10 Professional Receipt Templates You’ll Need in Business
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Written by:
Raja Mandal
As a business owner, you know the excitement of witnessing your business thrive, outperforming competitors in a challenging market and achieving the goals you've been longing for.
Strategic planning can make all these things happen by helping define your goals, aligning your business with them, and creating a roadmap to reach them. However, you need the right template to help you get started with strategic plans like business plans, employee development, OKRs, Porter’s Five Forces and more.
That's why we've compiled a list of 11 easy-to-use strategic plan templates. These templates will help you kickstart your journey toward success or refine your existing plan for maximum effectiveness.
Along with the templates, we'll explain what a strategic plan is, its purpose and critical elements to help you get the most out of your strategic business plan.
Quick Read
A strategic plan is a comprehensive framework that outlines an organization's vision, goals and the strategies needed to achieve them. It’s an excellent business tool that allows you to coordinate resources, capabilities and actions in a unified manner.
A well-crafted strategic plan covers important areas like analyzing the market, understanding the competition, making financial projections and creating operational strategies. With a strategic plan, you can make smart decisions, take advantage of opportunities and reduce risks for your business.
A strategic plan template is a tool that helps you start or refine a strategic plan with a solid foundation. It’s a document or presentation that comes equipped with the pages or slides a strategic plan needs. Strategic plan templates come in all shapes and sizes to match your needs.
If you regularly conduct strategic planning initiatives, creating a strategic plan template for your brand will help save time and effort. You won’t have to start from scratch every time.
Now comes the most exciting part of this article—the templates. We’ve gathered together eight of the best strategic plan templates out there, so you can easily create your own long-term strategy.
Let’s start with this Porter's Five Forces strategic plan template. The template simplifies the process of presenting each of Porter's five forces: supplier power, buyer power, competitive rivalry, the threat of new entrants, and the threat of substitutes.
Clear headings, concise instructions and visually engaging elements ensure you can input data and interpret the results effortlessly. Additionally, it includes data widgets that enable clear communication of the analysis findings. This feature enhances your ability to effectively present the results, making it a valuable tool for visually showcasing strategic insights.
Maximize your business growth by utilizing this strategic plan template, which helps identify opportunities for sustainable competitive advantage and allocate resources effectively.
Each element of the VRIO framework (Value, Rivalry, Imitability, and Organization) is presented on separate slides, featuring a clean and minimal design that focuses on essential information for your strategic plan.
Personalize the slides with your brand's unique identity by adding brand colors, brand fonts and logos. With Visme's brand design tool, this process becomes incredibly easy. Simply set up your branding kit in Visme and apply your branding assets to your presentations with just one click.
This seamless integration allows your strategic plan to reflect your brand consistently and professionally.
Do you need a tool to close the gap between your company's present and future state?
Our user-friendly gap planning template helps you visually map your organization's current situation and identify the gaps between your current position and desired goals. Defining these gaps allows you to create effective strategies to bridge them and achieve success.
The template's whiteboard format provides flexibility and promotes collaboration, making it perfect for team discussions, brainstorming sessions and strategic planning meetings. Utilize Visme's online whiteboarding tool to brainstorm with your team using this template and many other whiteboard templates like it.
Creating a strategic plan is almost impossible without effective collaboration between teams and stakeholders. That's why Visme comes with a wide range of collaborative design features that empower your team to work collaboratively.
Invite your team members via email or a shareable link, allowing them to edit, pin, circle or point out specific parts of the plan, leave comments, reply to discussions and resolve issues seamlessly.
With the live editing feature, you can edit any part of the design and the changes will be visible to every collaborator in real-time.
Here is a video guide that you can watch to learn more about how to collaborate with your team in Visme.
Visme has been instrumental in revolutionizing how businesses approach design collaboration. But don't just take our word for it; hear what one of our satisfied customers, Jaime Kelm, the Director of Business and Data Strategy at LAFC, had to say:
"I absolutely recommend Visme due to its dynamic functionality and ability to integrate everchanging media and digital technologies. That combined with a collaborative environment which empowers our team to be more efficient with time has been a huge plus."
Are you unsure if your company is making progress in the right direction? Our Balanced Scorecard Strategic Plan Template can help you assess and measure your organization's performance in various areas.
Imagine a visual representation of your organization's performance across various dimensions, all in one place. Our template lets you see the big picture by showcasing the financial, customer, internal processes and growth perspectives. It's like having a clear roadmap right before your eyes.
By utilizing this powerful tool, you'll uncover valuable insights and pinpoint areas for improvement. You can find other strategic planning charts in the Visme template library.
As your company expands, you may encounter challenges aligning goals among different teams and departments, resulting in inefficiencies and resource wastage.
The OKRs strategic plan template offers a straightforward solution to address this issue by assisting you in effectively managing your company's goals and ensuring their successful attainment.
The strategic framework template simplifies the process by allowing you to define precise objectives and track the progress of three key results associated with each objective. Using this strategic plan template, you can streamline goal management and enhance productivity.
The General Strategic Plan Template provides a solid foundation for businesses in the early stages of planning their growth. It covers essential components such as company vision, mission, goals, objectives, implementation strategies, and resource allocation.
Using this template ensures that your company stays focused on its mission and vision while promoting employee alignment. It serves as a simple yet effective tool to keep everyone moving in the same direction.
Customize the template by including your own text, images, brand elements and more. Editing the templates gets even easier with Visme's dynamic fields, which eliminate the need for manually entering certain information repeatedly.
Simply set your company name, address, contact information, and other details once, and the templates will automatically populate the relevant fields whenever you use them.
Watch the video below to learn more about this amazing feature.
Are you searching for a simple and clear marketing strategic plan template to guide your marketing efforts? Look no further! This template is specifically designed to assist you in strategizing and planning your marketing initiatives.
The marketing strategic plan template encompasses all the essential components required for a comprehensive marketing strategy, including a value proposition, promotional strategies, and SWOT analysis.
By providing in-depth details for each section, this template offers a deeper understanding of the crucial elements necessary to thrive in today's highly competitive marketplace.
Moreover, this template features a unique Flipbook effect, allowing you to navigate your strategic plan conveniently. Experience the flipbook-like view as each page turns seamlessly, providing a user-friendly interface for easy accessibility.
Clear and effective communication is crucial for any successful business. It involves not only speaking but also actively listening and understanding your audience's needs.
With the communication strategic plan template, you can evaluate your company's current communication strategies and identify improvement areas.
Utilize a combination of complementary colors and legible fonts to emphasize the significance of communication to your employees.
Enhance your texts by utilizing Visme's text animation feature, which offers eight different styles to make them more engaging. You can also adjust the animation speed to suit your preferences.
Consider incorporating interactive elements like hotspots, clickable menus and hover effects into your visuals to engage your audience further. These additions will make your content more captivating and interactive.
Are you looking for a new strategy in your business promotion efforts? Follow the idea from this strategic plan template and bundle services together to offer packages that bring better value and more affordable prices.
In this business model strategy plan, you can highlight the packages themselves and why they’re important in terms of convenience, value and customization.
Other pages include an overview, ideal customer cohorts, and an explanation of why the approach is a good idea.
Use the AI Image Edit Tools inside the Visme editor to edit the images for your strategic plan by removing backgrounds or unwanted objects. If you have a blurry image, you can unblur it and if the image is too small, you can enlarge it.
This strategic business plan template spans 7 pages to get you set up with a solid foundation for your business’s strategic plan.
The layout starts with an executive summary and continues with a company overview, product description, market analysis, and planned strategies.
Do you need a shortcut to create a strategic plan document like this one? The Visme AI document generator can help you with content and visuals at the same time. In the document templates gallery, choose the generator and input a prompt that explains what you need and let the AI work its magic.
Help your employees improve in their career trajectory by planning a development strategy for them that’s leadership-based and well planned out.
This template for a strategic plan includes sections such as development objectives, a candidate profile, a skills assessment, a training roadmap and an evaluation.
Work with your Learning and Development team to create the best strategy plan with this template using the workflow feature. Assign specific pages to different people, set due dates and keep track of what’s done or still needs doing. Collaborate with the team to create the best employee development strategy plan.
Though there are no universal standards for what a strategic plan should contain, there are several key elements that most plans share. Each element of a strategic plan plays a crucial role in achieving the organization's long-term goals.
Here are the five of them:
A strategic plan should begin with a concise statement of your organization's vision and mission. The vision statement describes what the company hopes to achieve in the long term, while the mission statement focuses on how it plans to accomplish that goal.
A clear and compelling vision and mission statement can motivate employees and stakeholders to collaborate more effectively toward achieving their objectives.
These are also the first sections you should write when creating a plan because they provide direction for the rest of the document.
The next element of a strategic plan is a list of specific goals or objectives. These are the things that you're trying to achieve over a given period, such as increasing sales by 15 percent over the next year.
You should have an objective for each section of your strategic plan: marketing, finance, human resources and so on.
Set SMART goals, which stand for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. Here is an example of a SMART goal:
Increase company revenue by 15% (Specific) through targeted marketing campaigns and expanding customer base in new geographic regions (Achievable, Realistic). Achieve this goal within the next fiscal year (Timely), allowing for clear measurement of progress (Measurable).
Visme's SMART goal-setting templates are the best tools to set and achieve your goals.
Once your goals are set, it's time to develop a strategy to achieve them. A strategy is a plan that outlines how you will achieve your goals. It should include what actions you will take, who will be responsible for each action and when each action needs to be completed.
This is the part where you choose how to allocate resources, differentiate from competitors and position the organization in the market.
The approach specifies the methods and actions to put the strategy into action. It involves using available resources wisely and adjusting to changes in market conditions.
Include a description of how you will measure success, track progress toward your goals and what resources are required to achieve them. It can also include a timeline if your goals are set for the future.
Tactics are the specific steps you take to implement your strategy and achieve your goals. They can involve changing processes, reorganizing departments and even changing personnel.
Suppose you want to increase sales by 15%. In that case, a few possible tactics could be:
The difference between approach and tactics is that the approach in your strategic plan serves as the foundation or framework for deciding tactics. And tactics are the actions you will take to execute your strategic plan.
Here’s a pyramid chart template that you can use to document your sales tactics.
Strategic plans come in various types, and each type has its own set of benefits and drawbacks. To help you find the right one for your business, we will now provide an overview of the eight most popular strategic plan types.
Go through them and choose the best one that best suits your business needs.
The SWOT Analysis is a widely used strategic planning tool that evaluates an organization's internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats.
By conducting a SWOT analysis, businesses gain valuable insights into their current position, competitive landscape and areas for improvement. This analysis enables decision-makers to identify strategic priorities, capitalize on strengths, address weaknesses, exploit opportunities and mitigate potential risks.
With a clear understanding of internal and external factors, you can formulate effective strategies to achieve your goals.
Here’s a SWOT analysis template you can use to create your own. Customize these templates using Visme’s SWOT analysis generator to fit your business needs.
PEST stands for Political, Economic, Social and Technological. The PEST analysis model helps you identify external factors that affect your business environment and can impact its success. It involves analyzing:
To examine your business's internal and external factors, you can use this strategy alongside another one.
This whiteboard is an excellent starting point for brainstorming your company’s PESTEL analysis.
This is a popular technique developed by Intel for setting goals.
An OKR is an objective, or a goal, broken down into key results (KRs), which are measurable actions taken to accomplish the objective. For example, if you want to increase sales by 10%, one KR might be “Increase website conversion rate from 2% to 3%.”
To implement this strategy, you have to set an objective and then break it down into a list of critical results.
If you are looking to increase your business's competitive advantage, Porter's five forces is the perfect strategic plan for you. It's a framework for analyzing your business's competitive environment and understanding where the opportunities and growth lie.
The five forces are
The tool offers a simple way to quantify the threat posed by each of these forces. In addition, it provides you with a clear picture of how your business stacks up against its competition and what's preventing you from gaining market share.
Here's Porter's Five Forces Model template from Visme to help you create your own.
Understanding the competitive landscape and how your business measures up against your peers is the first step to developing strategies for success. The VRIO Framework helps you do just that.
The framework uses four key variables that determine a company's competitive advantage:
Gap planning is a strategic approach that helps you bridge the gap between your business's current and desired future states. It involves identifying the gaps or discrepancies between where your company currently stands and where it aims to be and then formulating a plan to close those gaps.
You need to do a gap analysis to utilize the power of gap planning. Here's how it works:
1. Identify the gaps between where you are now and where you want to be.
2. Determine what prevents you from closing those gaps (for example, time, resources, or technology).
3. Develop strategies for bridging those gaps by providing solutions for each one.
As the name suggests, a balanced scorecard measures organizational performance by focusing on four key areas: financial, customer, internal business processes and learning and growth.
The idea behind BSC is that organizations are more successful when they have a clear and balanced view of their overall performance.
For example, a company may excel at generating high returns but neglect customer satisfaction, leading to a decline in brand loyalty and market share.
By incorporating the customer perspective into the balanced scorecard, the organization can identify areas for improvement and develop strategies to enhance customer experiences.
Imagine a market where your business faces no competition. That's a blue ocean—a market that either doesn't exist yet or where you can offer a fresh value proposition for customers.
But it's not a magic show where you wave a wand and suddenly, your business is completely unique. There's much more to the blue ocean strategy than just creating new market spaces.
The idea is to focus on what matters most to customers, develop innovative solutions and find a path where your business stands alone, free from competition.
The main purpose of a strategic plan is to set growth targets for your business and create effective strategies to achieve them, turning those strategies into actionable tasks.
The plan also helps businesses focus their efforts, prioritize objectives, and create a sense of urgency around key initiatives. It provides a framework that enables businesses to make better choices even when faced with difficult situations or obstacles.
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While they may sound similar, a strategic plan and a work plan serve different purposes and are used at different times in business planning.
A strategic plan is a high-level document that outlines a business's long-term goals and objectives. It considers the company's mission, vision, values and overall strategy and provides a roadmap for success. A strategic plan is typically created at the beginning of a planning cycle and is reviewed and updated periodically.
On the other hand, a work plan is a more detailed document that outlines the specific tasks and activities that need to be completed to achieve the goals and objectives outlined in the strategic plan. It is a more tactical document that focuses on the business's day-to-day operations. Businesses create a work plan as part of the implementation phase of the strategic planning process.
For example, a software development team creates a work plan to outline coding tasks, testing and deadlines for a new mobile app project. Meanwhile, the company's strategic plan focuses on long-term growth by diversifying the product line, expanding into international markets and investing in emerging technologies.
If you have successfully created the strategic plan, you're just halfway there. And your execution plan is equally important.
So, follow these four best practices to get the most out of your strategic planning process.
Clearly define your strategic goals and ensure they are effectively communicated to everyone in your organization. This helps align all employees towards a common objective and ensures everyone understands their role in achieving it.
Break down your strategic goals into actionable steps or initiatives. Assign responsibility and create a system of accountability to ensure these steps are executed effectively and on time. Regularly review progress and make adjustments as needed.
Recognize that the business environment is dynamic, and plans may need to be adjusted. Remain open to feedback and monitor changes in the market or industry that may impact your strategic plan. Build flexibility into your plan to allow for timely adaptations, seize emerging opportunities, or address unexpected challenges.
Establish a system for ongoing evaluation and learning. Regularly assess the progress and outcomes of your strategic initiatives. Identify areas of success and areas for improvement. Encourage a culture of learning from both successes and failures and use these insights to refine your strategic approach over time.
By following these best practices, you can enhance the execution of your strategic plan and increase the likelihood of achieving your desired outcomes.
Creating a strategic plan is an important part of any business. But it's not enough to just create the plan and forget about it. You need to manage and execute this plan to achieve its goals.
Whether customizing your favorite template, collaborating with your team, or securely storing and updating the plan, Visme makes the entire process a breeze. Choose a strategic plan template from the list and customize it to make it your own.
In addition to the strategic plans and features mentioned above, Visme provides a vast selection of templates to fulfill almost all your business document creation requirements.
With over 50 different template types available, including presentations, infographics, whiteboards, budgets, roadmaps and more, there are endless possibilities for you to explore and create with Visme.
Sign-up for Visme and start creating your strategic plans now!
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About the Author
Raja Antony Mandal is a Content Writer at Visme. He can quickly adapt to different writing styles, possess strong research skills, and know SEO fundamentals. Raja wants to share valuable information with his audience by telling captivating stories in his articles. He wants to travel and party a lot on the weekends, but his guitar, drum set, and volleyball court don’t let him.