With 2022 drawing to a close, it’s a good time to think about where to take your business in the new year. Though many businesses don’t run according to the calendar, and follow the busy periods and fallow times of their own industry, and the filings of the financial year, it’s still hard to ignore the instinct to look back in the middle of winter and prepare for the new year ahead.
Today we’re taking a look at some potential plans for the new year and how you can prepare to make a success of the next twelve months.
The Year in Review
The first thing to do is look back at the year you’ve just had. Review the state of your business in general (how does revenue compare to previous years? Were your busy periods busier and more productive? Were your quiet periods busier?) but also the specific aims and plans you had for the year. These should be quantifiable – “grow your business” is so vague it can be hard to assess if you’ve succeeded or failed, whereas “increase marketing spend in order to increase footfall by 20%” is a target you can use your statistics to tell if you’ve actually achieved.
Looking at the successes and failures of the previous year can help steer you towards good goals for the next year, leaning into those successes and avoiding similar failures.
Getting Some Help
If you find your plans regularly don’t play out in reality, one new direction for your business in 2023 could be to use consultants for an injection of expertise. Good planning takes experience in lots of different disciplines – not just your own industry, in which you’re justly an expert, but financial forecasting, insights into customer dynamics and what your competitors may do next.
If you’re not sure where to begin, strategy consulting may be helpful. These experts help you identify what you want to achieve and then work out how you can achieve it, within the values and principles of your business. If you’re looking for a growth planning company London hosts plenty of options for business of different sizes and industries.
Looking to Past Plans
While it’s normally best to keep moving forward, there’s one good reason to look to the past for ideas for the future. The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021 caused huge disruption for many businesses and led to shelved plans throughout those two years.
While the disease hasn’t gone away, vaccines and more effective treatments mean we’re living through a period of sustained ‘normality’ and it may be worth revisiting the plans you’d made for what you thought 2020 was going to be, and modifying them for the world we now find ourselves in.
