Dec. 8, 2008—With 2008 coming to a close, and 2009 looming closer, it's a good time to be thinking about your business and where you'd like to take it in the next 12 months. This becomes even more important in times where the economy is not as strong as we would like to see it.

The key to being one of those printers you see profiled in places like Printing News as success stories in troubled times is planning. Success doesn't just happen because you want it to. It happens because someone sat down to draw up a targeted plan for where the business would and should be in three months, six months, a year, and five years.

And that plan wasn't just tossed up on a shelf and forgotten. It was acted upon, referenced frequently, and revised as times and situations changed.

A business plan is something no company, large or small, should be without. In fact, you probably already have one somewhere, but when was the last time you really looked at it? Or acted on the ideas and ambitions written there? If you're one of those printers with a plan that's a bit dusty and in need of some cleaning up, don't despair. Starting the process of getting your business into shape to face tough times and come out standing tall isn't as hard as you might think.

SWOT Down the Doubts
The best place to begin is to create a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

To start, bring together employees from every part of your business. If you're just a small shop with a few people, get every person involved. If you're too large for that, have a representative from every department participate. This will ensure you get the full picture of your business. It might be doing better than you thought it was, or you might discover problem areas you never knew existed.

As a bonus, by getting everyone involved in the process, when it comes time to act and make changes, they will be less resistant since they will have had a hand in the planning stages.

Find a big whiteboard or large piece of paper, and section it off into four boxes. Hang it up where everyone attending this planning session can see it, and label each section with one of the SWOT ideas.

Start with Strengths. Go around the room, and as everyone to name something they consider the company does well. It can be anything from new equipment purchases that give you a competitive edge, to customer service, to a great employee atmosphere, and everything in between. Keep going around the table until everyone runs out of things to contribute.

The next part is a little harder, since it means being honest with yourselves about the companies faults. These are your Weaknesses. Use the same round-table method, and make it clear up front that you want honesty. As the owner or manager, lead the way by kicking it off with things you've noticed that could use improvement. You can't make changes unless you really know where the problem areas are, so this is a crucial step.

Opportunities is where you take those weaknesses the group identified and you list all the ways you might be able to improve. Maybe upgrading a particular piece of machinery will open up new markets currently unfeasible. Maybe improving inefficient processes will allow you to improve profit margins. For every weakness listed in the last step, there is an opportunity. Go through that list, and ask everyone to give their opinions on different ways to capitalize on weak points in the business.

Finally, there are the Threats. Like with opportunities, go through all the things you listed as strengths originally, and list the ways someone else could come in and undercut you.

Maybe you have a new machine, but someone down the street is installing something comparable or better. Maybe you're the leader in a particular market segment right now, but who are your largest competitors, and what are they doing to narrow the gap?

Making a Plan
Armed with this knowledge, you now have the foundation of a good business plan.

Prioritize the opportunities you want to tackle by how big of a weakness they are to your company. Start with the biggest areas that need improvement, and go from there. Create solid action items—this is not the place to be vague. For example, if old or worn out equipment is your biggest concern, set a deadline for yourself to replace or repair it. And then stick to it.

To Invest, or Not To Invest
With the current economy, the first gut response you had, no doubt, was to pull back, and cut out any expenses deemed unnecessary. This isn't a bad plan, per se, but it can be taken too far. It's one thing to cut your expenses and streamline your operations. It's another to stop investing in your company altogether.

The companies that come out of recessions stronger than when they entered them are the ones that realize investments cannot be put on hold. Now, this doesn't mean you should go out throwing money away. If you've done your SWOT analysis and created a business action plan from it, you have already identified your biggest problem areas.

These are the ones you should invest your dollars in, and for now, don't worry about the smaller areas. You can and should get to them in time, since any business should constantly strive to improve if it wants to stay on top, but when the money is limited, it's not a bad thing to target your upgrades a little more.

And when we talk about investments, that doesn't necessarily mean buying expensive new equipment. You might be able to overhaul or upgrade parts of your current machinery to improve efficiency. If personnel is your biggest identified weakness, maybe it means offering an incentive program.

Come Out Ahead
If you follow these basic steps, you'll be setting yourself up for a profitable future. However, this isn't something you can do once and forget. Businesses change, people change, situations change, clients change.

At the very least, you should make the SWOT and following planning sessions a yearly event. If you can do it quarterly, or even biannually, that would be even better, as it will ensure you are constantly on top of things, positioned to take immediate advantage of those opportunities as they come up, and minimize new weak points before they become major issues.