As a business leader, you are aware of your company’s operating cycle. If you are an entrepreneur in the making, you need to learn about the operating cycle, how to develop it – and how to use it. plandisc.com has the unique templates that can help you create and track the success of your own operating cycle.
Estimating Your Success
An operating plan is the period of time it takes your company to invest cash into the production of goods or services and the date or point at which it receives cash from your customers in exchange for those goods or services. Another way of looking at the operating cycle is to view it as an estimation of the period of time between investing in something and achieving the return on the investment (ROI).
Let’s briefly look at two types of business operating cycles.
• A manufacturing company uses an operating cycle to estimate the period of time between the purchase of materials to manufacture and distribution of products, and sale of the products.
• A real estate investor who “flips” properties (purchases homes or group residences, refurbishes, and immediately sells the refurbished property for a profit) uses an operating cycle to determine how long it takes to complete the purchase-refurbish-resell process, and the amount of profit he or she will need to realize in order to repeat the process.
In order to more fully prepare a realistic operating cycle, you need planning tools that can help you map out the steps involved in reaching your operational goal. The circular planning templates from plandisc.com can do just that.
End at the Beginning
The plandisc circular templates enable you to see the end plan even while you are just at the beginning. They can be used by individuals, departments, and at senior management levels to identify the key points of production within their own spheres of influence. When principle elements from each template are merged into a master template, they help form the overall roadmap of what it will take to complete an operating cycle.
plandisc templates are cloud-based, fully customizable, and easy to use. You can include any content you want. Label and colorize each cell and concentric ring, and even add more levels (rings) to your template. Your operating cycle template might include these key elements and benchmarks:
• Budget for next house flip project
• Bid cycle for bank-owned house
• Completing all ownership paperwork for purchase of house
• 2ndary Budget for refurbishing house
• Determine ROI for house sale
• Completion of refurbishing
• Placing house for sale Completion of manufacture cycle(s)
• Close of sale – receipt of payment
The power of seeing the beginning and completion of an enterprise side by side is both practical and motivational. See at a glance where you are starting and the steps you will need to take to reach your objective. Update the benchmark cells by notation, color, or other visual cue to denote completion of significant tasks and objectives.
Viewing the beginning and the end of a project is easier when you don’t have to sift through printed pages or multiple screen loads of data. Your progress and successes are uniquely positioned in one place, showing you where you started, what’s left to be completed, and where you stand at the end of your operating cycle.
Share your templates inter- and intra-departmentally, modify them as needed, merge data and embed templates in working files. plandisc.com planning templates are highly adaptable and can be incorporated into other major documents like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
When it’s time to create your operation cycle, use plandisc’s circular template planning tools to help you visualize the entire cycle – at a glance.
