Setting Objectives for Your BusinessDon't set business objectives in isolation. There are basic five approaches to setting objectives for your business. Include all of these in your plans and review your plans often. Competitor Results - Keep a sharp eye on your competition’s results. Benchmark yourself based on where your competitors are. Take a look at what geographical locations they serve, segment of population, and are they ahead. In today’s world, information is abound, and this is not difficult to do. Figure who you want to benchmark against and track them. Organization Results – Here you analyze your own organization and figure how to invest your own resources to get the results you want to achieve. Organizational results help set realistic objectives since you have first hand knowledge of the organizational history and past performance. Opportunities – Business objectives can be set based on opportunities that come your way. A simple example is a company that specializes in air conditioning they service might have an opportunity to also delve into plumbing. A more complex example is an insurance company offering different kinds of insurance plans. Resources - Setting objectives based on available resources just makes sense. Your resources are in limited supply. Use them wisely. Shareholder Expectation - Setting business objectives should ALWAYS be done with the shareholder in mind. Who is the shareholder? The boss. Those who invested in the company, expect a good return on their investment. Don't disappoint them. Then we have the unexpected, unplanned results. The kind you didn't plan for but inadvertently ended up as objectives. -------- Here are more pages on the subject:
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