Solution:  Business Planning

There are two phases to the a company’s business plan:  “planning” and “publishing”.  While having a published plan can be permitted to remain below each weeks cut line until raised above by a key event like raising additional funds or acquisition/divestiture, the activity of planning can be very central to the success of the company.  Usually, scraps of the business plan are in the heads of the principle authors and builders of the business but are the scraps internally consistent, are there important omissions, are they in a form that can assist with the leadership of the growing organization, are they the same in each of the principal’s minds, ….  To minimize the activity of planning will most certainly underutilize the potential of the organization. 

ubiLink’s focus – fine tuned by a number of career years at Hewlett Packard leading the business planning function – is on the activity of planning.  We do this by involving the key members of your team, drawing out their thoughts in workgroup fashion.  We follow a 3 step process
    1. Discovery
    2. Collaborative synthesis of issues
    3. Publication

 In the discovery step, we work through the
    - product rollout plan
    - go to market plan
    - deployment plan
    - manufacturing plan
    - financing plan
The team person most directly responsible makes a presentation of their element of the plan.  Others cross check in their minds and openly comment and question.  ubiLink facilitates the process and probes for missing elements to the plan that the person responsible takes as a homework assignment.  In the final analysis, the cross checks to each plan are:
       #1 the questions raised by other key members of your team
       #2 the marketplace realities such as the alternatives available to your customers
       #3 the contingency situation should something not happen according to plan.
       #4 ubiLink’s own high tech business experiences
The goal is to identify the top issues – inconsistencies, omissions, miracle needed, etc.  The whole discovery process generally takes two sessions separated by a few weeks of two days each. 

The next step of business planning works the top issues in collaboratively amongst team members.  It is essential to synthesize answers to these issues as others in the company are expecting consistent sound leadership to come out of the planning activity.  Again ubiLink facilitates work toward the solution[s] keeping the discussion constructive and assuring we are making progress toward the required objectives. 

In your team there are a number of individuals who no doubt possess the experience and facilitation skills to lead an effort such as this.  Typically they are all busy on some other activity very critical to the central strategic purpose.  ubiLink LLC has experience with these facilitated planning sessions – both as participant and leader -- and can augment your available resource to overcome this challenge.   All the work will be done with your team.  For every day spent by ubiLink, you can budget 5X the number of internal days distributed amongst strongest contributors.  For the planning activity to be successful, we need strong top level sponsorship.

In our society there is no shortage of ideas.  Many make it to market.  Few succeed.  Universities have business courses focused on entrepreneurism – but none on building the business plan.  ubiLink can play a vital role for your firm by involving the key personnel, addressing the tough questions,  and publishing the results.