Strategic goals in GoalEnvision are specific goals that aim to describe more concretely how the growth targets will be achieved. They provide a clear path forward and help your organisation focus on the activities that are most critical to achieving your growth targets.
1. Formulate Strategic Goals: GoalEnvision allows you to formulate strategic goals that are linked to your overall growth objectives. These goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound (SMART) to ensure they are effective and achievable.
2. Place Goals in Success Perspectives: Each strategic goal is placed in one of five success perspectives to clarify the order, prioritisation and logic of the strategy. These perspectives include Marketing, Sales, Operations, People and Finance.
3. Assign Responsibility: Each strategic goals is given a name, a measure, a responsible person and one or more conditions. This ensures that there is a clear person responsible for each goal and that the necessary resources are available to achieve the goal.
4. Use AI to Support Your Strategic Goals: GoalEnvision's AI can help you with the names, metrics and conditions of your strategic goals. This can give you valuable insight and support in your strategic planning process.
By setting and tracking your strategic goals with GoalEnvision, you can ensure that your organisation is on track to achieve your growth targets. Regardless of size or industry, GoalEnvision's strategic goals can help you concretise your path to success.
Create a strategic goal
To be able to create a strategic goal, you need to have the right authorisation. Read more in the section on permissions in GoalEnvision.
Here's how to do it:
Go to the organisation page in GoalEnvision
See the overview of the 5 perspectives and select the perspective to create the strategic goal. See later in this section for how to use AI when creating a strategic goal.
Short introduction to the 5 success perspectives you can choose to create a strategic goal within:
1. Market: this perspective is about understanding and satisfying customer needs. Strategic goals within this perspective may include improving customer satisfaction, developing new products or services, or expanding into new markets.
2. Sales: This perspective is about communicating and selling the organisation's offering. Goals here may include increasing sales volume, improving sales effectiveness, or developing new sales channels.
3. Operations: This perspective is about organising internal processes for efficiency. Goals within this perspective may include improving production processes, reducing waste, or implementing new technologies.
4. People:This perspective deals with the competence and motivation of the staff. Goals here may include improving employee satisfaction, developing training programmes, or improving the working environment.
5. Finances This perspective focuses on financial results and returns. Goals within this perspective may include increasing profitability, improving cash flow, or reducing costs.
When you have chosen a perspective, click on e.g. "+ Sales goal" or "+ Operational goal" for the selected perspective.
You will now see a box to create a strategic goal. Start by giving the goal a name. We recommend that you formulate the goal as if it was already achieved. For example, instead of "We will improve customer service by 10%", write "80% of our customers are very satisfied with our customer service".
Choose how you want to measure the goal.
A measurement is objective, like checking the temperature with a thermometer and finding that it is 18 degrees.
Measuring with a survey is a subjective result, i.e. the respondents perceive the temperature as hot, cold or just right.
If you want to create several strategic goals at once before describing the details of each goal, click on "Save & Create New" and the goal will be saved and the box will be emptied of data so you can create a new strategic goal.
If you are happy with your wording and the way you want to measure the goal, click "Save & Describe" to go to the Edit goal page.
You will now be taken to the page where you can edit all the details of a strategic goal.
The 'Strategic goal' tab
The "Strategic Goal" tab is the first tab in the GoalEnvision tool. Here you can enter the name of your strategic goal and provide a more detailed description of why you are creating this goal and why it is important to achieve it.
When describing why the goal is important, it is good to relate it to your growth targets. For example, you could explain that by achieving this strategic goal you will be able to expand your market share, reach new customer segments or increase sales of a specific product. The clearer and more concrete you can be in your description, the better.
The next step is to specify which unit is responsible for achieving the goal. This means choosing the manager or department that will have overall responsibility for driving the work towards achieving the goal. It is important to note that the person chosen as the responsible manager for the selected unit will be directly responsible for the achievement of the goal.
Finally, choose how often you want to follow up on the goal. This means deciding how often to report on results and progress. It could be weekly, monthly or quarterly, depending on how quickly you want to get feedback and adjust your strategy if necessary.
Once you have filled in all the information, click "Next" to proceed to the next step in the GoalEnvision tool.
The 'How we measure success' tab
The next tab, 'How we measure success', allows you to describe the details of your measurement objective or survey.
If you have chosen to measure your goal with a metric, follow the instructions in the section "Measuring with a metric".
If you have chosen to measure your objective with a survey, follow the instructions in the section "Measuring with a survey".
Measuring with a metric:
When you choose to measure your goal with a metric, you should specify which metric you will use to quantify success. For example, if your goal is to increase sales, you can use metrics such as turnover, number of units sold or average order value. To make the instruction clearer, you can indicate which specific numbers or values you will use to measure success. For example, if your goal is to increase turnover by 10%, state this as your target and also indicate the timeframe you will use to measure success.
Measuring with a survey:
If you choose to measure your objective with a survey, you should indicate which specific questions you will ask to evaluate success. For example, if your goal is to improve customer satisfaction, you could use questions like "How satisfied are you with our products/services?" or "How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?". To make the instruction clearer, you can give examples of relevant questions that can be used to measure success and indicate how the answers will be quantified or evaluated.
After you have defined either your measurement objective with a metric or a survey, you can click "Next" to proceed to the next step.
The "Our performance over time" tab
In the "Our performance over time" tab, you can enter historical data for the selected metric. Follow the instructions below to correctly enter historical outcomes.
If you have not previously measured this goal, select "No, no historical data available" and enter the last known outcome for the goal. Then click 'Next'.
Example: If the goal is to increase sales and you have not previously measured them, select "No, no historical data available" and enter the last known sales volume.
2. If you have previously measured this goal, select "Yes, I have historical data" and enter the historical result in the table that appears. You can do this in several ways:
Enter the result for each period in the table.
Example: If you have measured sales every month, fill in the sales volume for each month in the table.
Copy and paste the result from another source.
Example: If you have sales data in an Excel or Google Sheets file, copy and paste the sales volume from the file into the table.
Upload data using the "Upload file" sub-tab.
Follow the instructions under this sub-tab to upload a file with historical data.
3. Once you have entered the historical data or latest outcome, go to the "Preview" sub-tab to see a graph of the historical outcomes you have entered or uploaded.
Example: In the preview tab, you can see a line graph showing the sales volume over time based on the historical outcomes you have entered.
4. When you have finished entering historical data or the latest outcome, click "Next" to proceed to the next step.
The 'Our ambitions' tab
The 'Our ambition level' tab is used to describe the expected result or outcome of your goal, either in terms of measurements or surveys. You have two options to choose from under this tab: "Set ambition level" and "Edit table". Choose the option that best suits your purpose.
Selecting the sub-tab "Set ambition level" means that exact results are not necessary. Instead, you can use a graphical representation to show the approximate trend you want to see. You can draw the green line to show the difference with the blue line, which represents last year's results.
If you select the "Edit in table" sub-tab, you can enter precise figures for the expected future outcome. This option is best suited when you want concrete numbers to measure and evaluate the progress of the objective.
When you have finished setting the ambition level, click on "Next" to proceed to the next step in the process.
Example:
If your goal is to increase sales by 10% compared to last year, you can drag the green line upwards to indicate that you expect an increase. If you want to enter specific figures instead, you can use the "Edit in table" sub-tab to indicate that sales are expected to be £1,000,000, an increase of £100,000 from last year.
The "How we succeed" tab
In the "How we succeed" tab, you can set up the conditions required to achieve your goal. To add a condition manually, follow the instructions in the section "Creating condition to achieve goals". If you want to use AI to suggest condition and help with their formulation, please refer to the section "Using AI to create condition".
Example:
Suppose your goal is to increase sales by 20% in the coming year. To achieve this goal, you can add the following conditions:
Develop a marketing strategy to reach a broader customer base.
Improve the quality and functionality of the products to increase customer satisfaction.
Train and educate the sales team to improve their sales techniques.
Increase visibility and awareness of the products by investing in advertising and public relations campaigns.
By following these instructions and using examples, you can easily create and document the conditions required to achieve your goal in GoalEnvision.
Congratulations, you have now created a strategic goal. Read more in the section "Follow up on goals in GoalEnvision" to learn more about what happens next.