Businesses that need to achieve specific goals understand the importance of plans. Having an action plan is even more important when those goals are long-term. Help your business grow by downloading this free 5-year plan template for Excel. It outlines the process, resources and more to help achieve strategic goals.
What Is a 5-Year Plan?
A 5-year plan is a strategic document that outlines the goals, objectives and steps a company plans to achieve over the next five years. It serves as a roadmap for guiding the business’ growth, development and overall direction during that period. The plan typically includes long-term and short-term targets, specific actions to reach those targets and key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress.
Before starting a 5-year plan, the business must create a clear statement of the company’s overall purpose and its aspirations for the next five years. This vision and mission statement help define what the goals over the next handful of years should look like. A thorough market analysis is also helpful to get an assessment of the current market conditions, including trends, competitor analysis, customer behavior and potential opportunities or challenges the business might face.
Creating a 5-year plan is important because it provides direction, helps prioritize resources and acts as a reference point to measure the company’s growth. It’s a useful tool for both internal management and attracting investors or stakeholders who want to see a clear strategy for the company’s future
Why Do You Need a 5-Year Plan Template?
This 5-year plan template is important for several more reasons. First, it helps businesses structure their long-term strategies, set clear goals and ensure they stay on track. For example, a template standardizes the format of the plan, which helps businesses organize their ideas and focus the process.
This also saves time rather than having to create the outline for the plan from scratch each time. Templates add consistency as well, which helps when working across departments or teams by providing a unified framework for all to follow. This improves focus and facilitates communication with stakeholders, investors and team members.
The 5-year plan template helps with monitoring and making adjustments as needed, by having success metrics to ensure that the execution of the plan is meeting expectations. However, a static template isn’t the best tool for monitoring and controlling a plan once it’s been executed. To ensure that the 5-year plan succeeds, use project management software.
ProjectManager is award-winning project and portfolio management software with robust roadmaps that schedule multiple plans on one Gantt chart allowing users to see the entire process from start to finish. They can also schedule resources and costs and link all four types of task dependencies to avoid cost overruns or delays. The critical path can be filtered to identify essential tasks and a baseline set to track progress in real time, which templates can’t do. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.
When to Use a 5-Year Plan Template
A 5-year plan template is an essential tool for businesses at various stages of growth, providing long-term direction and ensuring consistent progress. Here are some key scenarios when one should consider using it.
- Starting a new business
- Expanding an existing business
- Entering new markets
- Securing investment or loans
- Navigating major changes or transitions
- Launching new products or services
- Setting long-term strategic goals
- Improving operational efficiency
- Aligning stakeholders and teams
- Monitoring and reviewing progress
- Preparing for exit or succession
Who Should Use This Free 5-Year Plan Template?
A 5-year plan template can benefit a wide range of individuals and organizations. It’s a tool that helps provide structure, focus and direction for long-term goals. Here’s who should consider using one.
- Business owners and entrepreneurs
- Project management offices (PMOs)
- Managers and executives
- Startups and small businesses
- Corporations and large enterprises
- Nonprofit organizations
- Investors and financial advisors
- Individuals planning career growth
- Educational institutions
- Government agencies and public organizations
How to Use This 5-Year Plan Template for Excel
Download this fully customizable, free 5-year plan template to start achieving long-term strategic goals. Users can add columns if they want to collect further data, but we’ve created an outline that captures the pertinent information needed to plan and execute the plan.
Objective
Across the top of the template is a box to write the object of the 5-year plan template. This is a specific, measurable goal for the business to achieve within five years. These objectives are the key outcomes that guide decisions, drive actions and shape the long-term direction of the plan. The objectives typically align with broader visions and missions, providing a clear sense of the strategic initiatives.
Beneath the objective is a chart with five rows, one for each year. Five columns list the different components of the plan and how they’re defined over the five years.
End Goals
End goals represent the ultimate outcome the business wants to achieve at the end of each year, contributing to the five-year plan. This one-year goal should align with the broader objectives of the five-year implementation plan.
Process
The process refers to the actions, initiatives and strategies to be carried out each year to achieve the end goals. This step-by-step plan should be tailored to each year’s specific focus.
Success Metrics
The project success metrics are measurable indicators used to assess whether the goals are being met. These can be quantitative or qualitative, depending on the nature of the goal.
Benefits
The benefits are the positive outcomes expected from successfully implementing the process and achieving the goals in each year.
Resources
The resources required to achieve the objectives include finances, personnel, technology and other assets that must be secured or optimized for each year’s goals.
More Free Templates To Help With Strategic Planning
The 5-year plan template is only one of over 100 free project management templates for Excel and Word that can be downloaded from our site. There are free templates for every aspect of planning, managing and tracking projects, across multiple industries. Below are just a few that can help with strategic planning.
Strategic Roadmap Template
Use this free strategic roadmap template for Excel to visually communicate the business strategy and steps that will be taken to achieve long-term goals. This helps to align everyone involved in the implementation of the strategy.
Strategic Plan Template
A strategic plan captures a business’ future vision, goals and objectives. Use this free strategic plan template for Word to create a target to work towards and track that goal across all the departments working to achieve it.
Strategy Map Template
Download this free strategy map template for Excel to create a visual representation showing the cause and effect of a business’ strategic objectives. This free template helps to communicate how value is created by the business.
How ProjectManager Helps With Long-Term Planning
All of these free templates are great to help gather ideas about the 5-year plan of the business. But once those ideas have been settled on, then a template is not the best choice to plan and implement that strategy. That’s because templates are static documents. They have to be updated manually and are poor collaboration tools. To create a 5-year plan and see it through to successful completion requires project management software. ProjectManager is award-winning project and portfolio management software with the features project managers and their teams need to monitor multiple projects.
Manage Resources to Stay Productive
Once resources have been scheduled on the Gantt chart or roadmap and teams are onboarded, project managers can set the team’s availability, such as PTO, vacation and global holidays, as well as skill sets, to make assignments easier. Then, check out the color-coded workload page to see the team’s allocation. If some are overallocated or underutilized, balance their workload to keep them working at capacity without threatening burnout. There’s also a team page that provides an overview of the team’s daily or weekly activities, which can be filtered by progress, priority and more.
Monitor Progress, Costs and More in Real Time
Once the baseline is set on the Gantt chart or roadmap, the software automatically captures live data and updates it in real time. For a high-level overview, use the real-time dashboard for one or multiple projects. It shows KPIs such as time, cost, workload and more on easy-to-read graphs and charts. Customizable reports go deeper into the data or can be filtered to show a more general view to keep stakeholders informed. Secure timesheets streamline payroll and provide a window into how far each team member has gone in completing their assigned tasks and how much it’s costing. Those labor costs help keep the project within budget.
Related Business Content
A 5-year plan template is only one piece of running a successful business. For those who want to read more about business, such as how to write a business plan, the importance of scenario planning and more, check out the links below.
- Must-Have Business Report Templates
- How to Write a Business Plan
- Importance of Scenario Planning and Analysis in Business
- Creating a Tactical Plan for Your Business
- Free Excel Templates for Business
ProjectManager is online project and portfolio management software that connects teams wherever they are in the office or out in the field. They can share files, comment at the task level and stay updated with email and in-app notifications. Join teams at Avis, Nestle and Siemens who use our software to deliver successful projects. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.