As a business leader, you know the decisions you make today can shape the future of the company. If you want to control that trajectory, a 5-year plan template can be a useful tool. The right template helps you organize ideas, analyze data, and prioritize the goals you want to achieve — that way, you can create a framework that informs strategic decisions and guides your company toward its ultimate growth goals.
In this article, we’ll explore the parts of a 5-year plan template and discuss how to use it in your business. Then, we’ll dive into the ways you can integrate a 5-year plan into the monday.com Work OS to create a more efficient and powerful workflow.
What is a 5-year plan template?
A 5-year plan template is a model document that helps you map out company goals and strategies for the next 5 years. Many templates contain a variety of common sections that you can edit to reflect the goals and needs of your business:
- Executive summary: Top-level overview of your objectives and strategies
- Business description: Mission statement, description of your products and services, and an introduction to your management or leadership team
- Market analysis: Data about your industry and target audience, trends, opportunities, and competitors
- Financial information: Historical revenue, expense data, and financial projections
- Plans and objectives: Goes into detail about your short and long-term goals and sets company priorities, discusses the goals you want to achieve, and explains the strategies and methods you’ll use
The right structure for your 5-year plan template depends on your company’s specific goals. If you’re going after investors, for example, a traditional structure can help you meet expectations. If the plan is mostly for internal use, you can be more flexible and still reap the benefits of the template.
Why use a 5-year plan template?
A 5-year business plan provides a structure to help you think strategically about your company’s plans for the next few years. Use the preexisting headers to guide your discussions and spark new ideas; you can also add new sections to tailor the content to your business. When it’s time to write, the template helps you organize ideas and format them into a usable document that can provide a slew of benefits for your business.
Use a 5-year plan template to improve your company’s goal-setting process and shape its growth trajectory.Guide business decisions
A 5-year plan clarifies your company’s priorities, creating a set of strategic objectives that serves as a reference point when it’s time to make decisions or evaluate opportunities. If your priority is to build brand awareness among Gen Z customers, for example, you might jump at the chance to establish a presence on the hottest new social media platform. If you’re laser-focused on building the best management team in the industry, however, it would be easy to see that your resources are better spent elsewhere.
In addition to serving as a guidepost for major strategic initiatives, your 5-year plan can inform business decisions of all sizes. Look to it when you’re:
- Making a budget
- Assessing the organizational structure
- Designing a marketing plan
- Adding or removing products and services
- Writing business policies
- Setting up a technology infrastructure
Enable strategic hiring and training
A solid 5-year plan makes it easier to anticipate upcoming personnel needs, so you can make strategic hiring decisions. If you have limited resources, the plan can also help you figure out which tasks require a full-time employee and which ones you can outsource.
Are you thinking about training your existing employees? To determine the courses and topics with the highest ROI, compare the skills and abilities of your workforce against the practical needs outlined in the 5-year plan. This process highlights skill gaps and exposes the most urgent training opportunities.
Stay focused on goals
A lot can happen in 5 years — managers come and go, market conditions shift, and unexpected events can arise out of nowhere. In the midst of all that change, a well-written 5-year plan is a constant. It keeps your team focused on the same long-term goals, regardless of turnover. This unified approach can ensure that you’re always making progress in the right direction.
Prepare for challenges
Writing a 5-year plan requires you to analyze the business and the industry. As you dig into available data, you gain a deeper understanding of your customers, operations, competitors, and the market itself. With that knowledge, you’re better positioned to anticipate potential challenges and roadblocks. Awareness is everything; it helps you spot early warning signs, so you can start preparing the company to adjust short-term goals and adapt quickly.
Build confidence among investors
If you’re thinking about seeking investments to fund business expansion, a 5-year plan is essential. A thorough, well-written document reassures investors that you’ve done your due diligence and demonstrates that your company is positioned to make a profit. A template can help you examine and analyze each part of the business systematically to ensure the plan addresses investors’ top concerns.
When you’re ready to grow, a professional 5-year plan template can help you woo investors.
What are some examples of 5-year plan templates?
No two companies have identical 5-year plans; the template that works best for your organization depends on the age of the business, the nature of your goal, and how you’re planning to utilize the plan.
Startup plan
A 5-year plan creates a roadmap to follow as you establish a startup, build an audience, and stake out a place in the industry. This type of template often contains lengthy sections about marketing, sales, and product or service development; it also tends to be heavy on research and analysis.
Growth and expansion plan
When your company has been in business for a few years, you might start to think about expanding. A 5-year plan helps you approach growth strategically; it’s a good way to identify the best opportunities and find ways to minimize risk. These plans often analyze competitors and discuss the costs and benefits of different growth options.
One-page plan
Whether you’re growing a startup or expanding an established business, a traditional 5-year plan contains a high level of detail. The one-page business plan version provides a quick overview — it highlights the most important points of each section. Instead of explaining your market research and explaining how they inform each goal, for example, you could note the key findings and include a prioritized list of goals.
5-year plan template on monday.com
Whether you’re creating a plan for an arts nonprofit or an engineering firm, the 5-Year Plan Template on monday.com can help you navigate the process. A color-coded header system enables you to organize and identify top-level sections. Within each one, you can add descriptions and build out a list of objectives, goals, manager profiles, financial projections, and other details.
The monday.com template adds an extra level of detail and functionality to your 5-year plan. For each item in a section, you can add a variety of columns that track the status of a project, identify relevant team members, designate a timeline, or set a budget. You can even add a column that links critical files to ensure easy access for all of your stakeholders. When you start working toward the goals in your plan, monday.com offers different Board Views, project management tools, and automations to streamline your workflow. Your template also integrates seamlessly with Work OS, an open platform that enables you to create and customize the tools you need to monitor and run your business.
A 5-year plan is just one of the documents you need to map out and execute a long-term business strategy. The template library at monday.com includes a variety of options to help manage your company’s growth and development.
Related templates on monday.com
Marketing plan
If marketing plays a role in your 5-year plan, consider integrating the Marketing Plan Template into your strategic planning sessions. With sections for different projects and columns that enable you to assign tasks and monitor progress, it can also serve as a project management tool.
Recruitment process
Manage the hiring goals in your 5-year plan with the help of the Recruitment Process Template. It tracks each applicant through the different stages of the process and enables you to track referral sources to inform your job-posting strategy. Status reports for interviews and hiring decisions ensure efficient communication between departments.
Frequently asked questions
What is a 5-year plan?
A 5-year plan is a document that outlines your company’s goals and strategies for the upcoming years. It also provides information to support the plan, such as a market analysis and financial projections.
What should I include in a 5-year plan?
When you’re writing a 5-year plan, include an executive summary, a description of the business, and an analysis of the market, company finances, competitors, and customers. Follow that up with a section that lays out the goals, objectives, and strategies your company will pursue over the next 5 years.
What are 5-year goals examples?
Examples of 5-year goals might include developing new products, expanding to a new location, or reaching new audience segments. You might also set internal goals, such as improving the company culture or building the most talented workforce in the industry.
Using the 5-year plan template for sustainable growth
As you navigate the strategic-planning process, a 5-year plan template can help organize your ideas and set thoughtful, research-backed goals. You’ll emerge with a document that guides business decisions and unites employees around a common purpose. With monday.com, you can incorporate the 5-year plan template into your Work OS to manage projects, set smaller goals, and track progress toward your high-level objectives.
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