Strategic planning with OGSM

In the last quarter of the year, many businesses and organisations look ahead intensively to the coming year. So did Allsecur, the online car insurer and 100% subsidiary of Allianz, one of the world's largest insurers.

Strategic planning is the way an organisation organises and deploys its resources to reach its objectives. In Allsecur's specific case, the sales and marketing department wanted support in translating the existing priorities concretely into action lines, with the right owners and realistic timing. The OGSM model (Objectives, Goals, Strategies, Measures) offered a pragmatic structure to shape this planning further. The Jester team, together with a strategic planning team from Allsecur, got to work concretely along four steps.

Step 1: Set the Objective. What is the qualitative aim of the organisation: where does Allsecur want to be in one or a few years' time? In Allsecur's case this aim had already been set at the start of the trajectory, and mainly offered inspiration and a first direction. The fact that it was mainly a qualitative aim actually fuelled the sales and (online) marketing organisation's need for a concrete translation, and was the reason for the trajectory.

Step 2: Set the Goals. Together with Allsecur's strategic planning team, the qualitative aim (objective) was translated into a number of quantitative goals. On the basis of these measurable goals, the sales and marketing organisation can then determine over the course of 2018 whether the Objective has actually been achieved.

Step 3: Choose the Strategies. Based on the quantitative goals, concrete actions were then defined that the organisation will take in 2018 to reach the Objective. This is a concrete answer to the question: how does the organisation deploy its resources in 2018?

Step 4: Set the Measures. Finally, in line with the previous steps, quantitative measurement points were set to monitor the progress of the Strategies (step 3) and the achievement of the objectives in 2018.

The whole led to a concrete plan for Allsecur's sales and (online) marketing department on just one A4.