What Is Corporate Planning?

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Corporate planning is a strategic tool used by companies to set long-term plans to meet certain objectives, such as business growth and sales volumes. Corporate plans are similar to strategic plans, but place greater emphasis on using internal resources and streamlining operations to achieve certain end goals.

Corporate plans are essentially business plans that seek to make improvements and generate profits by making internal operations more effective and productive. Many corporate plans have specific action steps that must be taken to achieve certain objectives. These steps are clearly defined in the corporate plan and can be used as markers to check on a periodic basis to determine whether or not sufficient progress is being made.

Ideally, corporate plans help companies grow during a period of time, typically a year, by expanding their consumer base, improving marketing campaigns and attracting new business partners. Corporate plans are generally structured by first introducing a grand overall vision of growth and development, then laying out a plan of action on a microscopic level to meet the end goal.

Corporate plans can be created and used by businesses of all sizes, but are most commonly used by large organizations. Corporate plans typically consist of a vision statement, mission statement, identifying available resources and then listing business objectives and strategies to be used to meet those objectives.