Strategic advisors know when the targets should be pushed. Whether it’s cost reduction or sales growth, their outside experience can position your business to be successful in the short and long term.

They delve into market trends, competitive landscapes and internal factors to gain a holistic understanding of your company’s situation. This allows them to make bolder propositions to the leadership and provide legitimacy to decision-making processes. Read on Strategic Advisory for more information.

Strategic advising is the analysis, forecasting, reporting and strategy needed for small business owners to survive and thrive. It’s the most critical part of any advisory consulting firm’s offering. But it can be challenging to provide this service confidently, profitably and at scale.

Having a clear goal or objective for your Strategic Advisors is the first step in ensuring they add value to your client’s business. It will set the context and priorities for your advisory engagements, and guide you in selecting board members with appropriate skill sets and expertise. Strategic Advisors fill in the gaps in your team, adding a perspective and experience that can speed decision making and time to market. They also bring a wealth of best practices, enabling you to tackle problems with proven solutions. Their views are “agenda free,” meaning they are not clouded by your internal politics or prejudices and can offer frank advice that pushes you in the direction of growth and innovation.

An effective Strategic Adviser will be aware of when the goals you have set for yourself should be stretched, whether in cost reduction or sales growth. They are experienced enough to know when it is a good idea to put the gas on, and also to recognize when it is time to ease off and avoid burning out your team. They will also be aware of the risks that are associated with stretching too far, and be able to help you assess and mitigate them.

The process of strategic advising usually starts with a comprehensive current state assessment, which will identify the challenges you are facing and determine your current position relative to your desired future state. This is the best way to understand your gap, and to define the actions you need to take to close it.

This assessment may include a full financial forecast, including profit and loss and cash flow, or it could be a more focused review of your customer satisfaction, employee engagement and competitor analysis. It will be a combination of research and the use of data and predictive analytics to build a smart roadmap for your business.

Goal-Setting

A successful strategic planning and goal-setting process provides clarity, focus and direction – enabling organizations to navigate uncertainty with confidence. Using proven methodologies, these processes ensure that every effort and resource is aligned with the overarching vision while fostering efficiency, collaboration and adaptability.

Once the strategic goals have been established, they must be broken down into specific measurable objectives that can be tracked and evaluated on a daily basis. These objective are known as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). They help you and your team understand what needs to be accomplished, and how. They are also useful for measuring progress against the plan on a regular basis and providing a framework for identifying opportunities for improvement.

Measuring your KPIs on a routine basis helps you identify and address any potential obstacles that could interfere with meeting the strategic plan’s objectives. For example, a financial advisor’s KPIs might include revenue growth, gross margin and customer churn. Having the ability to track these indicators on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis enables you and your team to assess your business’s performance and make necessary adjustments.

As the strategic planning and goal-setting process moves from planning to execution, it is important that teams have access to the resources they need to be successful. This includes financial, operational and emotional support. Providing these resources will maintain motivation and momentum, enabling the achievement of the strategic goals.

During the implementation phase, it is important to evaluate and prioritize tasks in order to ensure that all objectives are being met. One way to do this is by establishing a set of strategic priority areas and then creating SMART goals with KPIs for each area. This will allow teams to focus on achieving the goals that are most critical to their success.

Another valuable tool for evaluating the progress of a company’s strategic goals is the Balanced Scorecard, which combines organizational objectives, financial measures and customer metrics to provide a clear picture of what needs to be done. It also encourages a balance of ambitious (stretch) goals and more attainable objectives, promoting a culture of innovation while maintaining realistic expectations.

Execution

Strategic advisors are a valuable resource to help your organization succeed. They offer a combination of high-level strategic guidance and specialized expertise to drive large projects forward, saving you both time and money. Their experience allows them to quickly identify and capitalize on growth opportunities, as well as navigate challenges and assess risk.

A well-executed strategic advisory process focuses on setting goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound (SMART). Strategic advisors know how to work with your executive team to set ambitious yet realistic goals, then provide support and resources to ensure they are achieved. This provides a clear ROI and delivers the results you need to achieve your desired outcomes.

Unlike a traditional board of directors, a Strategic Advisory Board (SAB) is a group of external experts and professionals who guide and advise a leadership team on strategic matters. SAB members bring diverse perspectives and industry insights that are invaluable to a business’s success, as well as deep expertise, extensive experience and a network of valuable contacts.

Strategic Advisory is a key part of any business’s growth strategy. But, it is not without its challenges. This is why it is essential for businesses to understand how to successfully execute a strategic advisory plan, and how to build a successful team to achieve their desired results.

As more clients seek more strategic, proactive advice, many firms are bidding adieu to the days of rearview mirror accounting in favor of a model that is both client-centric and value-driven. This shift means that it is now more important than ever for financial services firms to invest in a strategy execution solution that will help them deliver better outcomes and stay ahead of the competition.

QuestionPro is an ideal strategic advisory tool that can be used to gather and analyze data from various stakeholders within an organization. Its robust survey and feedback capabilities allow for a faster, more efficient strategic planning process, and its advanced analytics and reporting features deliver actionable insights to help businesses understand stakeholder perspectives and make confident strategic decisions.

Monitoring

The monitoring process is critical to ensuring that a strategic advisory board delivers on its promise of guiding businesses toward success. Whether the board is overseeing a new, ongoing business process or reviewing a completed strategic initiative, effective monitoring helps to ensure that the activity is performing as expected and that corrective action can be taken when needed.

There is a wide range of approaches to the monitoring process, which can include a comprehensive plan for reviewing all transactions or a more limited approach that reviews specific transaction exceptions. For example, an organization may decide to monitor all exceptions from a certain type of transaction or only those that occur in a particular geographic area or are submitted by a specified group of employees. The number of exceptions reviewed will affect the cost and complexity of a monitoring plan.

In addition to reviewing the transaction, monitoring also identifies any changes in the environment or other factors that could impact a process. For example, a sudden decrease in hotline calls within a given month could indicate a problem with employee perceptions or the effectiveness of an outreach program. Monitoring also identifies intentional deviations from an established business process, such as a staff member who intentionally tries to stray from a set of expectations for his or her own benefit.

A well-defined strategic advisory board should include a diverse mix of backgrounds, skills and experiences, enabling the members to provide the business with a broad range of perspectives and insight. This diversity of expertise can help the board stay ahead of trends, provide valuable industry insights and offer a network of connections.

The strategic guidance a board provides can be instrumental in the successful execution of large-scale business initiatives, helping to reduce risk and mitigate costly mistakes. This is particularly true in areas such as establishing a strategic plan or developing and implementing new technologies.

Strategic advisory boards provide the technical insight required to successfully navigate today’s fast-paced business landscape. By leveraging the QuestionPro platform’s robust survey and feedback capabilities, strategic advisory boards can efficiently gather stakeholder input, promote collaboration and foster a more effective decision-making process.