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Corporate planning is creating a strategy for meeting business goals and improving your business. A corporate plan is a roadmap that lays out your business’s plan of action. It is imperative to write down goals and plan for how they will be achieved. Without planning, business operations can be haphazard, and employees are rarely on the same page. When you focus on corporate planning, you set achievable goals and bring your business one step closer to success.

Corporate Planning Definition

Corporate planning is the act of creating a long-term plan to improve your business. A corporate plan examines a business’s internal capabilities and lays out strategies for how to use those capabilities to improve the company and meet goals. Think of a corporate plan as a roadmap laying out everything you need to do to achieve your future goals and reach new levels of success. The plan looks at each sector of a business and makes sure that all parts are aligned, working towards similar goals. Corporate planning is often looked at through a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats). Further, it usually starts with broad goals and works its way towards a much more detailed analysis, laying out exactly how objectives will be reached. The following elements tend to be in a corporate plan:

Corporate Planning Examples

The needs of your corporate planning will vary depending on your business and industry. For example, for automotive giant GM, CEO Mary Barra’s corporate turnaround strategy included several objectives. The main ones included becoming a leader in product and technology, growing the Cadillac brand, continuing to grow the GM brand in China, continuing to improve GM’s finances and becoming more efficient from an operational standpoint. These objectives are, of course, tailored to GM’s specific needs as a company.

The following are a few examples of corporate planning objectives:



Why You Need Corporate Planning

Every business needs to do corporate planning. Creating a strategic plan gives your company direction and actionable goals to see through. Without a plan, how will you know your priorities or where to place your resources? A business with a plan achieves better results than one that does not have any direction.

The first reason you need corporate planning is because it provides clear objectives for your organization. You wouldn’t leave for a road trip without mapping out your route. Similarly, it’s not advisable to run a business without mapping out your route. Corporate planning puts on paper your focus, and allows you to move forward with purpose. If your business is operating without a plan, you will not be able to achieve your goals. Goals must be written down and broken into parts to be efficiently achieved. Further, they must have clear timelines and deliverables. Corporate planning helps you create a roadmap for success by asking you to answer three crucial questions:

Another reason you need corporate planning is because it can help align your organization and its values. A corporate plan does more than simply keep your employees on a timeline for success. It also defines who you are as a company, and what you stand for. Likewise, when employees get a say in the direction of a business and its objectives, your company culture will improve. Planning for the future brings everyone to the table, promotes the exchange of ideas and creates effective solutions to organizational problems. Making and sticking to a plan ensures that everyone in the organization is on the same page. Small business owners especially will find that strategic planning is a great way to get feedback from employees and improve overall culture.

Finally, a corporate plan helps communicate your brand’s message to employees, shareholders, creditors, partners, investors and customers. Taking the time to hone your vision and mission statements is extremely important for messaging, which is essentially communicating what you are and what you want to be as a company. When your purpose as a company is boiled down to its bare bones and made widely available, the message sticks. Everyone immediately knows what your brand stands for and who it hopes to serve. A solid, clear corporate plan can be used to attract investors, customers and employees.

How to Do Corporate Planning

There are no hard-and-fast rules for how to do corporate planning. Each company has unique needs when it comes to planning for the future. However, there are a few tips to keep in mind for corporate planning success. First, gather input from employees from all different divisions of the company to go into the plan. You can do this through an open forum or employee meetings.

Next, a crucially important step is to bring the right people together to write the plan. Even if you involve many people in the brainstorming process, only a few should be involved in the actual writing process. Wording can become arduous when too many people are involved. For the first draft of the plan, it’s important not to obsess over every word. That will come later as you revise drafts and bring in more players, such as your board members. At first, only concern yourself with getting the main ideas and objectives written down.

After writing your first draft, show your employees, the board of directors and senior management as soon as possible. They will all have valuable insight and feedback as to how you should move forward. Ultimately, your corporate planning draft should include:




Chelsea Levinson earned her B.S. in Business from Fordham University and her J.D. from Cardozo. She is a small business owner who has created content for Bank of America, H&R Block, CNBC, AOL and many more.



Levinson, Chelsea. "Definition of Corporate Planning." Bizfluent, https://bizfluent.com/about-5117185-definition-corporate-planning.html. 07 June 2018.
Levinson, Chelsea. (2018, June 07). Definition of Corporate Planning. Bizfluent. Retrieved from https://bizfluent.com/about-5117185-definition-corporate-planning.html
Levinson, Chelsea. "Definition of Corporate Planning" last modified June 07, 2018. https://bizfluent.com/about-5117185-definition-corporate-planning.html

