Planning

Our starting point is normally to work with managers individually and as a team, to facilitate shared vision and priorities

One approach we can use for this is the Business Planning Day,  an off-site day or half day which we set up and facilitate for you.

We would bring to this an analytical approach which is specifically designed to:

  1. Use tools and techniques which have worked well with other clients
  2. Build on what you already have, not re-invent anything
  3. Be focused on the task in hand - not doing analysis for its own sake
  4. Leave you with capabilities and a web-based "dashboard" tool which you can continue to use after the project

We can draw from a range of market and cost analysis tools which we have extensive experience of using with clients:

  1. For market analysis: examples include customer attribute rating charts (from customer research),  customer/competitor segmentation analysis, business portfolio analysis, and the Ansoff matrix
  2. For cost improvement: examples include driver diagrams for financial modelling, business process re-engineering, activity-based costing, priority-based costing, standard costing, benchmarking, statistical analysis and various approaches to marketing effectiveness, which is a particular area of specialisation

Team dynamics is a critical element in implementing any plan effectively, and we will work with you on this.  To support the team dynamics, we also bring prioritisation tools, milestone planning and have a proprietary personality profile checker, which aligns with our 3Cs organisational effectiveness framework.

The  deliverables will be a combination of:

  1. New insights.  The highlights of these  projects can be what we call the "AHA" moments. "AHA, I get it!".   We are keen to try and deliver these, as it can be where the crunch of the value comes.  Typically, it is the combination of analysis, our experience and the dialogue that we facilitate that can lead to these insights.
  2. New capabilities.  We aim to bring expertise which your staff can acquire - this may be costing or business intelligence techniques, or indeed new ways of running projects or meetings.
  3. New organisation structure and/or processes.  We expect that re-designing your structure or processes to some degree, will be key to realising cost savings or improved effectiveness.  Just like plants, organisations that grow organically unchecked are generally not optimally efficient, and require some amount of pruning.
  4. Business plan, with financial model.  Agreed with you, and ready for use in generating "investment" funds.
  5. Performance tracking. We can deliver a web-based interactive dashboard, using a proven open-source software solution, to ensure all the priorties identified in the planning process are tracked on a regular basis

Blonay has been involved in setting up, planning and developing several social enterprises.