7 simple reasons that justify the importance of planning

The importance of planning cannot be over emphasized for an organization or even for an individual. From the start of a small business, to managing a large business, from starting your own career, to the last stages of your working life, planning will be the most important tool that you use in marketing. Here are 7 reasons justifying the importance of planning.

Better position – Whenever you plan, you plan to succeed. Thus, it is not a surprise that planning will eventually lead you to have better success and achieve a better position in the market, be it a brand or a product. Any of your goals can have more chances of success with proper planning.

Progress – If you are planning to succeed, the plan will include your progress as well as the best pathway to achieve the goal. The management of the organization always keeps goals for itself which it wants to achieve. These goals, and the subsequent planning, will always lead to the progress of the organization. The progress of the organization is the reason that planning is important for the management.

Decision making – Whenever you make a marketing plan, you know what you want to achieve in a given time frame. At the same time, you are clear what the future holds for you and what is the ultimate goal. This ultimate goal, which has been decided by planning, makes your decision making more efficient and more ‘to the point’. This is because you know that how a decision will affect your plan in the long term and whether or not, this decision will help you in achieving your goals. Thus, because planning helps you decide short term and long term goals, it helps you make decisions faster.

Flexibility – The importance of planning increases in an organization where stability has not been observed. These are typical traits of a newly formed organization, or an organization which is trying to rebuild itself. These organizations do not have a standard strategy. Thus, when these organizations plan ahead, they have the flexibility to adjust the growth of the organization if any unseen events happen. So, tomorrow if a competitor launches a new product, you have an answer already in the pipeline in your plan. Because of this reason, you will not panic, but instead you will just pay attention to the execution of your plans.

Integrated approach – Planning brings the organization together. The importance of planning also lies in its holistic approach. Although you might make plans for different departments within the same organization, however all the departments together are trying to achieve a desired objective. Unity will always lead to success and hence, the integrated approach which planning imparts to an organization is ultimately very important.

Evaluation and control – One of the best things about planning is that it can be done in the board room. Thus, whenever you plan things, you know what are the results expected. However, you always keep a tab on the planning, so that you can at anytime refer to the plan and find our whether you are on track or not. For example – your plan is to increase the sales to 2000 units this year. This means you need to sell 500 units a quarter. However, if you are at 400 units, then you need to evaluate the options to increase sale. At the same time, if the growth is large and you are at 700 units, then you need to boost manufacturing. Thus, the importance of planning is seen when we know which factors to observe to evaluate and control the plan.

Achieving Desired Results – Planning is important, because through progress, an integrated approach, flexibility, and all of the other points mentioned above, planning ultimately helps the organization reach a desired, economically viable and profitable objective. If the plan is implemented correctly, the results will always be desirable by the organization.

The end of the implementation of one marketing plan, is immediately followed by the implementation of another marketing plan, the process of which starts immediately with a different objective in mind. Thus, planning is important to an organization because it gives a steady growth and prepares the organization for a desired future.