Business planning in a changing world

Even if we know where we want to get to, it is difficult to plan a journey if we don’t have a clear idea of where we are starting from. Human nature is to look forward towards goals that can seem elusive. Looking back will identify the good things that have been achieved recently, which helps generate motivation to strive towards future goals.

Understanding current performance is important as it allows you to evaluate the impact of the strategies and plans you implement. Using a greater level of detail to describe this performance will provide you with better management information to inform your plans. Current business performance and trends should be reviewed, including:

• Dispensing: volume, income, costs and profit. Break the numbers down, for example into walk-in items, collected items, EPS, repeat dispensing, for example
• Services: what services are provided, income, costs and profit. Break the data down into individual services to help you understand both the numbers of services provided and the income derived from each
• Sales: top-line sales figures are often the only measures used, but will be more useful if broken down into medicines (P and GSL separately), other healthcare (for example vitamins, first aid, etc) and general retail, for example. An EPOS system will be able to provide this level of data quite easily
• Financial position: balance sheet, profit and loss statement and cash flow. Monthly accounts will provide a breakdown of costs by specific categories. While an aggressive focus on costs can have a detrimental effect on sales, it’s important to ensure costs are reasonable and in line with expectations
• Others: you might have access to customer numbers, patient numbers, basket size and stockholding.

Trend data allows you to review current business performance in relation to previous performance. Data analytics companies can help you compare your business with local competitors, or benchmark your performance against businesses with similar features elsewhere. 

An understanding of what leads to current performance is important in planning for business success. You need to consider internal and external factors. A useful tool to provide a focus for reviewing the situation is a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis.

Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors, the intrinsic nature of the business. These might include the premises, the position of the pharmacy, the skills mix in the team, the competence of the staff and relationships with local GPs. It might also include strengths in terms of performance in different areas of the business.

Opportunities and threats are external – things that are going on outside the business. They might include local competition, the state of development of the primary care network to undertake integrated services commissioned locally, changes to local doctors or within the NHS, or changes within your local community. Opportunities might include areas where the business is not succeeding at present, for example, not yet offering flu vaccinations.