Growing natural

All the government legislation doesn’t hold a candle to the impact businesses are having on environmental progress. The resources, constraints, overpopulation, and pollution are just a few of the trends driving environmental products, services, and business practices. The big change in the trend is that the environmental services are now becoming profitable.
Here’s what’s growing:

Shortage of […]

Getting Ready for Implementation

With the recent debut of the execution module of our award-winning strategic planning software, MyStrategicPlan, much of our focus around the office has been on plan implementation and execution. Both topics are also especially relevant this time of year as many business leaders and organizations start preparing for a new fiscal year start in July […]

Green Thumbs Cash In On Green Trend

The trusted business planning tool called the SWOT (for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) may be familiar enough, but are you using it to your strategic advantage?
Along with the internal assessments of your organization’s strength and
weaknesses, reviewing your strategic position also includes evaluating external opportunities and threats in the marketplace.

Consider G-Sky, a Vancouver, British Columbia, […]

Printing up a superior customer experience

When a weekly community newspaper analyzed its value chain, the publisher realized that several of its supporting activities detracted from the overall customer experience. For example

In the general administration area, the newspaper’s invoices only offered one method of payment, when there were actually three ways to pay. The publisher immediately revised the invoices to include […]

Partnering through franchising

Franchising is exploding in popularity as a way to grow your business potential very quickly. Franchising is a partnership of sorts between the two parties because they’re sharing assets for a mutually beneficial outcome. You can license your intellectual property to wanna-be business owners in exchange for their cash in the form of a franchise […]

AOL’s advantage: Make it personal

Remember back in the early 1990’s when Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were springing up everywhere? If you bought a computer from a major manufacturer in those early days of Windows, odds were that you also got up to three separate trial ISP accounts preloaded on your computer at the factory. I got CompuServe, Prodigy, and […]

Anthropologie, a nationwide retail store

"A female about 30 to 45 years old, college or post-graduate education, married with kids or in a committed relationship, professional or ex-professional, annual household income of $150,000 to $200,000. She’s well-read and well-traveled. She’s very aware - she gets our references, whether it’s to a town in Europe or to a book or a […]

Strategic Plan Examples

Every now and then we need a visual to inspire the planning process. We have recently posted some strategic plan examples on our website. Hope this inspires your next planning session!
View strategic plan examples.

What can we learn from Toyota?

We’re all familiar with the Boy Scout motto of "Be Prepared", but have you considered applying this phrase in your professional life? The most successful companies out there know the value of preparation and the rest are taking a cue from the best.
A recent New York Times Magazine cover story chronicled the rise of Toyota […]

Your Success Takes Planning

Did you know that having a strategic plan is the best way to
bring focus and direction to your organization AND drive growth at the same
time? According
to a recent study by M3 Planning, a nationwide leader in on-demand strategic
planning services, businesses that use strategic planning are 12 percent more
profitable. The results from the 2006 M3 Planning […]