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Strategic planning is essential to any government contractor’s success, but that doesn’t mean it has to be complex. Simplified strategic planning focuses on setting clear objectives, understanding your government customer’s needs, and aligning business capabilities accordingly.
Instead of endless spreadsheets and getting lost in unimportant details, simplified strategic planning combines collaboration, the latest technology, and an outcome-focused planning process. For contractors, this approach improves budget utilization, shortens project timelines, and creates competitive advantage.
Discover the fundamental elements of a strategic plan, explore why such planning helps with government contracts, and learn how to simplify your planning process.
4 Key Elements of a Strategic Plan
Every successful strategic plan shares common elements, whether you’re a small business, government contractor, or large corporation. Let’s explore each element’s significance in shaping a robust strategic plan.
Mission, Vision and Values
A mission statement articulates an organization’s core purpose and reason for existing. This type of statement can help employees choose to work there, and it can be a North Star for the decisions they make every day. Externally, your mission statement underscores your commitment to service and accountability.
Note that a mission statement isn’t the same as a vision statement, which projects the organization’s aspirations. It complements the mission statement, providing a broader perspective on the company’s ambitions. Together, vision and mission statements form the foundation of a strategic plan. While the strategy details what will happen, these statements show why.
Values, meanwhile, are the bedrock of an organization’s culture, guiding decision-making and shaping behavior at every level. They illustrate the organization’s fundamental principles and beliefs and influence every action — including interactions with government officials.
Strategic Objectives
Strategic objectives are the goals that the organization seeks to accomplish. Your strategic objectives translate the vision into actionable steps, phases, and milestones. Often, these objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). By declaring objectives, you focus the workforce on what tasks must be done, what resources are needed, and how success will be marked.
Key Performance Indicators
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable measures that help organizations evaluate strategic objectives. For government contractors, these indicators might include project completion rates, whether a project is under budget, client satisfaction scores, and compliance. Contractors can track KPIs to gain insights into operational effectiveness and develop action plans to optimize performance and outcomes.
Accountability
Accountability exists at the organizational, leadership, team, and individual levels. Every employee and team must understand their responsibilities and the role they play in achieving strategic objectives. Likewise, leaders must be accountable for communicating strategic objectives, providing the necessary resources and guidance, and delivering results. Finally, government contractors are held accountable by government entities for delivering projects on time, of high quality, and on budget.
At a granular level, accountability involves transparent expectations, regular check-ins, and a culture where constructive feedback leads to continuous improvement. By embedding accountability into the strategic plan, contractors are more likely to track deliverables, course-correct early, and help employees commit to hitting their goals. Accountability to the terms of government contracts, meanwhile, can make all the difference in whether the government selects you the next time.
Why Government Contractors Benefit From Having a Strategic Plan
A thoughtful strategic plan helps companies set meaningful and attainable goals. This is especially important when facing the detailed and stringent requirements in government contracts. Here are the key benefits of strategic planning in government contracting.
Improved Compliance
Working with governments often involves additional layers of scrutiny, either due to regulations or additional contract terms. An effective strategic plan ensures these details are accounted for and that your actions align with these requirements. Strong compliance practices reduce your risk and improve your credibility as a reliable government contractor.
Improved Bid Success Rate
With a clear strategy in place, businesses can more effectively target government contracts that align with their capabilities and goals. By taking a strategic approach to bidding and applying to proposals, your business can improve success rates, as proposals will be more tailored to the needs of government agencies.
Streamlined Operations
Your strategic plan is a road map for what you plan to accomplish as an organization. An ambitious, clear strategic plan allows leaders to identify the most effective ways to allocate resources, manage projects, and deliver services. This operational efficiency is crucial in fulfilling government contracts on time and within budget — especially with fixed-price contracts.
Increased Adaptability
The landscape of government contracting can quickly change rapidly because of policy shifts, budget adjustments, and evolving political priorities. A robust strategic plan should be adaptive in two ways. One, it should allow for changes based on rapid changes in contract conditions, available budget, or other external factors. Two, the strategic plan should leave room to recognize emerging opportunities and develop services to meet this new demand.
Stronger Stakeholder Relationships
A strategic plan clarifies your business’s values, mission, and vision, making it easier to communicate these aspects to government stakeholders. This transparency fosters trust and can lead to stronger, more collaborative relationships with government agencies.
Sustainable Growth
A strong strategic plan considers near-term conditions but also steers the organization toward long-term success. Existing government contracts could change during the next bidding round or go away, while new contract opportunities can arise at any time.
When your strategic plan aligns your business strengths and capabilities with a range of government needs, you set the stage for long-term growth that doesn’t depend on one or two massive contracts.
6 Tips for Simplified Strategic Planning
Government contracting often involves many stakeholders, massive amounts of data, compliance requirements, project management challenges, and navigating bureaucracy. During the strategic planning process, start by using tools that are tailored to government contractors. Here are some other ways to simplify strategic planning in government contracting.
Move on From Spreadsheets
Many companies continue to lean on Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheet-based systems during strategic planning, resulting in less efficient, less accurate processes. Managing government projects is also more difficult with a spreadsheet-first approach.
Instead, government contracts can turn to modern, integrated solutions that are more efficient and accurate. Solutions like Acterys provide a centralized platform for data consolidation, process automation, and a comprehensive view of project metrics. Such platforms simplify reporting and analysis while streamlining the entire strategic planning process.
Manage Projects With Gantt Charts
Reporting tools like Acterys Gantt in Power BI provide an intuitive way to visualize project timelines. Break down tasks into manageable segments across different levels of detail. Gantt charts offer a vivid overview of timelines and resource distribution, equipping contractors to meet project deadlines and adhere to budgets. With Acterys Gantt, you can add and edit tasks stored in any source supported by Acterys.
Optimize Resource Allocation
Resource allocation isn’t just about materials and software; it’s also about the human resources in your environment. To maximize productivity across projects, you need visibility into each project’s current skill sets so you can weigh them against project requirements. Misallocating people resources creates project inefficiencies and threatens on-time, on-budget delivery.
Acterys tackles this challenge by providing visibility into every team member’s skills and availability. If someone has a skill that’s especially important for a given project, you can ensure they’re working on that project and not another assignment that other colleagues could cover. Acterys seamlessly integrates with tools including Power BI, Excel, and ERP systems, helping project managers access performance insights and make informed decisions about resource allocation.
Leverage Historical Data for Future Success
Data from past projects is invaluable for informing future planning, particularly for cost estimations and resource planning. Look at performance metrics including budget adherence, timeline accuracy, and resource utilization for insights into where previous strategic plans fell short — and why.
For example, historical data reveals that projects of a certain size tend to exceed budget due to underestimating costs. You can incorporate this trend when planning for upcoming project bids — and revisit and revise this analysis over time.
Embrace Scenario Planning
Adaptability is key for every business. In government contracting, companies must be ready to adapt to changes in key personnel, policy and political changes, and shifting funding levels.
Collaborative planning and forecasting tools can simplify strategic planning by integrating advanced forecasting and scenario simulation tools directly into the planning framework. With Acterys, government contractors can create multiple what-if scenarios, including budget adjustments and new regulations. During this planning, teams can use the Acterys comments visual to discuss plans without switching to a different platform.
With Acterys, you can simplify strategic planning by visually comparing scenarios immediately, without getting lost in complex data analysis. Contractors can generate projections and visualize outcomes based on changes in key variables, such as a sudden decrease in funding or an expanded project scope.
Integrate External Data for Deeper Analysis
External data, including economic data, legislative changes, and regulatory updates, can be a powerful complement to the project analysis you’re already performing. With Acterys, contractors can integrate external data and internal project information.
For example, if you’re planning out a series of upcoming bids, you might also want to track relevant legislation that could affect funding for those projects. Combining external and internal data helps government contractors identify risks early, as well as opportunities.
Use Tools Built for Government Contractors
Simplified strategic planning doesn’t need to be an overwhelming task. Start by focusing on incremental process improvements that pave the way for efficiency gains and more informed decision-making. Look for versatile tools, products and services that can help you solve multiple problems, especially if they integrate with systems you already use.
Acterys improves and extends the functionality of widely used tools like Power BI, Excel, and accounting software for government contractors. Acterys creates a single source of truth that scales as projects grow and become more complex, ensuring that your strategic planning remains dynamic and grounded.
Ready to see how Acterys can help you create a plan for your business without creating a headache? Start your free trial now.
