Strategic Plans and Operating Plans
Budgeting is most useful when it is integrated with a company’s strategy. Strategy specifies
how an organization matches its own capabilities with the opportunities in the marketplace
to accomplish its objectives. In developing successful strategies, managers
consider questions such as the following:
What are our objectives?
How do we create value for our customers while distinguishing ourselves from our
competitors?
Are the markets for our products local, regional, national, or global? What trends affect
our markets? How are we affected by the economy, our industry, and our competitors?
What organizational and financial structures serve us best?
What are the risks and opportunities of alternative strategies, and what are our contingency
plans if our preferred plan fails?
A company, such as Home Depot, can have a strategy of providing quality products or
services at a low price. Another company, such as Pfizer or Porsche, can have a strategy of
providing a unique product or service that is priced higher than the products or services of
competitors. Exhibit 6-1 shows that strategic plans are expressed through long-run budgets
and operating plans are expressed via short-run budgets. But there is more to the story!
The exhibit shows arrows pointing backward as well as forward. The backward arrows
are a way of graphically indicating that budgets can lead to changes in plans and strategies.
Budgets help managers assess strategic risks and opportunities by providing them with
feedback about the likely effects of their strategies and plans. Sometimes the feedback signals
to managers that they need to revise their plans and possibly their strategies.
Boeing’s experience with the 747-8 program illustrates how budgets can help managers
rework their operating plans. Boeing viewed updating its 747 jumbo jet by sharing design synergies
with the ongoing 787 Dreamliner program as a relatively inexpensive way to take sales
from Airbus’ A380 superjumbo jet. However, continued cost overruns and delays have undermined
that strategy: The 747-8 program is already $2 billion over budget and a year behind
schedule. The company recently revealed that it expects to earn no profit on virtually any of
the 105 747-8 planes on its order books. With the budget for 2010 revealing higher-thanexpected
costs in design, rework, and production, Boeing has postponed plans to accelerate
the jumbo’s production to 2013. Some aerospace experts are urging Boeing to consider more
dramatic steps, including discontinuing the passenger aircraft version of the 747-8 program.