Corporate and Strategic Financial Planning

Compare genuinely different strategic paths, not just optimistic and pessimistic versions of one.

Strategic decisions deserve more than a single forecast with a few numbers tweaked. When you are weighing real alternatives, expand into a new market or consolidate the existing one, build or acquire, grow organically or raise capital to accelerate, each path has its own cost structure, its own risk profile and its own timeline. I build models that put those alternatives side by side and show, in financial terms, what each one actually means.

WHAT IS INCLUDED

  • Multi-year strategic plans, integrated across P&L, cash flow and balance sheet, built around the specific drivers of your business rather than a generic template

  • Side-by-side comparison of genuinely distinct options. Not scenario variants of the same plan, but different plans entirely, each with its own driver set

  • Resource allocation and capital planning, showing where investment delivers the strongest return across competing priorities

  • Board-ready outputs. Dashboards, summary schedules and clear narrative outputs that translate the model into a decision a board can engage with

  • An ongoing planning framework your team can pick up and run themselves once the initial model is built, rather than a one-off exercise that goes stale

HOW THIS DIFFERS FROM A BUDGET OR A FORECAST

A budget answers one question: what do we expect the next 12 months to look like, and how do we track against it. A strategic plan answers a different one: of the paths available to us over the next three to five years, which one produces the best financial outcome, and what would have to be true for that to hold.

They are separate tools and they are built differently. A budget is maintained and updated against actuals. A strategic plan is built to be interrogated, and then retired once a direction is chosen. Most businesses need both. See financial forecasting and budgeting for the annual planning side.

WHEN CLIENTS COME TO ME

  • The board is choosing between genuinely different strategic directions and wants to see the financial case for each

  • Planning multi-year growth, and needing more structure than a single annual budget provides

  • Presenting a strategic plan to a board, an investor or a bank, and wanting the numbers to carry the argument

  • Leadership has changed, and the new team wants an independent, rebuilt view of where the business stands and where it can go

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How far out should a strategic financial plan run?

Three to five years for most businesses. Long enough for a strategic decision to play out in the numbers, short enough that the assumptions remain defensible. Infrastructure and property assets are the exception, where the plan runs the life of the asset.

What is the difference between scenario analysis and strategic planning?

Scenario analysis flexes the assumptions inside one plan to test how resilient it is. Strategic planning compares separate plans against each other. Most engagements use both: build the options, then stress each one.

What is the difference between a strategic plan and a budget?

A budget is a fixed financial plan for one year, approved by the board and used as the baseline for measuring performance. A strategic plan looks three to five years out and compares different directions the business could take. The budget is maintained. The strategic plan is interrogated and then retired once a direction is chosen.

Can our finance team maintain the model afterwards?

Yes, and it is built on that basis. The model is documented, the drivers are labelled, and I hand it over with a walkthrough rather than a manual.

What does a board actually want to see?

A small number of numbers that matter, and the ability to interrogate them. A dashboard comparing each option on the measures the board cares about, with the detail underneath available when a director asks where a figure comes from.

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WHAT CLIENTS SAY

"Mark had a great ability to understand and interpret business requirements in such a way as to question them in the first instance, and then design the system to meet, and often exceed, our expectations."

Alister Christopher, Group Vice President, Gartner Consulting