The creation of a best practice financial model for a strategic plan is often viewed for a sole purpose. It could be the cornerstone of a company’s annual strategic planning regime, or it could be for the purposes of a company raising debt or equity capital. However there are many other circumstances, where the strategic plan can be of vital and immense value to a company.

Investor or road show presentations

The rich currency of the strategic plan, whether it be the best practice financial modelling, analysis or dashboards presented in the model, are all elements that could be included into an executive PowerPoint presentation for potential investors or lenders.

Why invent the wheel twice, when your executives can fully leverage all that sweat capital of the strategic plan, into their road show presentations. Think of a cosmetically appealing financial model or dashboards presented in a PowerPoint presentation, as no different to a person painting their house before they put it up for sale! Looks are everything. Potential capital providers are no different. The manner in which a company’s executives pitch the benefits of a company can be enhanced; off the back of best practice financial models and graph

Corporate development

Do the corporate development people in your company know of the existence of a best practice financial model/strategic plan? Not only will you help them, by sharing your company’s strategic plan with their area; rather than them creating their own high-level output of the company. But you might be able to partner with them, in helping them to analyse potential corporate acquisitions or green-fields projects.

This will be a two-way street. You will be exposed to a new realm of work in your company, and the corporate guys will be able to leverage you and your strategic plan as a sounding board for their number crunching.

An educational tool for Executive Management

A company’s strategic plan that presents the company’s historicals, actuals, budget and forecasted numbers, might be a powerful and sober educational tool for the company’s executives, when they approach external lenders or investors. These external capital providers will rightfully demand a guaranteed return on the money they invest, not to mention they will expect to receive their principle investment back!

Thus on the back of the strategic plan, they might provide your company with some very stark or frank reality of where the company is at, in terms of the financial state and performance.

Potential investors or lenders are renowned for asking (rightfully) a myriad of questions to executives, as soon as they peruse the projected numbers and dashboards. The educational benefits of the Plan will equip executives to respond more accurately, confidently and rapidly to the raft of questions.

Concluding angles of untapped value with the Strategic Plan

The time, effort and money spent in crafting or managing a corporate Strategic Plan can be significant. However there are many ways a company can leverage its Strategic Plan. It can be a valuable tool to educate executives, especially when they are marketing their business to capital providers. Secondly, the Plan can be an additional sounding board for a company’s corporate development area; especially given the size of projects or divestments, which this area is analysing. And the Strategic Plan can be a powerful additional tool to the company’s investor or roadshow presentations.