Challenges
Many executives see their organizations’ strategy-development processes as bureaucratic rather than insightful—more focused on the past rather than on developing future competitive advantage. Executives also face the crucial challenge of translating strategic insight into actionable corporate plans and linking them with annual budgets.
Five questions are at the heart of the dialogue on how to improve the quality of planning:
How can we best generate the creative insights that lead to competitive advantage?
How do we increase our agility and preparedness in the face of a volatile environment?
How do we best translate strategic vision into corporate plans and annual budgets?
How can we foster alignment to ensure our strategy is transformed into action?
What processes will achieve our objectives most efficiently?
BCG Competencies
We have extensive experience in helping our clients review and entirely redesign, fine-tune, or supplement their planning approaches. Whether focused on strategic planning for a multibusiness firm or for one or more business units, our recommendations are grounded in the same basic principles. BCG advice
is tailor-made for each client;
achieves and sustains competitive advantage through insight and agility;
is driven by best practices;
balances creativity with rigor; and
focuses on integrating plans with financial results.
These are some of our typical projects:
Strategic-planning-process audit and redesign
Planning and budgeting for portfolios of business investments
Workshops on megatrends, scenario planning, or creativity to inject fresh perspectives into existing processes
BCG’s work and research on the topic of strategic planning is jointly managed by two of our practices, Corporate Development and Strategy.