Ash Mehta speaks at Cityzone on strategic planning for SMEs

Ash Mehta, CEO of Orchard Growth Partners spoke earlier today at a CFO Forum held by Cityzone/Directorzone. The speech discussed the difficulties of strategic planning and how smaller companies often struggle to produce a strategic plan due to lack of internal know how on to go about undertaking a good strategic planning process.

The process for creating a strategic plan is often managed by the Finance Director or Financial Controller and strongly overseen by the Chief Executive Officer. This highlights an inherent weakness in the process which is that the CEO or CFO may have vested interests which can lead to a sub-optimal strategic plan. Larger companies usually have business planning departments which manage the process in an impartial way ensuring that all ideas and inputs are incorporated into the strategic planning process.

Smaller companies are beginning to recognise the value of such an independent approach and whilst not creating a planning department, having an external party such as a part-time finance director can result in a more complete plan which includes all valuable inputs and also encourages input from all directors both executive and non executive directors.

The session also included a survey of CFOs which illustrated that in this uncertain economic environment there is no consensus on when to undertake key strategic options such as fundraising, acquisitions, launching new products or developing new geographic markets, with opinions varying very widely.

For further information on the event click here.

To discuss strategic planning with Orchard contact us. 

Read about Ash Mehta at the previous Cityzone NED event talking about the CFO / NED relationship, here.