MANAGEMENT FUNCTION : PLANNING

PLANNING - In the world of management, planning is a very important function since it is the first of the basic functions of management. Planning prepares organisations for tomorrow by assessing today what an organisation wants to accomplish and how it will go about achieving that goal.

Actually, the basic idea of planning is the process of thinking about the activities required to achieve a desired GOAL. It involves deciding what to do and how to do something by making rational studied presumptions about the future. 

STEPS IN THE PROCESS OF PLANNING

IMPORTANCE OF PLANNING

• Creation of goals
• Planning involves the process of creating realistic goals to be achieved.
• Planning provides direction 
• Direction is the process of giving instructions as to what to do to achieve the desired results in the most efficient manner possible.
• Planning facilitates decision making
• Planning acts as a guide to make efficient and accurate decisions.
• Planning promotes innovative ideas
• Today’s world and markets are growing dynamic every day, in order to exceed competition, out of the box ideas are required to manage the functions of the enterprise. Not necessarily, does the enterprise need to discover a new product rather just the idea of differently managing operations resulting in a lot of cost saving/efficiencies

Planning is a complicated process with multiple restrictions especially because of its futuristic nature. But its importance is a business cannot be overstated. It is better to prepare for the uncertain future in some certain terms than to not prepare at all.

LONG-TERM AND SHORT-TERM PLANS

A long-term plan is crucial to the ultimate success of the organization. A long-term plan for many businesses, such as construction, hospitality, or manufacturing, generally extends four to five years into the future. For other faster-changing industries, especially technology companies, a long-term plan may only look two or three years into the future. After that, it becomes too difficult to predict the future with any degree of certainty.

Short-term plans generally allocate resources for a year or less. They may also be referred to as operational plans because they are concerned with daily activities and standard business operations. Like long-term plans, short-term plans must be monitored and updated, and this is the role of middle- and first-level management. Different managerial levels have responsibility for implementing different types of short-term plans. For example, a department manager may be comfortable implementing an operational plan for the entire year for her department. A marketing manager may direct a three- to four-month plan that involves the introduction of a new product line. A team leader may only be comfortable planning and implementing very specific activities over the period of a month.