What teamwork skills are important for 2021? Teamwork makes the dream work, right?  Teamwork skills are a subset of skills that enable us to work well with groups of people (meaning, our teams) to achieve a shared goal or outcome. In 2021 and beyond, as we see a shift toward hybrid work models, honing in on your teamwork skills can help you land your dream gig. Here are the teamwork skills that are important to develop for 2021 and beyond: 1. Reliability Being reliable is arguably the most crucial teamwork skill. Those who are reliable can be depended on and trusted to do their part time and time again. They show a certain level of commitment to their work and colleagues, meet deadlines (or even get work in early), and follow through on any action or task they say they will do.  You want to be a reliable teammate so your colleagues and your employer will have faith in you. And the more trustworthy you are, the more responsibility you will be trusted with over time, which may boost your career growth in the long run. It’s even more important to showcase your reliability in a virtual workplace environment through clear and frequent communication. 2. Accountability Accountability goes hand-in-hand with reliability. But beyond being reliable, accountability is all about taking responsibility for one’s work — even when that includes mistakes or failures.  There’s no room for the blame game or pointing fingers on teams that work well with one another, which means you have to hold yourself accountable and take fault when necessary. Your teammates will likely think more of you if you’re willing to admit you’re wrong, as opposed to constantly shifting blame or pointing fingers when issues arise. 3. Respectfulness A little bit of respect goes a long way, especially at work. According to Indeed, respectfulness in the workplace reduces stress, increases productivity and collaboration, improves employee satisfaction, and creates a fair environment. You need to respect your team members, manager, and clients to do your best work together.  Acts of respect include acknowledging others and calling them by name, encouraging and exchanging opinions and ideas without judgment, giving credit where it’s due, and listening to and understanding your teammates. 4. Collaboration There is no successful teamwork without collaboration. Collaboration is working together with one or more people on a project or toward a shared goal.  When employees can work together and collaborate successfully, they can share ideas and come up with practical solutions to complex problems. Brainstorming, open discussions, workshops, and knowledge sharing sessions are all examples of collaboration that lead to great teamwork.  5. Persuasion Have you ever worked with a teammate who insists on working their way, even if the rest of the team agrees to pursue another route? How do you keep making progress on your project or goal if one team member isn’t on the same page? That’s where your skills of persuasion come in handy.  Sometimes you might have to persuade a team member to see another point of view and change their mind to benefit the rest of the group. But persuasive skills are more than just getting someone to change their mind and see your perspective — it’s about doing so in an empathetic and respectful way in order to maintain a healthy working relationship. 6. Constructive feedback for improvement You should be able to offer your teammate constructive feedback to help them improve and vice versa. Exchanging feedback not only benefits individuals and the team as a whole but also adds value to your organization by creating an opportunity for constant growth.  Giving feedback requires offering suggestions for improvement in a positive way, while receiving feedback requires listening with an open mind and a willingness to change.  Work skills that work on any resume Sure, there are specialized skills for different roles and industries. Engineers add their programming skills to their resume, project managers add project management certifications and relevant skills, and HR professionals add the performance management and HRIS systems they’ve previously used. While there are specialized skills you’ll want to emphasize on your resume based on your industry and role (and trust us, those are important), there are also some work skills that are relevant on any resume. These include:  Creativity: Creativity is an essential component of innovation and complex problem-solving. In its most basic form, creativity requires thinking about a problem or task differently and using your imagination to form and test new ideas. Problem-solving: All employers value problem-solving abilities because they want to hire people who can break down problems and develop effective solutions. To showcase your problem-solving skills, you might possess a range of qualities such as analysis, evaluation, decision-making, and communication. Time management: No employer wants to hire someone who doesn’t make good use of their time and will have a hard time getting their work done. Your future employer wants to know that you’ll be able to meet deadlines, effectively use your workday to get tasks accomplished, and handle your workload without a lot of babysitting. Examples of specific time management responsibilities include goal setting, prioritizing tasks, meeting deadlines, and minimizing or eliminating distractions for optimal focus. Leadership: Showcasing how you’ve demonstrated leadership in your previous roles can demonstrate to your future potential employer what type of employee you are. Being an effective leader can increase your advancement opportunities within your organization. Use specific examples of successful leadership on your resume for the most significant impact.  So how do you showcase these skills on your resume? Now that you know what work skills for resumes employers want to see, you’re bound to have this question: Where do you put them? Keep in mind that the goal of your resume is to prove that you’re a qualified, no-brainer fit for the role you’re applying for. That’s why your smartest move is to tailor your resume to a specific job. Take a fine-tooth comb to the job description and identify words or skills that are repeated or emphasized. Those are traits that you should be incorporating in your own resume (provided you honestly possess them, of course). The most important skills should go as close to the top of your document as possible, because remember, hiring managers are only skimming for a few seconds. As for where you can work these skills in, you have a number of options, including:  Your professional summary at the top of your document A dedicated key skills section where you can bullet out your most relevant abilities Your past positions, where you can demonstrate how you applied your skills in previous jobs Finally, remember that many of your work skills and social work skills — from communication and time management to problem-solving and active listening — will be on display throughout the hiring process and your interviews.  So, it should go without saying, but show up on time, respond to messages promptly and respectfully, and treat everybody respectfully. After all, when it comes to your work skills, employers want you to show — and not just tell.

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How to Write the Operations Plan Section of Your Business Plan

• Written By Dave Lavinsky

The Operations Plan is a component of your business plan that is like the engine of your car. The operations plan holds the key parts of your business and it shows how those parts work together to keep the business running. If you are starting a business or your business is growing, the operations plan also shows that your business is more than just a good concept. It shows why the business is running smoothly and how key milestones ahead will be met as the business grows. The operations plan is the powerhouse engine in your business plan . Let’s start that engine together.

What is the Operations Plan in a Business Plan?

The key to putting your operations plan together is choosing which processes show how your business works and what the expected outcomes will be as a result. Include the processes that you believe are most important even if they are basic or simple. And, if you think your business is too new to create an operations plan, think again. Every business has processes, no matter how large or small they may be. Your operations plan may be considered by potential investors or lenders; make it the best it can be.

Components of a Comprehensive Operations Plan

The best operations plan includes a list of key processes with short explanations that detail each process. Some explanations will also include a brief sentence explaining how the key process will help the business meet the expected key milestones. For example, “Our Marketing team will post on social media each time our product sales reach one of our sales goals. This will drive new customers to our product offering.”

Main components of an operations plan:

Product Development

Describe how the product is being developed and if it is currently offered or is on target for launch. Include the production process for testing, improvements or revisions.

Key milestone : Note the forecast for new product development to expand the product line.

Manufacturing

Describe the process of manufacturing, from the first step to the delivery of products. This may include several bullet points. Add facilities maintenance in this section. Also, include the management processes of the staff.

Key milestone : Include a brief forecast with plans to increase manufacturing capabilities.

Administration/Human Resources

Include a description of day-to-day activities that are overseen by staff members, including facilities management, safety, reports and compliance, hiring staff and training.

Key milestone : Add a sentence regarding staff training for leadership as the business grows.

List the process of purchasing parts, services, products, and raw materials. Include a sentence about financial oversight of expenditures to control costs.

Key milestone : Indicate how the staff is preparing for purchasing increases to meet higher manufacturing demands.

Customer Service

List the processes that comprise customer service, including any customer relationship management software (CRM) or other processes that interact with customers. Provide details on processes for customer retention.

Key milestone : Add a sentence describing staff training to build customer relationships.

Describe how your business conducts sales, whether through online channels, via wholesale or retail sales, or by other means. Explain why the process works for your business and how it is positioned to be successful because of the sales process.

Key milestone : Indicate how planned sales strategies will expand to meet key milestones.

Note the process of current marketing campaigns and the response of the target audience. Note how responses are scored on social media.

Key milestone : Include operational plans for building brand awareness, key selling points, and entry positions.

At this stage of business, the finance process should be clearly outlined, with current and any expected funding included. Also, include a sentence about how the business has structured a repayment plan for any loans and is making on-time payments.

Key milestone : Describe any anticipated funding options that have already been put into place.

Accounting/Payroll:

Describe in a few sentences how timely accounting is completed on a regular basis. Add a sentence about the payroll system and the software that runs it.

Key milestone : Add a note about increasing software programs in accounting to increase performance during growth.

Include a sentence about the process of oversight for the business. Add the process of documentation, filings, and oversight of any copyrights, patents, or trademarks. Include any licensing payments that add revenue to the business.

Key milestone : Include a description of the legal process already in place to accommodate expansion and long-term growth.

How to Write the Operations Plan For Your Business

Now that you’ve read about the main components in a business operations plan, it’s time to connect them in writing your own operations plan. To do this, you can follow the easy steps ahead as you construct each process.

Remember, you may not need all of the processes listed here. You will want to choose those that make sense for your business and, if needed, add some others. When completed, your operations plan will flow smoothly from start to finish.

• Consider your Business Goals . Write out each goal. Read them as you decide which processes to include in your operations plan and think about how soon you will want to meet the company goals.
• Create a Process List . Look at the list of components and decide how to make them into a list for your own business. Don’t write out full descriptions yet. We’re building the list first. How do processes start in your business?
• Finance (get funding)
• Product Development (buy a truck, provide services, equipment, tools)
• Manufacturing (maintain the garage and tow truck)
• Sales (make sales calls)
• Customer Service (answering texts, and emails)
• Marketing (getting referrals from friends)
• Accounting/Payroll (paying yourself and the bookkeeper)
• Legal (risk management assistance)
• Start filling in the Process Descriptions . Use the examples above to describe the processes of your business. A few sentences that explain each process are all you need in the operations plan.
• For example, key milestones for your tow truck business might be:
• Tow at least five vehicles daily during each week (sales/marketing)
• Buy a second tow truck within 6 months (finance)
• Add a second tow truck driver within 6 months (human resources)
• Buy a commercial truck within 12 months (finance/product development)
• Finish your Operations Plan . Re-read each Process Description and complete the Key Milestones for each operations section.

Sample Operations Plan for Badger Drains & Plumbing

Badger Drains & Plumbing, based in Milwaukee, WI, is dedicated to providing top-notch residential and commercial plumbing services. Our operations plan outlines the key processes that make our business run smoothly and how we plan to meet our key milestones as we grow.

Our services, instead of physical products, are continuously refined based on customer feedback and technological advancements in plumbing. This includes adopting newer, more efficient ways to conduct pipe repairs, installations, and maintenance services.

Key milestone : To introduce environmentally friendly and cost-effective plumbing solutions within the next year.

Our staff handle day-to-day operational tasks, prioritizing safety, efficiency, and regulatory compliance. This includes everything from scheduling service calls to conducting routine safety checks and equipment maintenance.

Key milestone : Implement a leadership development program for senior technicians to prepare them for managerial roles as the company expands.

We procure high-quality plumbing materials, tools, and technologies from reputable suppliers, ensuring we have the necessary inventory to meet customer demand without excessive expenditure.

Key milestone : Strengthen relationships with key suppliers to negotiate better prices and ensure priority fulfillment as service demand increases.

Customer service is a pillar of our operations, involving not just resolving issues but proactively enhancing customer satisfaction through follow-ups and feedback collection using CRM software.

Key milestone : Introduce a loyalty program by the end of the next quarter to increase customer retention rates.

Sales efforts are directed through personal client interactions and digital marketing to generate leads, with a strong focus on the benefits of choosing Badger Drains & Plumbing for reliability and professionalism.

Key milestone : Achieve a 20% increase in annual contracts by targeting commercial entities in the Milwaukee area.

Our marketing is focused on local SEO, targeted ads, and social media engagement to connect with the Milwaukee community, emphasizing our quick response times and quality service.

Key milestone : Launch a community-oriented campaign to increase brand visibility and customer engagement by participating in local events and sponsorships.

Our current financing includes business revenue and a small business loan, with a diligent approach to budgeting and a clear plan for loan repayment and future investments.

Key milestone : Secure a line of credit to fund an expansion of services within the next two years.

Accounting/Payroll

We use modern software solutions to ensure accurate and timely financial and payroll management, allowing us to focus more on serving our customers and less on back-office tasks.

Key milestone : Transition to a more comprehensive software suite that integrates CRM and finance for better overall management efficiency.

Our legal framework encompasses regular reviews of compliance, documentations, and the management of any intellectual property, ensuring all operations are above board.

Key milestone : Establish a retainer partnership with a legal firm specializing in small businesses to prepare for interstate licensing and expansion.

By following this operations plan, Badger Drains & Plumbing aims to enhance its service offerings, optimize operational efficiency, increase productivity, and achieve sustainable growth, maintaining its commitment to being Milwaukee’s trusted plumbing service provider.

If You Aren’t a Writer or Have No Time to Write…

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Why do we offer PlanBuildr? We are business owners. We know your time is valuable. And, we know a comprehensive business plan is vital when it’s time to obtain funding or secure investors. Not all of us are writers, but we all know good value when we see it. Try PlanBuildr for free !

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What an operating plan is and why you absolutely need one.

Most companies spend valuable time and resources to create strategic plans, giving their best to outline a strategy that establishes a solid long-term vision. While having a strategic plan is necessary, a vast number of organizations often lack a critical strategy element: an operating plan.

An operational business plan outlines the details of your daily operations for over one year. It defines who does what, when they do it, and how they do it. When done well, an operation plan defines how you allocate human, physical, and financial resources to reach short-term objectives that support your larger business goals.

What Is An Operational Plan And Why Is It Important?

An operation plan is an extremely detail-oriented plan that clearly defines how a team or department contributes to reaching company goals. It outlines the daily tasks required for running a business. When properly created, an operating plan makes sure each manager and each employee know their specific obligations, as well as how they should execute them within a defined timeline. Mapping out the day-to-day tasks that ensure a clear path to your business and operational goals is essential to success.

On a daily basis, your operations plan should answer these crucial questions:

• What are the strategies and tasks that need to be completed or achieved?
• Who are the individuals responsible for those tasks and strategies?
• When must each strategy be completed?
• How much will it cost?

Your strategic plan is a manual that ensures your company and all its employees execute day-to-day operations in a way that ensures reaching your long-term business goals.

Operational Planning VS Strategic Planning

Very often, a strategic business plan also functions as an operating plan. The confusing of the two can cause problems because both plans are necessary for any company to achieve its goals.

A strategic plan helps your business outline long-term goals and fulfill the big vision. Operating plans define what processes need to be finished to achieve those goals. An operating plan supports the efforts of a strategic plan and makes sure everyone runs their day-to-day tasks as efficiently as possible. Both are action plans, and since the success of the strategic plan heavily depends on the efficiency of the operating plan, you should create it right after outlining your long-term strategy.

A successful company never chooses between an operational plan and a strategic plan. Instead, market leaders make sure they have both. Simply put, a strategic plan outlines your long-term goals for the future, while an operating plan defines how to get there through daily activities and processes.

The goal of an operating plan is to define how all departments join efforts to achieve your vision.

The Steps Of A Successful Operational Business Plan

You can't create a successful operational plan without clearly defining your operational goals. The template below walks you through several important steps to take if you want to develop a functional operating plan:

• Create your strategic plan first. An operating plan is a necessary tool for achieving the goals you've defined in a strategy, so first, you should make sure your strategic plan is in place.
• Focus on essential goals. All successful operating plan examples stick to one rule—focus on goals that matter the most. A complex plan with multiple unclear goals is hard to follow.
• Instead of lagging, use leading indicators. Lagging indicators will show your efforts are falling short only after you already execute the operations. By contrast, leading indicators include predictive measures that will prevent you from making a mistake in the first place.
• Choose the right KPIs. Defining the appropriate KPIs for your business is essential. You shouldn't develop them all by yourself. Instead, involve the whole team in the process.
• Communication is key. Everyone in the company should learn and understand what metrics you use, why they are important, and what everyone's roles are in working toward your goals.

Note, you can always check out our blog for more successful business tips like this!

Want additional insight? Read 4 Step Guide to Strategic Planning now to learn more

Operational Planning Examples

An operational plan template should help you define and improve the day-to-day actions and processes of your business. Any successful operational plan example indicates that the plans include everything your company does daily to deliver your products or services to customers. They may cover any section, department, and operation. You can find numerous examples of successful operational plan implementation, especially among powerful enterprises.

Let's go over the most common ways of utilizing a proper operational plan:

Planning for Processes and Practices

Businesses often create operational plans for specific processes and practices to ensure they’re meeting objectives in what they deem the important areas. These include efficiency, turnaround time, productivity, cost reduction, waste reduction, sustainability, quality, and customer satisfaction. You can find a successful operating plan example in any department.

Planning As a Strategy Component

Take a look at this operational planning example: let's say a company makes strategic efforts to expand volume production by 50% by the end of the year. The strategic plan will include several critical components: marketing, sales, and operations. The operations part of the plan will include manufacturing, financial, and logistic strategies to achieve a boost in production.

Bottom Line

An operational plan is the key element of every goal-oriented organization. Contact The Alternative Board today to schedule a meeting with our team of business advisory services specialists. We will help you produce an effective operations plan that will help you fulfill your long-term business goals.

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Operational planning: 5 steps to create a better business operational plan

Learn how to conduct operational planning to enhance collaboration, streamline workflows, and unlock peak productivity in all your company’s teams.

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Operational planning enhances collaboration and streamlines workflows to unlock peak efficiency.

Transforming a strategic vision into business success demands meticulous planning. It requires navigating unexpected obstacles, coordinating team activities with long-term goals, and implementing practical steps to realize organizational objectives.

Organizational planning plays a pivotal role in this context by translating high-level strategies into actionable day-to-day tasks.

But an operational plan is more than a structured to-do list — it’s a comprehensive framework that outlines roles, responsibilities, and timelines. By breaking down grand strategies into executable actions, operational planning ensures cohesive teamwork and transforms ambiguous business strategies into achievable realities.

What’s operational planning?

Operational planning is how companies organize day-to-day tasks to align with broader strategic goals. It’s a road map guiding teams through operational decisions about daily operations, ensuring every task contributes to the company’s long-term and high-level objectives. This typically involves setting short-term objectives, defining key activities, and establishing clear timelines.

In practice, operational planning often blends traditional and innovative methods to maximize efficiency. Conventional strategies like Gantt charts and flowcharts help leaders visualize data , tasks, and timelines to make complex projects more manageable. And digital tools like enterprise project management software introduce automation, real-time collaboration, and data analytics into the mix. These platforms enable agile plan adjustments and offer insights through predictive analytics.

By integrating these mixed methodologies, operational planning helps enterprises build a system that’s efficient and responsive to evolving business needs. It bridges the gap between meticulous organization and the agility needed in a fast-paced business environment.

Benefits of operational planning

Operational planning offers a structured approach to decision-making, but its advantages extend beyond planning. Here’s why it’s a crucial tool for achieving organizational goals.

Clarifies goals

Operational planning turns abstract ideas into concrete objectives. It encourages setting explicit goals with definitive timelines. This clarity benefits leadership and the entire team, ensuring everyone understands what needs doing, who’s doing it, and by when.

Enhances productivity

An operational plan enhances productivity by establishing timelines, outlining objectives, and allocating resources. This structure helps team members prioritize their work and manage their time efficiently because they have clear deadlines to guide them.

By defining precise objectives, the plan ensures every team member understands their specific tasks and expected outcomes, preventing unnecessary work and deviations from the plan. And knowing what resources are available helps team members prepare realistically for their taskwork.

Improves efficiency

A well-crafted operational plan boosts efficiency by optimizing workflows and streamlining organizational processes . By mapping out immediate and long-term objectives, the plan establishes a clear blueprint for task execution. As team members better understand their roles, task sequence, and the rationale behind each, they can execute them more seamlessly. This clarity and structure are also invaluable for onboarding new team members and allow them to integrate and understand the workflow with less friction.

Strategic planning vs. operational planning

Both plan types are distinct yet essential components of an organization’s overall planning process. Let’s break down the primary differences:

• A strategic plan defines your company’s “what,” outlines your business’s direction, and sets broad, long-term objectives. It’s a high-level overview that articulates your mission statement, establishes key business objectives, and outlines strategies for achieving them. This plan typically spans several years into the future and aligns the company’s efforts with its overarching vision.
• An operational plan focuses on the “how” by detailing how to execute the strategies and goals laid out in the strategic plan. This is where you get into the specifics — setting milestones, crafting a detailed road map, and establishing short-term, incremental goals that steer your company toward achieving strategic objectives. And at this point, you’ll focus on more immediate factors, like dealing with daily management and task implementation, that are necessary to achieve strategic organizational goals.

Types of operational plans

Departmental goals and needs vary significantly, and tailored operational plans ensure you optimally manage each area. While a sales department might need a plan focused on customer engagement and retention, an IT department might emphasize technology upgrades and cybersecurity . Combining various plan types — like a couple of those that follow — ensures optimal management and effectiveness in each area, aligning departmental activities with broader objectives.

Project operation plans

Project operation plans are indispensable documents for breaking projects into actionable milestones and assigning teams to relevant tasks. A well-developed project plan organizes tasks and anticipates resource requirements such as personnel, infrastructure, and time. By identifying these requirements early on, project operation plans provide planning foresight that helps avoid resource shortages and last-minute scrambles to ensure projects progress smoothly and stay on track.

Say you’re designing a website . Your project operation plan will outline key steps, such as user research , wireframing , user testing , and launch. Each step would have assigned teams, deadlines, and specific objectives, like establishing focus groups by a certain date and finalizing prototypes. The project manager would monitor progress to ensure resource availability and timeline adherence.

Enterprise operation plans

Enterprise operation plans translate broader strategic goals into smaller, manageable milestones. They involve assigning responsibility for these milestones to department directors to ensure accountability for each plan segment.

When creating an enterprise operational plan, it’s vital to identify resource gaps, dependencies, and other potential obstacles to ensure seamless execution. This lets you set realistic, achievable milestones and achieve smooth interdepartmental coordination. Involving directors from the start is also crucial because their insights can reveal critical aspects you might otherwise overlook.

Consider a web design agency planning to expand their service offerings to include mobile app development over the next year. The enterprise operational plan might include milestones such as hiring app developers, training current staff in responsive mobile design , and marketing these new services to potential leads. You might also ask the development head to oversee recruitment and training and involve the marketing director in developing strategies to promote the new services.

IT operation plans

IT departments confront unique challenges due to rapid cybersecurity threats and their critical role in every business sector. Unlike other departments focusing on sales and marketing, IT departments must ensure the organization’s technological structure is robust, secure, and current.

IT operation plans typically outline how the department will adapt to business changes, like scaling up for new hires, migrating from a legacy system to a new one, and safeguarding the organization against evolving cybersecurity threats.

If you’re preparing for a major server infrastructure upgrade, for instance, an IT operation plan will outline steps like evaluating current server and hosting capacities, selecting new hardware and infrastructure, and scheduling website migration to new servers. The plan would include specific timelines — such as completing server evaluations by the end of the first quarter and starting the migration in the second quarter — to ensure minimal downtime and a smooth transition for all hosted websites.

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Key elements of an operational plan

No matter the type you’re creating, most operational plans include the following core traits.

Operational plans should be clear and to the point. While comprehensive coverage is important, elaborating too much risks misinterpretation and becoming bogged down in the details. Focus on concise, direct explanations and allow the details to unfold during project execution.

Team buy-in is essential for success. Instead of leaving the executive team to dictate the plan exclusively, involve team members in its creation. A collaborative approach helps garner buy-in and fosters feelings of ownership and responsibility toward the plan’s objectives. This involvement translates to increased motivation and commitment because team members feel more likely to invest effort in a plan they helped shape.

Consistency

Consistency in operational plans is crucial for their effectiveness and for establishing organizational trust. It involves applying the same standards and procedures uniformly across all departments and teams. By consistently applying rules and policies, you ensure every organizational element operates under the same guidelines, enhancing fairness and reducing confusion. Consistent execution of your operational plan also streamlines progress and success tracking because the criteria and methods used for each remain uniform.

Specify the processes and methodologies each department should use. If the design team uses an agile, iterative process , for instance, implement similar practices in other departments like IT. This standardization enables smoother collaboration and operational harmony.

Key performance indicators

Every operational plan needs well-defined key performance indicators (KPIs) from the outset. These should include:

• Leading indicators provide early insights into your strategy’s effectiveness by signaling shifts and trends ahead of their full realization. By monitoring these indicators, you can gauge your strategy’s immediate impact and proactively adjust your approach. Indicator examples include customer satisfaction levels, changes in market share, and fluctuations in sales figures.
• Lagging indicators reflect the outcomes of your operational efforts by providing historical data on your plan’s efficacy after execution. Key lagging indicators include metrics like the time taken to complete projects, support ticket volumes, and total expenses incurred. Analyzing these metrics also helps identify improvement areas, like optimizing resource allocation, enhancing customer support processes, and streamlining operational workflows.

Constraints

Acknowledge any assumptions and constraints within your plan, such as technological limitations, tight deadlines, and regulatory requirements. Being upfront about these factors is essential for setting realistic expectations and guiding effective task execution. And it ensures everyone involved understands the framework they’re operating in.

Say you’re building an agency website in the European Union (EU). A critical constraint would be compliance with data protection regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). You must keep this constraint in mind as you develop your operational plan because it affects the technology and processes used for data handling and shapes your website’s design and functionality. For instance, you’ll likely need to integrate clear consent mechanisms for data collection, prominent user data management tools into the website’s layout, and GDPR-compliant technologies for data processing and storage.

The 5 steps of the operational planning process

Enterprises develop operational plans through five strategic steps, each essential for shaping an actionable and effective strategy. Let’s explore what this planning process looks like.

1. Set goals

Establish specific, immediate business goals that align with your strategic plan. This might include launching a redesigned website, increasing online sales by a specific percentage, or reducing digital marketing expenses.

Make these goals ambitious yet adaptable, allowing for flexible responses to unexpected challenges. This step lays the foundation for your operational strategy and aligns every subsequent action toward these well-defined objectives.

2. Allocate resources

After establishing your goals, evaluate your capacity to achieve them. Analyze your current resources and identify what additional expertise, technology, and budget you require. This step isn’t just about highlighting what’s missing — it’s about strategizing how to scale your business to accommodate these needs.

3. Define KPIs

Select KPIs that align closely with your operational goals and ensure they reflect key aspects of your strategy. These KPIs should include leading indicators, like website traffic and user engagement rates for predictive analytics, and lagging indicators, such as satisfaction scores post-launch, to evaluate past performance. Consistently apply these KPIs throughout your project to monitor progress and keep the team focused on core objectives.

Consider using digital analytic platforms like Google Analytics to track KPIs. These tools offer detailed insights into traffic and user behavior. And you can set up dashboards to visually represent these metrics to help spot trends and patterns without combing through data.

Suppose you notice rising bounce rates on a specific webpage — this might indicate user disinterest or navigational issues. In response, you might pivot to revise the page’s copy, restructure its visual hierarchy , or simplify the navigation structure to make it more engaging and user-friendly.

4. Prescribe processes

Develop clear and detailed plans for how your teams should execute tasks. This clarity guides them through each stage, reducing confusion, ensuring consistency, and enhancing productivity.

To communicate these procedures to your team, use tools like flowcharts. They simplify and clarify each operational plan phase and help ensure everyone understands their responsibilities.

For large-scale projects, consider using project management software like Asana, Trello, or Jira. These platforms offer features like task assignment, deadline tracking, and real-time communication, and they provide a centralized platform for monitoring progress and maintaining team alignment.

5. Determine milestones

Create a road map that outlines clear, measurable goals and specific objectives. This map transforms your operational plan into achievable targets, helping teams visualize where they’re headed and the benchmarks they need to hit. Host regular meetings when outlining your milestones — this consistent evaluation ensures everyone moves forward in sync, maintaining the necessary momentum to achieve the plan’s goals.

In a web development project, for example, these evaluations might reveal if certain phases, like design or development, have too few or surplus resources. Identifying these imbalances lets you efficiently reallocate resources to ensure each department has what it needs to meet its milestones effectively and on schedule.

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Learn how Webflow Enterprise can be a part of your operational strategy, and harness a visual-first design platform that lets you create and adapt web content in real time.

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What Is a Business Plan?

Understanding business plans, how to write a business plan, common elements of a business plan, how often should a business plan be updated, the bottom line, business plan: what it is, what's included, and how to write one.

Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and behavioral finance. Adam received his master's in economics from The New School for Social Research and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in sociology. He is a CFA charterholder as well as holding FINRA Series 7, 55 & 63 licenses. He currently researches and teaches economic sociology and the social studies of finance at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

A business plan is a document that details a company's goals and how it intends to achieve them. Business plans can be of benefit to both startups and well-established companies. For startups, a business plan can be essential for winning over potential lenders and investors. Established businesses can find one useful for staying on track and not losing sight of their goals. This article explains what an effective business plan needs to include and how to write one.

Key Takeaways

• A business plan is a document describing a company's business activities and how it plans to achieve its goals.
• Startup companies use business plans to get off the ground and attract outside investors.
• For established companies, a business plan can help keep the executive team focused on and working toward the company's short- and long-term objectives.
• There is no single format that a business plan must follow, but there are certain key elements that most companies will want to include.

Investopedia / Ryan Oakley

Any new business should have a business plan in place prior to beginning operations. In fact, banks and venture capital firms often want to see a business plan before they'll consider making a loan or providing capital to new businesses.

Even if a business isn't looking to raise additional money, a business plan can help it focus on its goals. A 2017 Harvard Business Review article reported that, "Entrepreneurs who write formal plans are 16% more likely to achieve viability than the otherwise identical nonplanning entrepreneurs."

Ideally, a business plan should be reviewed and updated periodically to reflect any goals that have been achieved or that may have changed. An established business that has decided to move in a new direction might create an entirely new business plan for itself.

There are numerous benefits to creating (and sticking to) a well-conceived business plan. These include being able to think through ideas before investing too much money in them and highlighting any potential obstacles to success. A company might also share its business plan with trusted outsiders to get their objective feedback. In addition, a business plan can help keep a company's executive team on the same page about strategic action items and priorities.

Business plans, even among competitors in the same industry, are rarely identical. However, they often have some of the same basic elements, as we describe below.

While it's a good idea to provide as much detail as necessary, it's also important that a business plan be concise enough to hold a reader's attention to the end.

While there are any number of templates that you can use to write a business plan, it's best to try to avoid producing a generic-looking one. Let your plan reflect the unique personality of your business.

Many business plans use some combination of the sections below, with varying levels of detail, depending on the company.

The length of a business plan can vary greatly from business to business. Regardless, it's best to fit the basic information into a 15- to 25-page document. Other crucial elements that take up a lot of space—such as applications for patents—can be referenced in the main document and attached as appendices.

These are some of the most common elements in many business plans:

• Executive summary: This section introduces the company and includes its mission statement along with relevant information about the company's leadership, employees, operations, and locations.
• Products and services: Here, the company should describe the products and services it offers or plans to introduce. That might include details on pricing, product lifespan, and unique benefits to the consumer. Other factors that could go into this section include production and manufacturing processes, any relevant patents the company may have, as well as proprietary technology . Information about research and development (R&D) can also be included here.
• Market analysis: A company needs to have a good handle on the current state of its industry and the existing competition. This section should explain where the company fits in, what types of customers it plans to target, and how easy or difficult it may be to take market share from incumbents.
• Marketing strategy: This section can describe how the company plans to attract and keep customers, including any anticipated advertising and marketing campaigns. It should also describe the distribution channel or channels it will use to get its products or services to consumers.
• Financial plans and projections: Established businesses can include financial statements, balance sheets, and other relevant financial information. New businesses can provide financial targets and estimates for the first few years. Your plan might also include any funding requests you're making.

The best business plans aren't generic ones created from easily accessed templates. A company should aim to entice readers with a plan that demonstrates its uniqueness and potential for success.

2 Types of Business Plans

Business plans can take many forms, but they are sometimes divided into two basic categories: traditional and lean startup. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) , the traditional business plan is the more common of the two.

• Traditional business plans : These plans tend to be much longer than lean startup plans and contain considerably more detail. As a result they require more work on the part of the business, but they can also be more persuasive (and reassuring) to potential investors.
• Lean startup business plans : These use an abbreviated structure that highlights key elements. These business plans are short—as short as one page—and provide only the most basic detail. If a company wants to use this kind of plan, it should be prepared to provide more detail if an investor or a lender requests it.

Why Do Business Plans Fail?

A business plan is not a surefire recipe for success. The plan may have been unrealistic in its assumptions and projections to begin with. Markets and the overall economy might change in ways that couldn't have been foreseen. A competitor might introduce a revolutionary new product or service. All of this calls for building some flexibility into your plan, so you can pivot to a new course if needed.

How frequently a business plan needs to be revised will depend on the nature of the business. A well-established business might want to review its plan once a year and make changes if necessary. A new or fast-growing business in a fiercely competitive market might want to revise it more often, such as quarterly.

What Does a Lean Startup Business Plan Include?

The lean startup business plan is an option when a company prefers to give a quick explanation of its business. For example, a brand-new company may feel that it doesn't have a lot of information to provide yet.

Sections can include: a value proposition ; the company's major activities and advantages; resources such as staff, intellectual property, and capital; a list of partnerships; customer segments; and revenue sources.

A business plan can be useful to companies of all kinds. But as a company grows and the world around it changes, so too should its business plan. So don't think of your business plan as carved in granite but as a living document designed to evolve with your business.

Harvard Business Review. " Research: Writing a Business Plan Makes Your Startup More Likely to Succeed ."

U.S. Small Business Administration. " Write Your Business Plan ."

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What Is the Operational Plan Section of the Business Plan?

Learning what an operation plan is and learning how to make it is something critical to any business. 3 min read updated on February 01, 2023

An operation plan section of the business plan is an essential part of any business. Learning what an operation plan is and learning how to make it is something critical to any business. Here are the main things you need to know about an operation plan.

Definition of an Operation Plan

An operation plan is a guiding path for the business to follow in order to achieve all of its goals and objectives described in the general business plan.

The operation plan mainly includes details about the people responsible for completing the required actions, and all the costs and KPIs (key performance indicators) for these actions to be accomplished.

In order for any business to be stable in the long run, the operation plan must be updated regularly in order to ensure the stability of the business.

What Is the Operations Plan Section and How to Properly Make It

The section of the operations plan which is included in the business plan mainly specifies all the physical requirements for the operation of the business. These physical requirements mainly include equipment, facilities, and location.

In order to make a complete business plan , three things need to be clarified to the reader:

• Everything was done for the business from the start to reach its current position
• Acknowledgment that you know exactly what should be done for any business to get off the ground
• Full awareness and understanding of the delivering and manufacturing processes of the service or the product you offer.

Operating Section of the Business Plan: Stage of Development Section

While you're developing the stage of development section, you should begin with the previous procedures that have been taken so far, along with mentioning what is best to be done in the future, it should be as follows:

• Production workflow : In this, you will describe in detail the exact steps of how your service or your product will be made, along with the acknowledgment of any possible problem that could be faced during the process.
• In addition, you will include details about how to train the employees to solve any upcoming problem and avoid any risks as much as possible. Along with mentioning any dangerous equipment that will be used, and the proper ways of using and storing these pieces of equipment.
• Supply chains: In this section you clarify the identity of the suppliers, the prices they offer, and their terms and conditions, In addition to providing the possible alternatives in case it doesn't work out with the current suppliers
• As an example, in case you are willing to have a specific quality control certificate, like the ISO 9000, you should identify and explain the required procedures.

What Are the Key Components to Include in an Operational Plan Regarding the Business Organization?

Here are the main components to be included in the operational plan:

• Most of the tasks in the operation plan are carried out by the company's managers and the employees under them, so it is essential that to clarify their identity, describe their qualifications, and describe the jobs and tasks which they will be responsible for.
• Providing an organizational chart to describe the structural hierarchy of the business.
• The philosophy and tactics of the company, and the role they play in the development and stability of the business.
• A statistical measurement of the performance of the employees and managers, and the ways of reward and punishment.
• Explain the methods that you will use to find the right employees, putting into consideration the required qualifications needed, the job description of each one, and the compensation rates that you will offer.
• In case the business will need any outside consultants it should be noted, along with the specific functions required from any outsider consultant or employee.

In the end, one could conclude that the success or a failure of a business depends heavily on the quality of the business and operation plan put forward.

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Create an Operational Plan that Makes an Impact

Companies often confuse strategic, tactical, and operational planning. Strategic planning sets your organization’s long-term vision and goals. Tactical planning is the process of figuring out how to achieve your strategic plan. And operational planning links the two, outlining the procedural steps you’ll take to meet your goals. A sound operational plan is critical for achieving success in your organization.

What Is Operational Planning?

Operational planning is the process of creating actionable steps that your team can take to meet the goals in your strategic plan. An operational plan outlines daily, weekly, and monthly tasks for each department or employee. During operational planning, you’ll also create milestones that help you achieve your strategic plan. For example, if your strategic plan aims to grow your customer base by 20%, your operational plan will include incremental steps to gain new leads and customers.

What Are the Benefits of an Operational Plan?

A well-constructed operational plan makes everyone’s jobs easier. The benefits include:

• Clear guidance: With actionable steps for each department, operational plans help teams understand if they are performing well or need to improve.
• Better workflow : Each team knows what they’ll be working on over the month or quarter, and they can adjust their workflow as needed.
• Improves morale : All employees can see how their day-to-day work connects to the company’s broader goals.

Creating an Effective Operational Plan

Operational plans help you hit strategic goals, so start by reviewing your strategic plan. Your operational plan should be specific to a department or team, so your organization will likely have more than one operational plan. Identify the key stakeholders for a particular team: they’ll be best suited to develop the plan, which should include:

• Departmental objectives
• Key performance indicators
• Staffing and budget needs
• Process for tracking and reporting on progress

Once the plan is complete, you can replicate this process for each department. Plans should be shared department-wide for feedback and questions.

Operational Goals

Also referred to as departmental goals or objectives, operational goals are the short-term targets that your organization wants to hit. An operational plan includes operational goals and the steps to achieve them. Typically, organizational goals are:

• Tied to a specific department or team
• Tied to a budget line or item
• Tied to a specific short time frame, such as a month or a quarter

Operational Goals Examples

All operational goals should be measurable and actionable. Actionable means your team can achieve them – so the goal cannot be dependent on an outside factor. For example, your IT team may be tasked with training 10 new employees on security best practices each quarter. But if 10 employees aren’t hired in a particular quarter, that operational goal is not actionable.

To be measurable, there must be a clear way to tell if you met your operational goal or not. For example, one operational goal for an accounting team might be to process invoices more quickly. Their accounting software should be able to collect data on how quickly invoices are processed and paid, so the team can measure their performance over time and see if they are working more efficiently.

Share Your Operational Plan

An operational plan shouldn’t be static – it’s a living document. As time goes on, you may need to adjust your operational goals. That isn’t a sign of failure – it means you’re doing a better job of understanding how each team functions and setting your targets accordingly. You should keep your plan up to date and revisit it regularly, whether once a year or at the end of each fiscal quarter. Include key stakeholders in this process so that the plan works for everyone.

Start Your Operational Plan with Spider Impact

Creating an operational plan might seem challenging at first – but once you get started, it can help all your teams run more smoothly. See how Spider Impact helps you define, measure, manage and report on your operational goals. Click for a free test drive or demo .

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What is a Business Plan? Definition, Tips, and Templates

Published: June 07, 2023

In an era where more than 20% of small enterprises fail in their first year, having a clear, defined, and well-thought-out business plan is a crucial first step for setting up a business for long-term success.

Business plans are a required tool for all entrepreneurs, business owners, business acquirers, and even business school students. But … what exactly is a business plan?

In this post, we'll explain what a business plan is, the reasons why you'd need one, identify different types of business plans, and what you should include in yours.

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a documented strategy for a business that highlights its goals and its plans for achieving them. It outlines a company's go-to-market plan, financial projections, market research, business purpose, and mission statement. Key staff who are responsible for achieving the goals may also be included in the business plan along with a timeline.

The business plan is an undeniably critical component to getting any company off the ground. It's key to securing financing, documenting your business model, outlining your financial projections, and turning that nugget of a business idea into a reality.

What is a business plan used for?

The purpose of a business plan is three-fold: It summarizes the organization’s strategy in order to execute it long term, secures financing from investors, and helps forecast future business demands.

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Working on your business plan? Try using our Business Plan Template . Pre-filled with the sections a great business plan needs, the template will give aspiring entrepreneurs a feel for what a business plan is, what should be in it, and how it can be used to establish and grow a business from the ground up.

Purposes of a Business Plan

Chances are, someone drafting a business plan will be doing so for one or more of the following reasons:

1. Securing financing from investors.

Since its contents revolve around how businesses succeed, break even, and turn a profit, a business plan is used as a tool for sourcing capital. This document is an entrepreneur's way of showing potential investors or lenders how their capital will be put to work and how it will help the business thrive.

All banks, investors, and venture capital firms will want to see a business plan before handing over their money, and investors typically expect a 10% ROI or more from the capital they invest in a business.

Therefore, these investors need to know if — and when — they'll be making their money back (and then some). Additionally, they'll want to read about the process and strategy for how the business will reach those financial goals, which is where the context provided by sales, marketing, and operations plans come into play.

2. Documenting a company's strategy and goals.

A business plan should leave no stone unturned.

Business plans can span dozens or even hundreds of pages, affording their drafters the opportunity to explain what a business' goals are and how the business will achieve them.

To show potential investors that they've addressed every question and thought through every possible scenario, entrepreneurs should thoroughly explain their marketing, sales, and operations strategies — from acquiring a physical location for the business to explaining a tactical approach for marketing penetration.

These explanations should ultimately lead to a business' break-even point supported by a sales forecast and financial projections, with the business plan writer being able to speak to the why behind anything outlined in the plan.

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Fill out the form to access your free business plan., 3. legitimizing a business idea..

Everyone's got a great idea for a company — until they put pen to paper and realize that it's not exactly feasible.

A business plan is an aspiring entrepreneur's way to prove that a business idea is actually worth pursuing.

As entrepreneurs document their go-to-market process, capital needs, and expected return on investment, entrepreneurs likely come across a few hiccups that will make them second guess their strategies and metrics — and that's exactly what the business plan is for.

It ensures an entrepreneur's ducks are in a row before bringing their business idea to the world and reassures the readers that whoever wrote the plan is serious about the idea, having put hours into thinking of the business idea, fleshing out growth tactics, and calculating financial projections.

4. Getting an A in your business class.

Speaking from personal experience, there's a chance you're here to get business plan ideas for your Business 101 class project.

If that's the case, might we suggest checking out this post on How to Write a Business Plan — providing a section-by-section guide on creating your plan?

What does a business plan need to include?

• Business Plan Subtitle
• Executive Summary
• Company Description
• The Business Opportunity
• Competitive Analysis
• Target Market
• Marketing Plan
• Financial Summary
• Funding Requirements

1. Business Plan Subtitle

Every great business plan starts with a captivating title and subtitle. You’ll want to make it clear that the document is, in fact, a business plan, but the subtitle can help tell the story of your business in just a short sentence.

2. Executive Summary

Although this is the last part of the business plan that you’ll write, it’s the first section (and maybe the only section) that stakeholders will read. The executive summary of a business plan sets the stage for the rest of the document. It includes your company’s mission or vision statement, value proposition, and long-term goals.

3. Company Description

This brief part of your business plan will detail your business name, years in operation, key offerings, and positioning statement. You might even add core values or a short history of the company. The company description’s role in a business plan is to introduce your business to the reader in a compelling and concise way.

4. The Business Opportunity

The business opportunity should convince investors that your organization meets the needs of the market in a way that no other company can. This section explains the specific problem your business solves within the marketplace and how it solves them. It will include your value proposition as well as some high-level information about your target market.

5. Competitive Analysis

Just about every industry has more than one player in the market. Even if your business owns the majority of the market share in your industry or your business concept is the first of its kind, you still have competition. In the competitive analysis section, you’ll take an objective look at the industry landscape to determine where your business fits. A SWOT analysis is an organized way to format this section.

6. Target Market

Who are the core customers of your business and why? The target market portion of your business plan outlines this in detail. The target market should explain the demographics, psychographics, behavioristics, and geographics of the ideal customer.

7. Marketing Plan

Marketing is expansive, and it’ll be tempting to cover every type of marketing possible, but a brief overview of how you’ll market your unique value proposition to your target audience, followed by a tactical plan will suffice.

Think broadly and narrow down from there: Will you focus on a slow-and-steady play where you make an upfront investment in organic customer acquisition? Or will you generate lots of quick customers using a pay-to-play advertising strategy? This kind of information should guide the marketing plan section of your business plan.

8. Financial Summary

Money doesn’t grow on trees and even the most digital, sustainable businesses have expenses. Outlining a financial summary of where your business is currently and where you’d like it to be in the future will substantiate this section. Consider including any monetary information that will give potential investors a glimpse into the financial health of your business. Assets, liabilities, expenses, debt, investments, revenue, and more are all useful adds here.

So, you’ve outlined some great goals, the business opportunity is valid, and the industry is ready for what you have to offer. Who’s responsible for turning all this high-level talk into results? The "team" section of your business plan answers that question by providing an overview of the roles responsible for each goal. Don’t worry if you don’t have every team member on board yet, knowing what roles to hire for is helpful as you seek funding from investors.

10. Funding Requirements

Remember that one of the goals of a business plan is to secure funding from investors, so you’ll need to include funding requirements you’d like them to fulfill. The amount your business needs, for what reasons, and for how long will meet the requirement for this section.

Types of Business Plans

• Startup Business Plan
• Feasibility Business Plan
• Internal Business Plan
• Strategic Business Plan
• Business Acquisition Plan
• Business Repositioning Plan
• Expansion or Growth Business Plan

There’s no one size fits all business plan as there are several types of businesses in the market today. From startups with just one founder to historic household names that need to stay competitive, every type of business needs a business plan that’s tailored to its needs. Below are a few of the most common types of business plans.

For even more examples, check out these sample business plans to help you write your own .

1. Startup Business Plan

As one of the most common types of business plans, a startup business plan is for new business ideas. This plan lays the foundation for the eventual success of a business.

The biggest challenge with the startup business plan is that it’s written completely from scratch. Startup business plans often reference existing industry data. They also explain unique business strategies and go-to-market plans.

Because startup business plans expand on an original idea, the contents will vary by the top priority goals.

For example, say a startup is looking for funding. If capital is a priority, this business plan might focus more on financial projections than marketing or company culture.

2. Feasibility Business Plan

This type of business plan focuses on a single essential aspect of the business — the product or service. It may be part of a startup business plan or a standalone plan for an existing organization. This comprehensive plan may include:

• A detailed product description
• Market analysis
• Technology needs
• Production needs
• Financial sources
• Production operations

According to CBInsights research, 35% of startups fail because of a lack of market need. Another 10% fail because of mistimed products.

Some businesses will complete a feasibility study to explore ideas and narrow product plans to the best choice. They conduct these studies before completing the feasibility business plan. Then the feasibility plan centers on that one product or service.

3. Internal Business Plan

Internal business plans help leaders communicate company goals, strategy, and performance. This helps the business align and work toward objectives more effectively.

Besides the typical elements in a startup business plan, an internal business plan may also include:

• Department-specific budgets
• Target demographic analysis
• Market size and share of voice analysis
• Action plans
• Sustainability plans

Most external-facing business plans focus on raising capital and support for a business. But an internal business plan helps keep the business mission consistent in the face of change.

4. Strategic Business Plan

Strategic business plans focus on long-term objectives for your business. They usually cover the first three to five years of operations. This is different from the typical startup business plan which focuses on the first one to three years. The audience for this plan is also primarily internal stakeholders.

These types of business plans may include:

• Relevant data and analysis
• Assessments of company resources
• Vision and mission statements

It's important to remember that, while many businesses create a strategic plan before launching, some business owners just jump in. So, this business plan can add value by outlining how your business plans to reach specific goals. This type of planning can also help a business anticipate future challenges.

5. Business Acquisition Plan

Investors use business plans to acquire existing businesses, too — not just new businesses.

A business acquisition plan may include costs, schedules, or management requirements. This data will come from an acquisition strategy.

A business plan for an existing company will explain:

• How an acquisition will change its operating model
• What will stay the same under new ownership
• Why things will change or stay the same
• Acquisition planning documentation
• Timelines for acquisition

Additionally, the business plan should speak to the current state of the business and why it's up for sale.

For example, if someone is purchasing a failing business, the business plan should explain why the business is being purchased. It should also include:

• What the new owner will do to turn the business around
• Historic business metrics
• Sales projections after the acquisition
• Justification for those projections

6. Business Repositioning Plan

When a business wants to avoid acquisition, reposition its brand, or try something new, CEOs or owners will develop a business repositioning plan.

This plan will:

• Acknowledge the current state of the company.
• State a vision for the future of the company.
• Explain why the business needs to reposition itself.
• Outline a process for how the company will adjust.

Companies planning for a business reposition often do so — proactively or retroactively — due to a shift in market trends and customer needs.

For example, shoe brand AllBirds plans to refocus its brand on core customers and shift its go-to-market strategy. These decisions are a reaction to lackluster sales following product changes and other missteps.

7. Expansion or Growth Business Plan

When your business is ready to expand, a growth business plan creates a useful structure for reaching specific targets.

For example, a successful business expanding into another location can use a growth business plan. This is because it may also mean the business needs to focus on a new target market or generate more capital.

This type of plan usually covers the next year or two of growth. It often references current sales, revenue, and successes. It may also include:

• SWOT analysis
• Growth opportunity studies
• Financial goals and plans
• Marketing plans
• Capability planning

These types of business plans will vary by business, but they can help businesses quickly rally around new priorities to drive growth.

Getting Started With Your Business Plan

At the end of the day, a business plan is simply an explanation of a business idea and why it will be successful. The more detail and thought you put into it, the more successful your plan — and the business it outlines — will be.

When writing your business plan, you’ll benefit from extensive research, feedback from your team or board of directors, and a solid template to organize your thoughts. If you need one of these, download HubSpot's Free Business Plan Template below to get started.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Improving a business is about more than just increasing efficiencies or maximizing ROI. Today’s global economy also requires the flexibility to adjust to changing markets, conditions and technologies. Operational excellence is a way for organizations to create a roadmap toward continuous improvement in a complex business environment.

Its goal is to give companies a competitive advantage. If done right, operational excellence helps business leaders make better decisions and employees show continuous improvement. Companies that are better at problem-solving and process improvement, the theory goes, will ultimately exceed their competition in profitability.

Here, we’ll explore the core principles of operational excellence and how companies are using technology to implement these methodologies.

Operational excellence (OpEx) is an approach to business management that emphasizes continuous improvement across all aspects of the business and within all business processes by creating a culture where management and employees are invested in business outcomes and empowered to implement change. When implemented well, every member of an organization sees the flow of value to the customer and, if problems arise, finds a solution before any disruptions occur.

Operational excellence begins with a culture shift, where all leaders and employees are dedicated to creating not only a quality product but also providing great customer experiences. Businesses that use operational excellence methodologies clearly define leadership and workforce roles and how they work together to improve operations. At all levels, employees can initiate change and drive toward efficiency, effectiveness and agility.

The definition of operational excellence has its roots in the Shingo Model, an approach to business that emphasizes quality at the source, value to the customers, a zero-inventory  supply chain  and an understanding of the workplace at all levels. It was created by Dr. Shigeo Shingo, a business leader who published 18 books on his philosophy and closely collaborated with Toyota executives to apply his principles in their manufacturing operations.

Shingo is also the inspiration for the Shingo Prize, awarded annually by the Shingo Institute for Operational Excellence at Utah State University. This prize defines the 10 Shingo Guiding Principles, often referred to as the core principles of operational excellence:

• Respect every individual:  When people feel respected and valued by an organization, they are more likely to give more. Respect seeks to draw the best from individual contributors.
• Lead with humility:  When decisions are made unilaterally, frontline employees are less likely to respect the decisions being made. To lead with humility, companies must implement a management system where leaders seek input and buy-in from stakeholders at all levels.
• Seek perfection:  This principle is similar to the adage, “You have to believe it to achieve it.” By seeking ways to continuously improve, you can open the door to new ways of thinking and innovation.
• Embrace scientific thinking:  This principle is not just about being data-driven. Creating a culture where employees are able to “experiment” and test new ideas based on observations and data fosters innovation.
• Focus on process:  If something goes wrong, instead of blaming people (which can be counterproductive), look for ways the process can be improved.
• Assure quality at the source:  Much like good food is made with good ingredients, assuring quality in business relies on doing work right the first time, using the right people and the right components.
• Improve flow and pull:  Providing value to the customer means having the products that they demand when they need them and nothing more, which is exemplified in lean supply chains.
• Think systemically:  Instead of focusing on individual players or departments for improvement, think of ways to improve the entire system.
• Create constancy of purpose:  Communication of goals, purpose, commitment to the customer and the “why” behind the company are key to operational excellence.
• Create value for the customer:  Ultimately, all businesses are all about the customer, so operations should reflect the value customers hold and should be provided.

As the Shingo Model gained popularity within the business world, others developed methodologies based on this approach and the core principles of operational excellence. These include:

• Lean manufacturing:  Lean manufacturing is a systematic method designed to minimize waste while keeping productivity constant.
• Six Sigma:  Six Sigma is a set of methodologies, tools and techniques used to improve processes and minimize defects. It’s sometimes combined with lean manufacturing principles and then known as “lean Six Sigma.”
• Kaizen:  Focused on continuous improvement, Kaizen emphasizes teamwork and proactively taking responsibility for designated areas within the organization to make incremental improvements.

When implementing operational excellence within an organization, it can be helpful to view the process as an ongoing journey rather than a final destination. Because the focus is on continuous improvement, business leaders and employees should always strive for ways to get better at what they do.

That being said, organizations need to establish goals and define metrics to understand if and how they are improving. These metrics include key performance indicators (KPIs), such as sales increases, health and safety performance and workforce retention rates.

Here are the types of goals that are often included in operational excellence-based processes:

• Operational goals:  How the company operates, including efficiency and safety. For example, an organization might seek to accelerate order to cash, solve problems with the supply chain or improve the delivery of services.
• Financial goals:  Metrics related to sales and losses. These goals could be to lower churn, efficiently enter new markets or improve the marketing-to-sales pipeline.
• Culture and workforce goals:  These include measuring worker satisfaction, offering professional development and investing in worker retention. This could entail initiatives to create a more inclusive culture, creating a more equitable compensation package or incentivizing professional development.

Value flow to customers

Operational excellence goals are typically focused on delivering value to the customer. What is value? Essentially, it’s what the customer demands and is willing to pay for.

Within the operational excellence methodology, companies provide this value by creating value streams. A value stream refers to the processes and initiatives that an organization creates to deliver the products and services the customers’ need in the time it takes to meet that demand.

For example, a  data center  that can keep up with customer demand and has the compute, storage and networking resources needed to service online transactions without overprovisioning is seen as a value stream that is running smoothly.

Communicating operational excellence

Communication is another key element for reaching operational excellence goals. If employees aren’t aware of company goals, have no idea how to deliver value to the customer or feel leadership is not invested in their professional success, it makes it difficult to achieve goals and continuously improve.

Implementation often includes a plan for communicating all aspects of the program, such as the mission, goals and those impacted to all employees. Companies that excel in operational excellence often have a well-designed internal communication system, as well as a forum for receiving and addressing feedback.

Operational excellence requires organizations to look critically at their operations and how they manage employees. In some cases, they must be willing to shift their culture. Being open to continuous change helps companies better implement methodologies and reach these benefits:

• Optimized workflows:  Part of creating an unhindered flow of value to the customer is being able to see and address roadblocks, supply chain issues and misaligned priorities. When using business management tools, companies can gain visibility into  workflows  and business processes to make them more efficient. For example, with better workflow modeling, they can get to the root cause of bottlenecks and redundancies and eliminate overproduction or waste.
• Lower operational risk:  Reducing risk is a primary goal of any business strategy, and a primary benefit of operational excellence. With the efficiencies that it brings, companies can also lower operating costs and increase revenues, especially when compared to competitors.
• Standardized work and outcomes:  Having standards of how work should be done and what the end product looks like improves efficiency and overall business outcomes.
• Accountability:  Defining roles and providing performance evaluations at all levels ensures that people have clear expectations.
• Employee empowerment:  Instead of a “top-down” culture where the CEO has a hand in business decisions throughout all departments, operational excellence strives to create a model where leadership makes strategic decisions and empowers frontline employees with the resources and decision-making abilities they need to succeed.

Operational excellence can benefit just about every industry and business model, however, there are some industries where operational excellence has become a standard in operations: 

• Manufacturing:  Companies like Motorola and BAE Systems have employed operational excellence methodologies to enhance productivity, decrease downtime and cut out waste.
• IT:  Using the core principles of operational excellence gives IT teams a way to minimize development rework and improve workflow efficiency in a fast-paced environment.
• Healthcare:  With a focus on customer experience, operational excellence helps healthcare providers reduce wait times, improve patient portals and better track patient outcomes.
• Construction:  Using operational excellence helps construction companies ensure worker safety, efficient workforce management and cost-effective sourcing of materials.

Automation, process analysis, observability and data and business management tools can help companies more quickly implement—and stick with—continuous improvement.

Business automation

Companies have been looking to automation for decades to create efficiencies and harness the power of digital technology. This could include automating hands-on tasks on the assembly line with machinery or  automating back-office tasks  like accounting and billing with software solutions.

There are many tasks that require creative thinking, intuition and strategy planning that only people can perform. However, automation tools can be used to perform the repetitive and mundane tasks, such as prepopulating invoices with account information and transferring data to multiple back-end systems that can save people time:

• Business process management software:  The business process management approach is iterative; you don’t implement it once, never to be touched again. Instead, you design, model, create, simulate, monitor and optimize your processes on a regular basis.  Business process management tools  help companies maintain this iterative process to create, analyze and improve business processes for continuous improvement.
• Process modeling:  A key concept in operational excellence is identifying abnormal flow—where the process has broken down—and figure out how to fix it.  Process modeling  gives a visual representation of business processes or workflows that companies can use to identify opportunities for efficiencies and better workflow. If a company wants to know what’s happening at every step of their supply chain process, it would use data modeling.
• Process mapping:  Organizations  gather information  from employees to create a visualized model of the workflows. If a company wants to clarify which departments own each part of the procurement process, it would use  data mapping .
• Decision management:  Companies recognize that streamlined, automated decision-making is key to being able to respond quickly to market pressures and pivot without losing momentum. When policies and business logic are embedded directly into application code, it can take weeks or even months for IT to recode.  Decision management  software allows business users to model and manage operational decisions that are repeatable, automated and in compliance with business guidelines and regulations.
• Robotic process automation:   Robotic process automation , also known as software robotics, uses automation technologies to mimic back-office tasks of human workers, such as extracting data, filling in forms, moving files, et cetera. It combines  APIs  and user interface (UI) interactions to integrate and perform repetitive tasks between enterprise and productivity applications. By deploying scripts which emulate human processes, RPA tools complete autonomous execution of various activities and transactions across unrelated software systems.

IT automation

In today’s digital-first age, customer satisfaction depends on the performance and availability of business-critical applications and infrastructure. As such,  IT operations (ITOps)  teams are under immense pressure to deliver operational excellence and must move at the pace of increasing business demands.  AIOps  drives efficiency and optimization in a modern, dynamic IT environment to accelerate necessary digital transformation.

Using software to create processes that reduce or replace manual interaction with IT systems, AIOps brings real-time insights to IT environments so that IT operations teams can assure proactive, continuous application performance that enables exceptional customer experiences, while increasing compliance and safely reducing cost across high variability of demand:

• Full-stack enterprise observability:  Modern applications, services and environments are continuously becoming more complex, and traditional monitoring tools lack the visibility that’s required to achieve the operational excellence needed in these new environments. Enterprise  observability  platforms, powered by automated APM, deliver full visibility by automatically ingesting observability metrics, tracing every request and profiling all processes across  microservice  platforms and the  CI/CD pipeline . Enterprise observability enables ITOps teams to discover, map and monitor the full application stack, including all interdependencies, providing immediate feedback after any change.
• Application resource management (ARM) and optimization:  Businesses often face the challenge of balancing the right number of resources for business applications while limiting as much overallocation as possible. When organizations come to terms with overallocating any of their applications, it is often unsustainable and costly. Modern applications are separated by multiple layers of abstraction, making it difficult to understand which underlying physical server, storage and networking resources are supporting which applications. Application resource management drives OpEx by automatically assuring applications get the resources they need to perform, no matter where they run or how they are built. ARM eliminates resource congestion at every level of the application stack, from the business application to the underlying hybrid and multicloud environment.
• Proactive incident resolution, remediation and avoidance:  A few seconds of application downtime can cost millions in lost revenue, reputational damage or regulatory penalties. To avoid these pitfalls, enterprises want to better predict IT outages and resolve them more quickly. With proactive incident resolution and remediation, ITOps teams gather new insights faster and with context, transforming user experiences and improving business outcomes. Proactive incident management platforms use explainable  AI  to help CIOs and ITOps teams detect and diagnose complex issues by connecting the dots between  structured and unstructured data  in real-time to give users a holistic understanding of IT incidents, enabling businesses to drive toward operational excellence within their IT estate.

Integration

As transformation efforts quicken across the globe, they also introduce a serious side effect—pushing data out into silos and impeding access to information that business teams need to be successful. Organizations that can quickly and securely connect applications and systems will outperform those that don’t. Without the right integration tools, data stays locked away, hampering your ability to make informed business decisions and implement scalable automations that uncover new efficiencies:

• API management:  APIs are in use everywhere. They connect your systems and applications so you can access and expose your data in a secure way. Having a strong  API management  strategy and toolset is critical to being able to create, manage, secure and socialize APIs with internal and external consumers.
• Application integration:  To make effective business decisions, you need to ensure you can trust your data. With  application integration , you can move and transform data between applications and systems—no matter where it resides—so existing and newly deployed applications are seamlessly integrated throughout your organization.
• Event streaming:  To optimize value flow to customers, businesses need to gain insights from real-time data to make informed choices that improve operations and act quickly in response to shifting customer needs.  Event streaming  allows you to capture and integrate streaming event data from your applications so you can automate customer-facing and backend actions based on defined triggers.
• Enterprise messaging:  With an explosion in the number and types of systems within a typical enterprise, cost-effective, scalable system-to-system integration has become a challenge. Enterprise messaging is a proven technology that connects systems and their data in the most flexible, highly available and secure way. Critical data, like a financial transaction, is sent between systems in the form of messages and held in a queue if it can’t be delivered immediately (like in the case of a system outage) to ensure it’s sent successfully, never lost and never sent more than once.
• High-speed file transfer:  Companies that need to transfer very large files over long distances under varying network conditions are challenged by the Internet’s underlying transfer technology, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). Fast, Adaptive and Secure Protocol (FASP) takes a different approach to file transfer, allowing businesses to achieve transfer speeds of 100x faster than traditional methods.

Seven ways IBM can help companies achieve operational excellence using intelligent automation:

• Completely understand your processes before you automate with process mining.
• Put automation in the hands of your employees with digital workers.
• Improve productivity and reduce errors with RPA.
• Assure application performance with smarter resource management.
• Improve application performance monitoring with observability.
• Connect your apps and data to automate your business.
• Manage your API lifecycle with API management.

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• Best for customer satisfaction
• Best for older adults
• Best for long-term care
• Best for high returns
• Best for agent support
• Best for term life
• How we review life insurance companies

Best Life Insurance of May 2024

Affiliate links for the products on this page are from partners that compensate us (see our advertiser disclosure with our list of partners for more details). However, our opinions are our own. See how we rate insurance products to write unbiased product reviews.

Life insurance is as complicated as the policyholders and beneficiaries who use it. That means there's no single "best" life insurance company. Instead, you can find the best option based on what you want or what you prioritize.

Best life insurance companies of 2024

While there is no such thing as the objective best life insurance policy, you will be able to find the best insurance policy for your specific needs. Here are our picks for the best life insurance companies, whether you want to use your life insurance policy to build wealth through cash value or you're just looking for a term life insurance policy .

Best life insurance for customer satisfaction

State farm life insurance.

State Farm Life Insurance gets the best life insurance ranking in J.D Power's Individual Life Insurance Study, with a score of 843/1,000. The company is also ranked A++ with AM Best for its financial stability with term, universal, and whole life insurance options. 

All State Farm policies have to be purchased through a State Farm agent. Your agent can help you bundle and save or buy one policy. State Farm is also among the companies offering "survivorship universal life insurance ," which means the policy covers two people, and it kicks in after the second person dies. Couples looking to maximize their death benefit for beneficiaries with one premium payment each month may enjoy lower overall costs.

State Farm agents can run quotes and compare options to find the right plans for each applicant. The range of options, discounts, and familiar name all contribute to the popularity of State Farm's life insurance.

Read our State Farm Life Insurance review here.

Best life insurance for older adults

Prudential vul protector life insurance.

Prudential Life Insurance is available in all states except New York. New York residents can buy the Pruco Life of New Jersey VUL Protector plan. This plan allows buyers to pull money out of their plan to pay for nursing home expenses. Cash value policy premiums are fixed, so you won't have to worry about extra costs later on. Internal costs are low, which minimizes risk. Due to age, many older adults want a safe investment option for their money. Prudential VUL Protector invests to avoid loss. That also means you're not as likely to see big increases in your available funds outside of what you deposit.

Read our Prudential Life Insurance review here.

Best life insurance for long-term care

Columbus life insurance.

Columbus Life offers a wide range of riders to customize your policy with affordable premiums. The company also allows you to convert term policies to whole life insurance policies until the end of your term (generally around age 70). For this and many other reasons, customer satisfaction is high.

When using living health benefits (otherwise known as accelerated death benefits), buyers are allowed to pull money from policies early to pay for medical bills, living costs, etc. under certain circumstances. Most companies use a discounted death benefit, which reduces your final payout using two models. Columbus uses the lien method, which makes it easier to calculate the financial impact of pulling money out early.

Best life insurance for high returns on income

Allianz life insurance.

Allianz Life plans are geared towards high-income adults looking for more tax-free income. Allianz offers a 40% multiplier bonus with a 1% annual assets charge. In short, the professionals managing your investments take 10%. Overall, your investments would pull in an extra 14%-1% asset charge. This means you end up with 3% more than what you deposit every year your life policy is active. This plan offers strong returns when using a life policy to supplement your retirement savings. Allianz also offers specialized plans to grow your income by as much as 20% according to some estimates.

Of note: Allianz also offers plans for foreign nationals, including those with H-1B visas.

Best life insurance for agents

New york life insurance.

New York Life Insurance agents go through extensive training before they ever hit the sales floor. What does this get you? Policies vary widely, and New York Life offers both large and small payouts. Some policies have significant penalties for early withdrawal, but taking a loan offers more options. Whatever your questions, New York Life agents are trained to offer comprehensive support giving you accurate information about its policies every time. The company comes in at position eight in J.D. Power's latest life insurance customer satisfaction study.

Read our New York Life Insurance review here.

Best life insurance for term life

North american life insurance.

North American Company offers term policies alongside accelerated death benefits for critical, chronic, and terminal illnesses and more. The company allows one conversion on a 20-year policy at 15 years or 70 years old (whichever is earlier). The conversion cannot happen later than the five-year marker regardless of which policy you choose or the length. North American Company also offers a term policy with a lower premium renewable up to the age of 95 for qualifying insureds.

Summary of the best life insurance companies

• Best for customer satisfaction:   State Farm Life Insurance
• Best for older adults:   Prudential Life Insurance
• Best for agent support:   New York Life Insurance
• Best for long-term care:   Columbus Life
• Best for high returns:   Allianz Life
• Best for term life:   North American Company

How to pick the best life insurance policy for you

Finding the right fit in life insurance starts with finding a trusted insurance agent. Because there are so many state regulations, shopping for homeowners or auto insurance can be easily done online. Life insurance is not required. So it's a voluntary purchase. Many buyers don't know what they need or when they need it. Before making your selection, consider a few things:

Some companies will sell you a policy for your child as soon as they're born. While this may seem morbid, early sign-up means lower rates for a policy your child could enjoy in the future. Regardless, early sign-up equates to more policy for lower premiums and a higher likelihood of acceptance. At 20, you may be healthier and be able to pay into the policy for a longer period compared to when you're 50 with more age-related conditions.

As a general rule, never agree to more than you can afford. For the average life insurance agent, their job is to sell you a large policy with a large commission. Consider not only how much you make now, but how likely your current income is to continue. If you work on a project basis and your project is scheduled to end in 12 months, you may want to reconsider a policy premium outside your monthly savings.

How much are you prepared to buy? Some people only want a small policy to cover funerals and other end-of-life expenses. Others build a life policy into their retirement plan. Whatever direction you're going, involving a financial planner could help you make the right decisions. Depending on the carrier, customers can also compare set limits with index universal life policies, which set no limit. These policies never expire, and the value builds over the entirety of your life.

Living Benefits

Life happens unexpectedly. You could be healthy one day and in the hospital the next. Many life policies offer living benefits. These allow you to draw a limited amount out of your policy to cover medical and other bills you cannot pay while sick.

Much like a 401(k), many life insurance policies have penalties for early withdrawal. No matter what policy you want, this question is critical to an informed decision. It's a question of how early you can withdraw and how much you'll lose from the total to have the money in 10 years instead of 30 or after death.

Some policies require insured parties to pay premiums for at least one year before any significant payout would be available. Suicide exclusions are common. Even with no medical exam policies, the company may still do a check for known conditions. An insurance company has to mitigate its risk.

Flexibility

Once you've been denied a life insurance policy, a mark goes on your record. No matter the reasons, other insurance companies may deny you coverage based on the first denial. So consider your whole situation and choose your policy carefully before you submit any applications. Some policies have greater flexibility if you lose your job or otherwise can't make payments. Others will lapse if you miss even one payment.

Payment Type

Even within whole life or term life insurance policies, customers have the option to choose guaranteed fixed or variable rates. Some have guaranteed payouts, but you'll need to ask your agent for details.

What is your intended use? Why are you shopping for a life insurance policy in the first place, and what are your goals? Many successful financial planners also have a background in life insurance. So while they may not be able to find you a specific life insurance policy, financial planners can help you set out a blueprint for your purchase.

Methodology: How we review life insurance companies

In life insurance, it's easy to get "sold a bill of goods." Many life insurance agents pass a state test to be thrown into the deep end. Agents sell the company product, but not all know the products. In this vein, we look at the products each company offers. We also look at agent training.

A good life insurance agent may not volunteer all facts upfront. But a company's agents should answer questions about its products accurately and in a way the average consumer can digest. Agents should be able to inform you about the long-term benefits and limitations. This will help customers find the right policy for their long-term plan.

We consider affordability, policy sizes available, and performance for a comprehensive assessment in our insurance rating methodology . If you can, we recommend also working with a financial advisor to make a plan for your future with life insurance.

Our Expert Panel for The Best Life Insurance Companies

To inform our choices for the best life insurance companies, we spoke with the following experts:

• Paul LaPiana , head of product at MassMutual
• Barbara Pietrangelo , CFP, CLU, and chair of the nonprofit Life Happens
• Wykeeta Peel , Corporate Vice President and Market Manager, African American Market Unit at New York Life

The Experts' Advice on Choosing The Best Life Insurance for You

How much life insurance coverage do you believe the average buyer should have.

Paul LaPiana, Head of Product at MassMutual

"There are different approaches to determining how much life insurance you need. One is the 'human life' approach, which estimates the current value of your future earning potential. Another is securing specific coverage to pay off debts such as a mortgage or provide for the education of children. A comprehensive protection plan should provide the right amount of coverage over the course of your working life and into retirement."

Barbara A. Pietrangelo, Chair of Life Happens

"There is no one-size-fits-all life insurance policy because everyone is different. One way to get a rough estimate is to multiply your income by 10 to 15; another is adding $100,00 to that amount, should you have a child and anticipate college education expenses.

Your best bet is to talk to a financial professional or use the Life Insurance Needs Calculator on LifeHappens.org to analyze what's right for you."

Wykeeta Peel, Corporate Vice President & Market Manager African American Market Unit at New York Life

"As you consider what policy best meets your needs, it can help to answer four key questions: First, how much death benefit do you need? Second, how long will you need that coverage? Third, what is your budget (or how much monthly premium can you afford to pay?), and finally, what is your investment risk tolerance?

To determine how much death benefit makes sense, it's helpful to think beyond using life insurance to cover funeral expenses and consider whether anyone is relying on the policy owner's income to maintain a lifestyle, pay rent or a mortgage, or fund a child's education and for how long.

There are various rules of thumb regarding the right amount of Life insurance coverage. Some tips can be found online, but they only provide an estimate and don't necessarily factor in an individual's specific needs. In my opinion, human guidance, powered by technology, is required. Basically, it comes down to how much money your loved ones would need to remain on firm financial ground if your earnings were no longer in the picture and that is different for everyone."

What is the biggest opportunity you see for improvement in the life insurance industry?

"Increased accessibility through digital and other channels as well as through underwriting enhancements. Increased tailoring of products and features. And an increased emphasis on health and wellness programs."

"Having enough qualified insurance professionals to walk potential buyers through the multiple benefits of life insurance will be pivotal to the growth of the industry. Education is a key factor here, as professional agents also need to be able to explain life insurance and its benefits in an easy, digestible way, especially when there are so many misconceptions about life insurance."

"The need for life insurance is greater than ever. In fact, a recent New York Life Wealth Watch survey found that 37% of adults have been thinking about life insurance more often these days – and half of adults report that financial products that provide protection (50%) and reliability (50%) are more important now compared to last year. This may be especially true for middle-market and Cultural Market families.

Our organizational structure of having Cultural Market agents embedded in the communities where we live and work allows us to understand the needs of diverse communities and develop solutions that resonate with them."

What advice would you give to buyers who are debating whether or not to buy life insurance?

"It is difficult to say with any certainty how healthy you will be years from now. That's why securing life insurance, and insuring your insurability, today, when you are the youngest you'll ever be again, and perhaps your healthiest is a wise decision."

"Do you love someone? If the answer is yes, then life insurance is certainly something you should consider. Many buy gifts and experiences to express their love, but haven't considered that life insurance is just another way to say I love you. Nothing says support like ensuring your family's financial security and peace of mind."

"If you have someone depending on your income, you should consider purchasing life insurance. A death benefit from a life insurance policy can replace income from the loss of a breadwinner, ensure a family can stay in their home, fund educational or retirement expenses, address debt and so much more.

A life insurance policy can also help you grow your family's wealth over time. Once the risk of an unexpected loss has been managed, you can begin to think more broadly about your family's financial future. Life insurance can enable your mindset to shift from death to growth."

What's the most important thing buyers should look for when choosing a life insurance agent/company to buy from?

"With life insurance, you are securing a future commitment that may be decades away. Research the company behind the policy to ensure it has high financial strength ratings, longevity, and an excellent track record of paying claims."

"When looking for an insurance agent or company, be sure to do your research. When comparing companies, be sure to remember that the policy features that fit you and your loved ones best is the most important factor. Don't automatically assume you should buy from the higher-rated company.

If the policy from the other company has more of what you're looking for, it might be the better choice. If you're unsure where to start, try the Life Happens Agent Locator to find an insurance professional in your area."

• "The insurers' track record: At its core, life insurance is protection - a hedge against the unexpected - and you are paying premiums in exchange for the promise that the insurer will be there when you need them, so the financial strength and track record of the company backing your policy is critical.
• Customer service: Are service professionals available by phone and digital channels? Is there is an online dashboard where you can manage your policy? Beyond ensuring assistance is available after you purchase a policy, it's also critical to ensure you have access to trusted advice and guidance before you buy.
• Flexibility in conversion: How easy is it to change? Life can be unpredictable and while term insurance can cover your loved ones through a critical period of time, you may decide that access to cash value is an important piece of your strategy.
• Accelerated online applications : Online applications are convenient but don't replace human guidance. Keep in mind that accelerated online applications may have a maximum coverage amount, meaning that you may not be able to get all the coverage you may need exclusively through an online process.
• A range of payment options: It's important to understand how often you're required to make premium payments and whether and how often you can change the frequency of payments."

Best life insurance FAQs

According to JD Power's 2023 life insurance study, State Farm is the highest-rated life insurance company when it comes to overall customer satisfaction. However, you still may want to shop around for quotes from various insurers if you're looking to purchase a new policy.

There isn't one best life insurance company, because the best option for you will depend on the type of policy you're looking for. It's best to work with a qualified insurance agent to help you find the best coverage. If you're deciding between multiple similar options, it's also worth consulting J.D. Power's life insurance customer satisfaction study . The latest study ranks State Farm as the top pick for individual life insurance, outpacing Nationwide by three points.

The best type of life insurance policy for you will differ from someone else's, as your policy should be tailored to your needs. The best policy for you will be affordable and will offer the benefits best suited to your situation. For example, some policies are only meant to cover end-of-life expenses such as burial and funeral arrangements, whereas others include living benefits like a cash value insurance plan , which you can borrow against during your lifetime.

Some life insurance policies are advertised as "no medical exam." This doesn't mean the insurer won't ask you about known conditions or look at medical records. Policies with no medical exam also tend to offer lower benefits with higher premiums. Most companies have a network of medical examiners, some of whom can come to your home. You can find our guide on the best no exam life insurance here.

Each situation is different and requires a knowledgeable life insurance agent to assess your best options. Bring all your questions and the coverage you're looking for to an insurance agent near you to explore your options.

Editorial Note: Any opinions, analyses, reviews, or recommendations expressed in this article are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any card issuer. Read our editorial standards .

Please note: While the offers mentioned above are accurate at the time of publication, they're subject to change at any time and may have changed, or may no longer be available.

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• Environment
• Environment Agency business plans

Environment Agency business plan 2024 to 2025

Published 20 May 2024

Applies to England

© Crown copyright 2024

This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: [email protected] .

Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.

This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/environment-agency-business-plans/environment-agency-business-plan-2024-to-2025

1. Introduction

We are the Environment Agency ( EA ), a non-departmental public body established in 1996 and sponsored by the  Department for Food and Rural Affairs ( Defra ). In our roles as regulator, operator, adviser, responder, and research centre, we are tasked with:

• protecting and enhancing the environment as a whole
• contributing towards sustainable development

Our remit primarily covers England, though our influence and collaboration with other UK environmental bodies and partners extends beyond England’s borders. England represents approximately:

• 13 million hectares of land
• 22,000 miles (35,000 km) of river
• 3,100 miles (5,000 km) of coastline seawards to the three-mile limit, which includes 2 million hectares of coastal waters

Through our work we contribute towards the UK government’s 25 Year Environment Plan ( 25YEP ) which launched in January 2018. It set out 10 ambitious goals relating to key aspects of our remit including:

• the environment
• biodiversity
• air quality
• waste reduction
• climate change mitigation

The Environment Act 2021 legally enshrined the commitment to refresh the 25YEP every 5 years. In 2023 the first review of the 25YEP resulted in the Environmental Improvement Plan ( EIP ). The plan builds upon the vision of the 25YEP and sets actions to achieve its goals. It reflects the UK’s commitment to environmental stewardship and global biodiversity conservation.

Key areas we contribute to include:

• halting biodiversity decline
• resource management
• climate change adaptation
• enhancing beauty and heritage

EA2025 – our current 5-year corporate action plan – comes to an end in March 2025. It reflects the ambition of the 25YEP .

This business plan sets out our priorities for 2024 to 2025. It will help focus our delivery as we transition to a new corporate action plan in our 30th anniversary year.

2. Foreword from the Chair

As the primary environmental regulator in England, we exist to create better places for people, wildlife, and the environment. We are here to:

• protect and improve the environment
• support sustainable development

This business plan represents a hugely important and exciting step forward for the Environment Agency. It will guide our delivery towards this mission for 2024 to 2025.

As Chair, I regularly meet with our partners, stakeholders, and communities up and down the country. They tell me they want the Environment Agency to:

• keep rivers clean
• hold polluters to account
• protect homes and businesses from the devastating impact of flooding

Their expectations are clear, and we must strive to meet them. Ultimately, we will be judged on our performance and the outcomes we deliver. We must therefore find ways to enhance and improve it in everything we do.

In the year ahead this includes:

• supporting our people to be more integrated and able to work more effectively as one team
• increasing transparency
• improving the way we use data and information to inform our decisions

This is already happening with regards to our role in ensuring people and wildlife have clean and plentiful water. This will continue to be a huge focus for the organisation. It remains one of the biggest challenges we face but also one of the biggest gifts we can give to future generations. This plan highlights work we will do this year to improve water quality. I look forward to meeting many of our new recruits who will drive this work forward in the year ahead.

We will contribute to green growth and a sustainable future for the country through our continued work on:

• the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Programme
• maintaining our strong performance on regulation

We can look back on 2023 to 2024 and be proud of what we have delivered. Through this business plan we can also look forward with a sense of optimism and determination. We know that if we can deliver it, we can achieve excellence as a leading environmental regulator. And more importantly make many people’s lives, and the places and environments in which they live, much better.

Alan Lovell, Chair

1 April 2024

3. Foreword from the Chief Executive

Our 2024 to 2025 business plan marks the next stage in our journey. We shall focus on:

• meeting the aspirations and standards the public hold for us
• expanding our work on water quality and waste management
• committing to challenging but realistic efficiency and savings targets

We start the year having achieved very good results in 2023 to 2024. This includes:

• protecting more homes from flooding
• delivering an excellent incident response
• cleaner healthier air (year-on-year reduction in pollutants)
• protecting people and the environment through effective regulation (97% compliance at permitted sites)

Our customer service improved too, as we met Freedom of Information deadlines and service standards for permitting.

We have delivered these improved results whilst managing one of the wettest winters on record.

Three years into the second flood asset capital programme , we have protected an additional 88,272 properties (101% of target) on top of more than 314,000 homes protected under the first 6-year programme. Over the last winter period, sadly almost 7,000 properties did flood (with over 240,000 properties protected) which underlines the on-going threat flooding poses to people’s lives and livelihoods.

I pay tribute to all our staff who worked tirelessly, often through weekends and holidays, to deliver an effective response to the weather and flooding we experienced last year.

As we look to 2024 to 2025, we will meet 2 major challenges. Firstly, to deliver a step change in our work on water quality. This follows the government’s approval to invest up to £53m in a new water inspection, enforcement, and data capability. This will ensure we can play a key part in delivering the government’s accelerated Plan for Water , assessing our progress and contribution against our targets and performance framework. We will need to work with all parties to move the dial on water quality and we are determined to succeed as a regulator in this domain.

Our second challenge will be to realise a major step forward on waste management. The coming year has many critical milestones as we deliver the government’s ambitious waste strategy. Core to success will be finding our voice as a confident regulator, which responds to the concerns of communities impacted by poor waste management and waste crime.

Our people are of course at the heart of what we do. In the year ahead we have set targets to improve diversity, building on our success in the last year. We want to introduce new talent schemes, particularly for under-represented groups, expand our work in sponsoring early career professionals, and sign the Armed Forces Covenant.

We know we can rely on our talented, passionate, and skilled staff to deliver for the environment and our communities in the year ahead.

Philip Duffy, Chief Executive and Accounting Officer

4. Final year of our 5-year corporate plan – EA2025

2024 to 2025 will be the final year of our current 5-year corporate action plan – EA2025 .

• reflects and connects with our people’s passion to protect and enhance the environment
• maps our varied and wide-reaching work to the ambition set out in the 25 Year Environment Plan ( 25YEP )

In the period of EA2025 the world came to grips with the Covid 19 global pandemic. For the Environment Agency, EA2025 helped us retain our sense of purpose and come through an enforced transformation on working practice. The pandemic also heightened the public’s awareness and appreciation of the environment and the places people live.

Our delivery of EA2025 has been tracked and published on GOV.UK in regular quarterly updates of our corporate scorecard . Whilst some of the measures have evolved over the period between 2020 to 2024, we can track our progress in delivering for the places and communities we serve. Our results in 2023 to 2024 are the latest in that series.

Looking ahead, we shall replace EA2025 with our new corporate action plan in 2025 when we will celebrate our 30th anniversary. We are focusing increasingly on the things we are uniquely placed and empowered to do to deliver against our long-term goals set out in EA2025. This focus aligns with:

• growing expectations of the public
• contributing to the delivery of the government’s Environmental Improvement Plan ( EIP )
• other significant contributions we make across a range of government policy and environmental legislation, including net zero and levelling-up

This 2024 to 2025 business plan will help us focus on:

• leveraging our roles (regulator, adviser, operator, responder and research centre)
• the powers given to us by government (as part of our statutory duties and legal responsibilities) to deliver on and progress the ambition set out in our long-term goals

In renewing our corporate plan, we shall take the opportunity to ensure we provide clarity to our people, our partners, and stakeholders, those we regulate, and the public on:

• our purpose as an organisation and our vision for the future
• how we shall bring all the resources we have to bear in delivering against that vision

5. Our performance in 2023 to 2024: making a difference

The Environment Agency use a red, amber, green system to see how we are performing:

• green - we are performing at or above the target(s) set
• amber - we are falling slightly short of the target
• red - there are improvements to be made

This table shows the red, amber, green scores for the measures plus the actual and target figures.

5.1 Corporate scorecard 2023 to 2024

6. our priorities and focus for 2024 to 2025.

In 2024 to 2025 we will do all we can to better enable our people to meet the challenges we face in the years ahead.

To do this means embarking on a journey of transformation. This is crucial if we are to secure the developments needed to improve our services to the public and to those we regulate.

A fundamental part of this journey will mean driving efficiencies and delivering better outcomes. In 2024 to 2025 we will focus on:

• developing and recruiting people with new skills
• applying new digital technology tools
• embracing a culture of innovation and agility
• providing clarity on priorities
• streamlining how we do things
• removing duplication
• speeding up decision making and action

Transformation will also underpin our drive to deliver efficiencies against our grant-in-aid and charges income. This will all mean we are better able to align our resources and effort to secure the best possible outcomes for people and the environment.

Our people are central to our future success. We will therefore continue to:

• prioritise their health, safety, and wellbeing
• provide opportunities for personal development and offer flexible working
• provide an inclusive and supportive working environment that reflects the diversity of the communities we serve

7. Focus areas for the year ahead

Our focus on water will mean a significant uplift in resources for our work to improve water quality, and options to address water quantity. We will :

• hire our first new water regulators and begin training them, as we expand our water industry water quality regulation teams from 130 staff to 340 by the end of the year
• deliver 4,000 inspections of wastewater and storm installations, and we will publish our findings
• look at options to use near real time event duration monitoring data, when it becomes available, as a development from the new data capabilities to provide mapped data on storm overflow spills and flow to full treatment data, which are already in use by Area teams
• complete 4,000 agriculture outcomes and farm inspections
• invest an additional £5.8m in 2024 to 2025 in water industry enforcement activity, enabling us to effectively tackle the worst offenders and make full use of voluntary undertaking and variable monetary penalties to tackle serious environmental offending impacting water
• continue to drive water industry investment through Price Review 2024, including securing options to close the 5 billion litre-per-day gap between supply and demand, and ensuring that the water industry deliver on their legal obligations to improve the water environment
• work with all water abstractors to help them understand and secure their water resilience
• deliver government initiatives to identify new water resource options, enable more efficient water use and return more water to the environment
• produce comprehensive classifications for all bathing waters, incorporate new bathing water designations in our operational activities, and ensure action plans are in place to address risk of non-compliance
• deliver the requirements of the River Basin Management Plan cycle and maximise Water Framework Directive delivery to 2027
• increase our Water Environment Improvement Programme delivery to £14.5m through partnership-working, delivering outcomes on Water Framework Directive measures
• deliver the Environment Agency elements of the Plan for Water

7.2 Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Programme

In the year ahead we will:

• continue to deliver the government’s £5.6bn programme for flood protection and resilience including year 4 of our current six-year capital programme; the £200m flood and coastal innovation programme and the £25m natural flood management programme
• deliver the £100m Frequently Flooded Allowance to protect communities that have suffered repeated flooding, and the £75m Internal Drainage Boards fund to protect agricultural land and rural communities
• publish our next National Flood Risk Assessment ( NaFRA2 ) - this will provide an up to date understanding of both current and future flood risk for rivers, the sea and surface water
• develop our long-term investment plans for future flood and coastal resilience in advance of the next spending review
• complete the renewal of our commercial frameworks and establish a new charter for working collaboratively with our suppliers
• develop a strategy for improving the performance and reliability of our flood and navigation assets
• deliver on our Category 1 responder role to deliver a flood warning service under the Civil Contingencies Act (2004)

7.3 Waste and resources regulation

We will work to support the government’s ambitions for waste reduction through:

• focusing on our compliance work on poor performing waste management operators and directing resources to sites presenting a high fire risk or risk of abandonment
• increasing our emphasis on ‘upstream’ interventions, undertaking waste classification, waste acceptance and producer responsibility checks to prevent harm - such as the handling and disposal of non-permitted waste and sulphate waste as landfill and deposit for recovery sites
• directing our response to waste crime on the greatest threat, risk and harm, using best practice in risk assessment - this will mean closing high-risk illegal sites, stopping illegal waste exports and the mis-description of waste
• strengthening our intelligence-led approach and our collaboration with partners to target effort on offending and criminality in the waste sector
• our Waste Regulatory Reforms Programme to develop a new delivery model for new duties and introduce the Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging - this is worth £1.2bn per annum to the UK’s Gross Domestic Product

7.4 Regulation

We will be a confident regulator and maintain our strong performance on regulatory activities, including:

• focusing on high-risk activity, including Control of Major Accidents Hazards ( COMAH ), landfill regulation and abandoned sites, hazardous waste, agriculture compliance, oil refineries, nuclear sites, and radioactive sources to minimise adverse impacts on the environment and communities
• using our regulatory and advisory roles to support the nuclear sector’s contribution to sustainable development by delivering regulation and advice across the civil and defence nuclear lifecycles - delivering the programme to prepare for the regulation of Advanced Nuclear Technologies ( ANT ), including fusion
• ensuring we have a sustainable and class-leading permitting system
• supporting climate resilience and environmental protection and development of decarbonisation – Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage ( CCUS ), hydrogen, decarb ready, advising government, developing regulatory approaches to innovation, implementing relevant legislation
• spatial planning – influencing strategic planning to identify opportunities for improving environmental and climate resilience. This includes working in partnership with others to protect, create and restore wildlife rich habitats and support nature recovery. Identification of environmental limitations that may shape and inform development programmes, particularly around water quality and water scarcity.
• focusing on our service to customers, delivering permit reviews, reservoir permits, Environmental Permitting Regulation ( EPR ) permits, water industry permits, digitalisation and standardisation of low-risk permits. We will adopt the new triage approach to enforcement, ensuring it is timely, intelligence-led and target effort based on threat, risk, and harm.

7.5 Organisational transformation

We will modernise our services and working environment through:

• creating a new unit in the business - the Strategy, Transformation and Assurance Directorate - to deliver ‘do it once’ services, improve our IT-enabled transformation effort, raise standards in our offer to our staff and provide better assurance of compliance across the business
• identifying and targeting key functions such as permitting that can benefit from digitalisation and service revision, through which we will deliver better customer experience and improved operational efficiency
• progressing towards our high ambitions for our staff through keeping them safe, strengthening our culture, offering a new talent scheme, greater interchange, new governance and initiatives to improve representation of staff from minority ethnic backgrounds by 1.5 percentage points
• improving our employee offer through targeted skills development, attraction and recruitment actions, and a continuous focus on how we reward our people, all guided by our People Strategy
• maintaining our performance against the Information Commissioner’s Office ( ICO ) standards for Freedom of Information and advancing plans to proactively publish more information

7.6 Efficiencies and value for money

We will improve management of our finances and value for money by:

• delivering £15m efficiencies to fulfil our Spending Review commitment, whilst maintaining performance
• reprioritising £8m of spending towards front line water quality work, which will be delivered by efficiencies
• reviewing more of our fees and charges, to ensure that the true cost of services is met by those that use them and bring our charges into line with other government bodies
• establishing a robust commercial plan to make best use of our assets to deliver greater taxpayer value and improve maintenance of our assets wherever possible
• continuing our close collaboration with the National Audit Office ( NAO ) to improve our understanding of our asset base, with a view to removing remaining accounting qualifications and holding significantly improved technical data

7.7 Providing advice to government

We will deliver on our role as the government’s adviser on pollution and environmental risks by:

• reinforcing our nuclear programme, with dedicated focus on Sizewell C nuclear power station
• continuing our programme of managing emerging threats, including work with the Health and Safety Executive on the management of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances ( PFAS or ‘forever chemicals’), the implementation of our Methane Plan, and further advisory work on emerging technologies
• reviewing and revising our monitoring work for further opportunities to leverage digital technology to improve the insights and evidence it provides
• advising on, influencing, and implementing planning reforms and levelling up agenda through informing changes to the town and country planning regime and accelerated Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project delivery
• providing a strategic overview role on all sources of flood risk from rivers and the sea
• driving the government’s waste reform projects in partnership with Defra , to deliver a more circular economy and reduce waste crime

8. How we will know we are succeeding

Our 2024 to 2025 priorities, targets and corporate scorecard measures.

8.1 Incident response

We will prepare for, respond to and support recovery from high-risk flooding and environmental incidents including major incidents.

Target and measure for 2024 to 2025

We will target 90% resilience in our capability to respond to incidents.

8.2 Capital programme

We will deliver the agreed capital programme for both the Environment Agency and Risk Management Authorities to better protect properties from flooding by 2027 and deliver wider environmental benefits.

We will target:

• a cumulative total of 114,000 properties better protected from flooding as part of the second programme of the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Capital Investment Programme (2021 to 2027)
• 80% on track / complete innovation actions delivered in flood and coastal resilience to adapt to a changing climate

8.3 Planning

We will influence local authority planning decisions and Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects ( NSIPs ) to deliver good environmental outcomes.

• 97% of local authority planning decisions that we successfully influence
• 97% of Development Consent Orders ( DCOs ) for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects ( NSIPs ) that we successfully influence

8.4 Asset operation and maintenance

We will maintain our assets to ensure reliable operation and response.

We have a target of 94.5% of assets at required condition. The winter storms between 2023 and 2024 have had a significant impact on existing assets. While we will endeavour to repair and maintain our assets, the more likely outcome for 2024 to 2025 is 92%.

8.5 Compliance

We will ensure effective compliance with a focus on our statutory duties.

• 97% compliance with environmental permits
• reducing the number of serious environmental incidents from permitted sites, activities, and sources we regulate directly to an annual limit of 150

We will deliver the Environment Agency elements of the Plan for Water.

• conduct 4,000 water company compliance inspections
• target 90% of non-compliant water company sewage treatment works to be brought back into compliance
• target completing 4,000 agriculture outcomes and farm inspections

We will reduce the impact of regulated and illegal waste on the environment.

We will target at least 90 high-risk illegal waste sites ( IWS ). They will be ‘stopped’ which means either:

• there is subsequently no activity for a minimum of 28 days
• that site has been brought into compliance

8.8 Habitat restoration

We will deliver environmental enhancement and restoration where we have a statutory duty.

We will target creating or restoring 1,250 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat, delivering Environmental Net Gains to benefit people and wildlife.

8.9 Sustainability

We will deliver our corporate sustainability commitments to meet government targets.

• reduce our carbon emissions to 250,697 tonnes
• become a net zero organisation by 2045 to 2050

8.10 Transformation

As part of a wider transformation programme, we shall review and revise our end-to-end services and the use of digital technology to support our people to deliver.

We will target the equivalent of £15m savings in grant-in-aid and £8m savings in charges income.

8.11 People

Our people’s safety is our top priority. We also want people to be their best selves when working at the Environment Agency and strive to ensure our people reflect the diversity of the communities we serve.

• a 0.11 Lost Time Incident ( LTI ) frequency rate limit per 100,000 hours
• a rate of 50% of executive managers who are female, and 7.6% of staff from minority ethnic backgrounds

9. Our funding

The Environment Agency’s total budget for 2024 to 2025 is £2,086m. This is an increase of £125m compared to our £1,961m budget in 2023 to 2024 and includes:

• government approval to invest up to £53m to deliver the Plan for Water
• a £9m increase in water resources charges relating to Kielder Water in Northumberland (the largest man-made lake in Northern Europe)

As shown in the table, funding to deliver:

• our flood related outcomes is predominately received from government
• environment protection outcomes is predominately generated through our fees and charges

This budget has been allocated across the business to:

• maximise our ability to deliver as one organisation
• enable the delivery of our priorities set out in this business plan

We are committed to efficiencies as a public body. We will deliver £15m of efficiencies this financial year to fulfil our Spending Review commitment. We have also committed to provide an additional £8m from existing resources to fund the commitments set out in the Plan for Water. We aim to deliver these savings by efficiencies. As such a new corporate scorecard measure has been included to capture this commitment. 

Our budget will also change throughout 2024 to 2025 as we are expecting to receive £5.8m to fund water quality enforcement. Our charge income may also increase depending on the outcome of charge reviews in progress.

We are also looking to the future and will develop an over-arching funding strategy to prepare us for future years. This will include proposals such as:

• a commercial plan
• maximising cost-recovery
• work to a prioritised fees and charges programme
• gaining agreement to have greater flexibility in our funding

The aim is to enable us to be more agile and responsive to fast evolving priorities so we can deliver the expectations placed upon us.

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San Diego will sublet space in Mission Valley as part of plan to vacate downtown operations building

Council members OK’d a short-term, $10.2 million lease of the two-story building at 7650 Mission Valley Road. The city will relocate most of its development services department to the facility later this year

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Eager to exit its failing downtown operations building, the city of San Diego has agreed to lease the entirety of an empty office building in Mission Valley and will move a portion of its development services department to the facility later this year.

Monday, San Diego City Council members voted 8-1 to sublease the building at 7650 Mission Valley Road from Wawanesa General Insurance Company Inc. for a term of four years and four months, ending September 2028.

The short-term contract is expected to commence in June or July and cost the city $10.2 million — or $8.8 million in rent and $1.3 million in operating expenses. The sum does not include another estimated $2.6 million in moving expenses and costs associated with the department’s anticipated remodel of the building’s lobby.

The city also intends to negotiate a direct lease with the landlord, H.G. Fenton, at the end of the sublease.

“The long-term neglect of (the City Operations Building) is a civic embarrassment. There’s nothing to be proud about the previous administrations and councils that deferred maintenance to the point of leaving our employees in, quite frankly, not only an embarrassing building but one that’s not up to standards from a safety perspective, either,” said Council President Sean Elo-Rivera, who also acknowledged concerns raised by a fellow council member.

“While I’m supportive of the lease terms in front of me, I will just say that moving forward, I would consider it a coin flip, at best, if I will be supportive of leases where the council is not provided an opportunity earlier on in the process ... to provide input and feedback on lease terms and conditions,” he said.

The council action constitutes one half of a two-pronged plan to move workers in San Diego’s Development Services Department, or DSD, out of the City Operations Building at 1222 First Ave. San Diego is also in the process of finalizing a lease for two floors at 550 West C St. for DSD workers that need to be near City Hall. The orchestrated move out comes as the city continues to advance a longer-term plan for a new City Hall complex.

DSD employs more than 700 people and is working to grow its headcount to 776. Staffers review project plans, process permits for public and private developments, perform building inspections, maintain records, and enforce building and land-use regulations.

The department was set to occupy the 101 Ash St. tower in late 2019, but the relocation was aborted weeks into the move because of asbestos contamination in the building. As such, the department continues to primarily occupy five floors at the downtown operations building.

The operations building, built in 1970, is said to require $45.2 million in deferred maintenance and improvements, and is often plagued by broken elevators, plumbing problems, busted light bulbs and HVAC issues.

“The smell that the plumbing leaks in the building, the elevators you heard about, the power, the HVAC, all of it. Employees have put up with it with a promise that we can’t fix it now because it’s a building that we’re going to leave,” Michael Zucchet, who runs the Municipal Employees Association, said at the meeting. “As you hear, the problems are spiraling. ... If there are issues with this lease, if it’s imperfect, please don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. This is clearly a great move for employees. It’s clearly a great move for the public.”

DSD also has field office locations at Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport and 9601 Ridgehaven Court.

With the council’s action, the department will consolidate the field offices and relocate its public-serving operations to the Mission Valley building.

The office building at 7650 Mission Valley Road is a two-story, 73,970-square-foot facility that was renovated by Wawanesa in 2019. The insurance company, now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Auto Club of Southern California, made the improvements but did not fully occupy the building because of workplace protocols put in place during the pandemic.

San Diego will pay $2.40 per square foot on a monthly basis for base rent, with the base rate increasing 3 percent each year. The lease agreement includes some concessions, including five months of free rent and use of Wawanesa’s ground-floor furniture and audio-visual equipment. The deal also includes the property’s 580 surface parking spots.

The city expects to move 500 development services staffers to the sublet space, which will be set up for hybrid work with shared desks, Christina Bibler, who heads the city’s economic development and real estate departments, told council members. The building’s lobby will also be remodeled with a public meeting hearing room.

“The city is undergoing a vibrant conversation as to how to plan for the needs for our workforce in the future. These discussions are not new. However, the dialogue of future needs has fit into the discussion, as it relates to the City Operations Building,” Bibler said. “This is a deteriorating facility with extraordinary deferred maintenance.”

The negotiated base rent is below market and less than what Wawanesa pays to lease the building from H.G. Fenton, she said. The insurance company pays monthly rent of $2.90 per square foot, said Karen Johnson, an asset manager in the real estate department.

Councilmember Marni von Wilpert, who voted against the lease agreement, said she is “appalled” at the condition of the downtown operations building, but is concerned about deal terms and unknown costs associated with the move.

“Nobody should be working in such an old, dilapidated building that has leaking walls, electrical wiring that is literally catching on fire in cubicles, where the staff are forced to take breaks in janitorial closets next to sinks with mops in them,” she said. “However, because of 101 Ash St. and the other real estate transactions in the city’s history, I am concerned about the proposed lease term itself, not about the idea of going to Mission Valley.”

The council member also said she couldn’t approve the deal without knowing the full extent of the city’s financial commitment.

The Independent Budget Analyst’s review of the proposed fiscal year 2025 budget notes that the city will need to spend around $2.6 million on building upgrades at the Mission Valley property. However, DSD Director Elyse Lowe told von Wilpert that the actual cost is unknown because the city is still going through the purchasing and contracting processes for the work.

The estimated amount for the renovations is currently not funded in the proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year, Ruixin Chen, who works in the Independent Budget Analyst’s office, told council members.

At the same time, Chen noted that the IBA’s office real estate consultant determined that the financial terms of the lease agreement were, “reasonable.”

Most of the base rent and operating expenses, or 90 percent, will be paid using DSD’s enterprise fund, according to the staff report prepared for the meeting. The fund collects fees charged for city services. The city’s general fund will be on the hook for 10 percent of charges.

San Diego intends to have staff working at the Mission Valley building by December, Bibler told the Union-Tribune.

The downtown operations building is also home to a fire station, Fire Station 1, that will remain operational. The facility is estimated to cost $2.6 million a year to maintain, according to a 2022 report by real estate consultant Jones Lang LaSalle.

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What's in the development plan?

Plans call for the creation of Gainesville Self Storage, an 831-unit, three-story building with a maximum height of 45 feet, and total of about 109,000 square feet of gross floor area. The property would continue to be accessed off Southwest 75th Street/Tower Road.

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Alachua County Property Appraiser's Office records show Health Cosmo Inc. purchased the property from Ginger and Dean Nappy in March 2021 for just over $1 million. The president of Health Cosmo Inc. is listed as Dae J. Kim, who also owns the Great Outdoors Restaurant and the Pink Flamingo Diner in High Springs.

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