Business planning takes place when the key stakeholders in a business sit down and flesh out all the goals, strategies, and actions that they envision taking to ensure the business’s survival, prosperity, and growth.

Business planning commonly involves collecting ideas in a formal business plan that outlines a summary of the business’s current state, as well as the state of the broader market, along with detailed steps the business will take to improve performance in the coming period. Business plans are not just about money. The business plan outlines the general planning needed to start and run a successful business, and that includes profits, but it also goes beyond that.  A plan should account for everything from scoping out the competition and figuring out how your new business will fit into the industry, to assessing employee morale and planning for how to retain talent.