Enhancement of Operational Planning in Business

Organizations benefit when using an enhancement to traditional operational planning in business techniques.  This objective is accomplished through the Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) business management system.

Traditional Operational Planning Objectives and Issues

Operational planning enacts strategy within business operations. Operational planning needs to yield the plan’s outcomes while at the same time managing constraints on time, resources, and money. Operational planning translates an organization’s strategy into day-to-day tactical execution of the business, which in time delivers the outcomes that were defined by the strategy. Operational planning converts strategic goals into managed execution; however, there are some issues with traditional operational planning; e.g.,

  • The possibilities for execution of high-level defined strategies are very much dependent upon the team and can lead to detrimental, if not destructive, operational planning activities for the enterprise as a whole.

The direction of operational planning work activity could significantly change when there is a significant change in executive leadership or leadership direction.

 

Operational Planning Enhanced Methodology

An approach to address the issues with operational planning is the Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) business management system.

With the IEE business management system, targeted strategies are created as in step 5, as illustrated in Figure 1. This is in contrast to step 1, which occurs in most business management systems. In the IEE approach, an overall business management system aligns predictive scorecards with analytically/innovatively determined strategies that lead to specific targeted operational goals. These operational goals then lead to process owners’ requiring timely execution and completion of improvement efforts for whole-enterprise benefits.

 

Operational Planning Enhanced Methodology: Strategic Planning is Step 5 in the 9-step IEE Business Management System

Figure 1
Strategic Planning is Step 5 in the 9-step IEE Business Management System

 

The IEE business management system with its analytically/innovatively strategic planning process provides a methodology for:

  • Whole-business evaluation when selecting performance measures for functions in the IEE value chain; i.e., step 2 of the IEE system.
  • IEE value chain measurements are long-lasting through management changes and, when the functional process metric is stable, can provide a predictive statement; i.e., a change would need to be made to the process to improve its performance.
  • The value chain IEE metrics describe the current business state and can be beneficial to determine where strategic improvements efforts should focus through analysis; i.e., step 3.
  • Insight to current conditions is gained in step 3 relative to the economic environment, competition, etc. when deciding where improvement efforts should focus when leading to targeted strategy building.
  • Reasonable financial goals for the enterprise are established in step 4 and are then aligned to their achievement through creating targeted strategies that lead to improvement efforts that are, when appropriate, in alignment with operation metrics; i.e., step 6.
  • In step 7 improvement projects are executed, which have alignment to specific functional performance metrics in the IEE value chain; i.e., step 2. Owners of these metrics are requiring timely completion of projects in their area so that their reported performance metrics improve.
  • The gain from improvement projects can be maintained since operations metrics can be automatically dated daily using Enterprise Performance Reporting System (EPRS) software, which can at any time be accessed by everyone throughout the organization who has authorization by a simple click of a button,
  • The timely completion of improvement projects using this process is in direct alignment with the development of operational planning efforts for the enterprise as a whole.

 

Additional Information about Operational Planning Enhanced Methodology and IEE Integration

For additional information about Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) with operational planning enhanced methodology see:

 

Contact Us to set up a time to discuss with Forrest Breyfogle how your organization might gain much from an Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) approach to operational planning in business.