In the ever-evolving business landscape, aligning a strategy with all organizational objectives can be challenging. Thus, strategic planning is vital for businesses to thrive amidst a turbulent environment. 

This begs the question, what steps can leaders take to ensure that their team will embrace the strategic planning process? This is where strategy and business planning capabilities come in handy.

Course overview

The KPI Institute’s Certified Strategy and Business Planning Professional course empowers practitioners with the knowledge to develop excellent strategies and plan their businesses using a robust framework.

This comprehensive training program delivers impactful outcomes for employees and organizations, regardless of the business’s scale. 

Participants will get access to a network of specialists, sharing business opportunities and innovative solutions to strategic planning challenges while reaching the course’s learning objectives, which are:

• Organize an effective process to formulate and plan the organizational strategy
• Formulate meaningful mission statement, vision and corporate values
• Identify the right strategy choice (position) for the organization
• Integrate operational plans with corporate strategy
• Connect strategy to KPIs and initiatives

Benefits and importance

In this learning program, you’ll gain premium recognition as a Certified Strategy and Business Planning Professional and other benefits, including:

• Access to structured knowledge, enabling the expertise transfer across all professional life areas
• Additional educational resources such as examples of tools centralized in several catalogues, Microsoft Excel based tools, and 10 short video doodles.
• Premium subscription for smartKPIs.com with six-month access to 500 fully documented KPIs and over 20,000 enlisted KPIs and one research report from the Top 25 KPIs series
• 40 Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits to include in the CPD records for your professional body, institute, regulator, or employer

Course structure and methodology

The course encompasses a three-stage educational process with an expected total duration of 40 hours:

1. Pre-course stage: Participants will determine their current skills, actively engage with colleagues via an interactive online forum, and establish the foundation for a beneficial learning experience.
2. Core-course stage: Participants can opt for live online sessions or face-to-face training, where they will complete Individual Learning Maps and take the certification exam. Both options facilitate experiential learning and encourage human interaction. 
3. After-course stage: Participants will delve into stimulating discussions and additional readings. They will be able to create a tailored, actionable plan aligned with their business needs.

Course syllabus

The core course comprises eight learning modules:

1. Key concepts
2. Corporate identity
3. Choice of a competitive strategy
4. Strategic internal environmental scanning
5. Strategic external environmental scanning
6. Vision and choice of a growth strategy
7. SMART objectives at the corporate level
8. Planning at the departmental level

Flexible learning options

The course is offered in multiple languages and locations to accommodate a wide range of schedules and preferences.

Certification and recognition 

Upon completion, participants will receive the following certificates (soft copy):

• Certificate of Attendance: for course sessions presence
• Certificate of Completion: after finalizing pre-course activities and passing the Certification Exam
• Certified Professional Diploma: upon properly concluding all three stages of the learning experience (to be issued once the contractor has received the full payment)
• CPD Certificate of Attendance: provided once you achieve Professional Status

Maximize your organization’s potential through effective planning. Enroll today and become a Certified Strategy and Business Planning Professional!

In the previous article, Linh Do,  Head of Professional Services at The KPI Institute Vietnam, highlights the geopolitical, environmental, and economic challenges that impact Southeast Asia. Understanding these factors is crucial for grasping the local dynamics and uncovering regional growth opportunities. In this article, Linh will delve into potential measures that can be implemented to enhance performance management in the region. 

Improving performance management in Southeast Asia involves diversifying their supplier base, investing in innovation, enforcing sustainable practices, leveraging AI technologies, and upskilling employees.

Implement risk management strategies. To mitigate the further impact of global recession and trade disruption, companies should pay attention to risk management in planning their strategy and manage them accordingly. This begins with implementing proactive risk assessment measures to identify potential threats that might negatively affect their business and the weaknesses within their operation that might strengthen those impacts. Subsequently, companies can employ various remedies to address these vulnerabilities. Organizations can secure a steady supply of raw materials by evaluating alternative sourcing options, establishing backup suppliers, and exploring local or regional partnerships while mitigating the risks associated with production delays and cost fluctuations.

Capture and manage the impacts on ESG-related matters. Businesses will need to manage this aspect through effective strategy planning associated with performance management practices, such as setting objectives to identify opportunities for sustainable business growth, reduce carbon footprints, and implement sustainable supply chain practices. Some KPIs to consider may include # Initiatives to promote environmental responsibility,  % Current production lines that are environmentally friendly, and % Energy produced from renewable sources.

Adjust performance management practices to stay productive in the new work arrangement. To ensure remote workers remain engaged and productive while maintaining a sense of connectedness and collaboration with colleagues, companies like Lazada have implemented remote work policies, providing online training programs and running digital Employees Net Promoter Score surveys to support their engagement and professional development. In addition, companies should move the focus from measuring process KPIs such as # Work hour to finish a task to more output and value-oriented KPIs such as # Tasks done on time that meet the requirements.

Utilize new technologies effectively. An excellent example of this is companies like Grab and DBS Bank have implemented AI technologies to streamline operations and improve customer experiences. To succeed in AI implementation, companies need clear performance metrics. Depending on their goals, such as cost reduction or lead time improvement, relevant KPIs can be used, like % cost saved or # lead time using AI technology.

Identifying the optimal approach to maintain resilience in this highly dynamic environment is challenging, yet managing them to ensure relevancy and effectiveness is even more arduous. Therefore, it is important to equip yourself with comprehensive knowledge and skills to facilitate these processes. 

Elevate your competitive edge by enrolling in The KPI Institute’s Certified Strategy and Business Planning Professional and Certified Performance Management Professional courses, allowing you to gain insights into these subjects and maintain a leading position in your field.

The KPI Institute’s Certified Strategy and Business Planning Professional course schedule for 2023 is out now. This training program is designed for professionals and organizations aiming to stay relevant, agile, and innovative in today’s fast-paced world.

The certification is the result of a complex, experiential learning program that has three sections: pre-course activities, three days core-course activities, and post-course assignments. Throughout the course, participants will learn how to develop a strategic mind frame, explore key strategy planning concepts, apply strategy planning tools to individual and team exercises, and reflect on the best practices in the field through case studies and debates.

In addition, the Certified Strategy and Business Planning Professional course provides access to a network of specialists, who are encouraged to share business opportunities and innovative solutions to strategy planning challenges.

Among the topics in the course are the architecture of the strategy planning process, internal and external environment scanning, cascading the strategy from the corporate level, identifying KPIs for strategic objectives, and setting targets for KPIs.

Check out the Live-Online and Face-to-face classes of the Certified Strategy and Business Planning Professional course today here.

For questions about our courses, contact:

Sasikala Annamalai 

Senior Business Development Manager

E: [email protected]

M: +60 12 591 1366

Teodora Gorski

Managing Director MENA

E: [email protected]

M: +971 55 787 6427

Alexandru Muntean

Head of Customer Engagement

E: [email protected]

M: +40 747 060 997

We will be entering the last month of 2022. A new month that offers an ideal mood in setting objectives and new beginnings and starting strong foreshadows a powerful finish.

The KPI Institute (TKI) had an exceptional year, delivering live online and face-to-face courses to a much larger audience in different countries. TKI has officially launched strategy and performance management courses in Vietnam with a specialized module dedicated to Vietnamese. 

Moreover, TKI also released its four micro-certification courses: Certificate in Employee Performance Management Maturity Assessment, Certificate in Performance Measurement Maturity Assessment, Certificate in Performance Improvement Maturity Assessment, and Certificate in Strategy Planning Maturity Assessment. The maturity assessment model presented in these courses is TKI and Global Performance Audit Unit’s proprietary knowledge, compiled over +10 years of research and practical experience in the field of performance improvement.

TKI has also opened more face-to-face classes this year after conducting strictly online and live webinars to adhere to COVID-19 health precautions in 2021. In the first four months of 2022, TKI has already held over 55 days of face-to-face classes in different countries and cities, such as Saudi Arabia: Al Khobar, Riyadh, Jubail, and Dhahran; UAE: Dubai and Ras AL-Khaimah; Mauritius: Le Morne Brabant, Quatre Bornes, and Ebene; Karachi in Pakistan, Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia, and Cairo in Egypt.

To successfully end this year, TKI is continuously delivering quality content for online and face-to-face courses up until the 29th of December, covering everything from KPIs, OKRs, and strategy and business planning. So, if you do not have a plan yet on how to spend the year-end productively, TKI invites you to sign up and join any courses that fit your interests. For more information about the programs, you can check them HERE.

Furthermore, it is highly suggested that you keep an eye on TKI’s social media channels – Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn – for updates on courses that are coming up in the last four weeks of 2022 and how to sign up for them.

Editor’s Note: “Business Analytics Trends: Is the Future of Data Here?” is an article written by Islam Salahuddin and originally published in the latest edition of Performance Magazine. 

Machines don’t have a worldview, according to the famous translator Richard Pevear. That’s no longer the case today, especially with data analytics. Businesses turn to data analytics to survive and adapt to disruptions. At the same time, data analytics is evolving to meet the new challenges. Here’s a glimpse of how the already noticeable trends in the pre-pandemic world have accelerated and transformed data analytics in different ways.

External Data: Predicting the Demand for Hershey’s Bars 

External data is data collected and provided by third parties. Companies now need to incorporate data from the outside world to weigh external factors in their analytics. Examples of external data are trending narratives, real-time financial trends, and property values.

In a July 2021 article, FoodDive showed how the chocolate company Hershey used data generated by IRI, a global market insights and analytics provider, to predict the demand for Hershey’s six-bar product. Since Hersey knows the number of people who plan to make s’mores in their backyards, want to spend time with family and friends, and invest in their homes during the pandemic, the manufacturer is able to adjust their inventory and production, create a relevant marketing message, and even respond to the demand for other parts of their portfolio.

Data Monetization: Where the Opportunities Are

External data can be either free or paid. While it is true that most of the datasets of the COVID-19 are available for no charge, the escalating attention to external sources could draw more attention to the paid options. According to ResearchandMarket.com’s “Global Data Monetization Platform Markets Report 2021,” data bartering, data brokering, insights bartering, and business intelligence are the four channels that shape the business processes and data evolution across the value chain.

The report states that telecommunication giants could become value-added solutions providers and offer advertising solutions through monetizing consumer data. Digital platforms and services will dominate the data monetization space while insights-as-a-service is considered “the data monetization model of the future.” Other opportunities for tech vendors and enterprises are in data security and privacy, location data, and digital data monetization platforms.

AI-empowered Analytics and Beyond

The artificial intelligence (AI)-empowered analysis of unstructured datasets is known as cognitive analytics. It depends on real-time generated data of images, videos, text, and other forms created through social media networks and the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. It is useful in running sentiment analysis on social media interactions as it allows for better understanding of customers’ emotions and ideas and thus enables a better customer service experience.

For IoT, small-size motion sensors can now be embedded in wearable products to understand customers’ activities and needs, giving valuable insights and opening horizons for new levels of customized products.

Agile Analytics: Catch Up if You Can

However diverse your analytics methods are, they will be of no use if you do not incorporate them into operations and act on them quickly, especially during disasters. Research published in the Open Journal of Business and Management states that being agile in the analytics process involves consciousness, accessibility, decisiveness, speed, and flexibility.

In a webinar, Hugh Owen, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at the MicroStrategy, a business intelligence (BI) firm, emphasized that agile data-driven decision-making requires an organizational strategy, deploying an analytics platform in the cloud for speed, power, and security, and using self-service BI analytics to empower end users and help them save more time. 

Shifting to Cloud-based Analytics

Work from home policies have stressed the benefit of cloud analytics. Cloud storage of data means that instead of keeping data files on hardware held in the brick-and-mortar premises, data files are uploaded, kept, and governed in advanced servers operated by third-party companies, through which the data is accessed and processed.

The benefits of cloud-based analytics include reduced costs of devices required for storing and securing data, accessibility from any device, and enhanced processing speed, depending on servers’ capabilities rather than local devices. 

Scaling Up with Data Lakes 

Conversations about the rise of data lakes have been around even before the pandemic. As the volume, velocity, variety, and value of data increase and constitute big data, the need for a new form of data storage arises. A data lake is different from simple tabulated data sets like spreadsheets, arranged in defined groups called data warehouses and sometimes categorized for specific uses called data marts. A data lake is like a swamp that is able to contain raw data in structured and unstructured forms and is generated in real-time.

The importance of such capability has been emphasized by the pandemic world as more real-time data is generated, allowing for more advanced AI-driven analytics. Adopting both a data lake in addition to a data warehouse will therefore be more relevant to businesses in the post-pandemic future.

Data is essential for businesses. It helps business leaders better understand their clients, predict consumer behavior patterns, identify trends, improve the quality of services provided, and support “organizational decision-making and strategy”, according to Forbes. 

To strengthen your knowledge in developing organizational strategy and business planning using a strategic framework, join The KPI Insititute’s Certified Strategy and Business Planning Professional Live Online course on 13-17 June 2022. Visit our website for further information and sign up here.

If 2020 was the year for survival mode, 2021 was the year for adapting to changes that came our way. Adaptability is not just about keeping up with modern technologies and trends. It’s more about how we use them to accelerate change and foster a culture of innovation in the workplace, and this won’t be possible without valuing learning and development.

That is why The KPI Institute continues to deliver quality live-online certification programs in strategy and performance management. These learning sessions are designed to help organizations and professionals address business challenges, gain competencies, and achieve results.  They are packed with tools, frameworks, resources, exercises, and expert recommendations.

Before we put 2021 behind us, let us revisit the courses that made a mark on you. According to our data, here are the top live-online training programs of The KPI Institute that received the highest number of participants last year.

1. KPI Certified Professional and Practitioner: “Embedding more than 15 years of research, this educational program will provide you the necessary knowledge and skills to differentiate yourself from other professionals through a rigorous and structured approach to measuring performance.”
2. Strategy and Business Planning Professional Certification: “The course aims to offer participants a chance to build up a strategic mind-frame, understand key strategy planning concepts, use strategy planning tools, in individual and team exercises, and reflect on the best practices in the field through case studies and debates.”
3. Balanced Scorecard Management System Professional Certification: “The training course provides the pillars, tools, and resources required for an immediate application and Balanced Scorecard Management System in your own organization.”
4.  Certified Performance Management Professional and Practitioner Certifications: In this course, participants will “Obtain a premium recognition for your competencies both as a professional and practitioner to demonstrate your ability to monitor and improve current performance levels in different scenarios, in a standardized and effective manner.”
5. Certified OKR Professional: “The three-day course trains participants in how to set and work with OKRs and offers them the opportunity to get certified on the ability to deploy and use OKRs in accordance.”

To learn more about other certification programs, check out the Performance Management Training Calendar 2022.

From shifting business priorities to emerging tech trends, uncertainties penetrate organizations and economies of all sizes. This is why building adaptable strategies is at the core of the The KPI Institute’s Certified Strategy and Business Planning Professional (C-SBP) Live Online training course.

“Nowadays, businesses are appreciating more and more the need to do a full analysis of developing the right strategy that can drive their growth to the future,” Malek Ghazo, TKI’s strategy management consultant and C-SBP course facilitator, said.

Malek is an experienced excellence specialist who has developed a comprehensive knowledge of customer service frameworks. He has trained 600 Jordanian governmental sector employees on running benchmarking projects according to the full cycle of benchmarking to achieve excellence in their processes and outstanding results.

In the C-SBP Live Online session, Malek teaches professionals how to design an organizational, operational, or departmental strategy from the ground up. He shows how to implement internal and external environment scanning and provides insights on innovative solutions to strategy planning dilemmas.

“The most common question I get is how they can cascade their strategy across their organization and make sure that all levels in the organization are fully aligned towards a clear direction,” Malek said.

Course participants will learn about key strategy planning concepts and use strategy planning tools that will allow them to revisit and update their respective strategies. They will also discover the best practices in the field to help them achieve their desired outcomes for their organizations.

If you’re up for the challenge, it is time to supercharge your core capabilities and make your strategy future-ready.

Secure your slot for the Certified Strategy and Business Planning Professional (C-SBP) Live Online training course today. For inquiries, email Teodora Gorski, Managing Director MENA, at [email protected] or call +971 55 787 6427.