Recently I wrote about setting up your long term vision by means of the 10 year plan. Well, it’s great to have that long term vision, but how are you going to get there? Well, the next step in plan has to be your three year plan. It’s basically the same concept as the 10 year plan, but now you need to take into account what you expect to accomplish in 10 years.
Let’s explain this a little more detail. Let’s just say that your 10 year plan has you making $5,000,000 gross revenue per year. Now, you need to take a look at exactly where you are today. For example, you are making $100,000 gross revenue per year. Well, to get to $5 million, what needs to happen? Well, first off, figure out where your gross revenue needs to be in 3 years. Now, remember, it’s not simple math. A lot of times your 3 year goal may end up well short of 30% of five million. Why? because growth isn’t a straight line. So, a more realistic approach would be to say in 3 years, gross revenue is up to $750,000 year AND you have launched 3 new products to the market that will begin your exponential growth 🙂
Take me for example… I have modest goals, but in order to get to those goals, I need to take my products to the next level. What does that mean for me? it means I need to have a platform independent offering. Right now, everything I do is tied to SAP. I want to move away from that limitation, and produce service products that can work alone (no huge ERP) as well as with SAP, Oracle, SalesForce.com, etc… This change will not happen quickly, but I need to be preparing things immediately in order to make sure that 3 years from now, I have that product launched… Get the idea?
Now the plan still needs to encompass all aspects of the business, like revenue, products, number of employees, costs, etc… Now with a 3 year in place, it’s a little easier to guide your ship.
thanks for reading,
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,Mike